Advertisement

Archive | July, 2004

Residence life welcomes new staff

The residence life department added three new additions to its staff.  As the demand for on-campus housing increases, so does the demand for new staff members.
“I’m very excited, because we did a very rigorous national search, and from a pool of hundreds of applicants, we were able to invite the best and the brightest to join us,” said Michael Sanseviro, director of residence life.  “You can expect to see a lot of great things from our young and new department.”

According to the residence life Web site, Sharon Fellers joined KSU as the coordinator of residence life for KSU Place. Sellers attended the University of Georgia, where she completed her Masters in College Student Affairs Administration.  She gained experience with orientation and also managed Russell Hall, an on-campus dormitory at UGA.  She also gained experience with on-campus living at Mercer University where she was a resident director.

“Beginning my professional position as KSU is a phenomenal opportunity due to the great residence life staff, as well as all the new developments on the campus,” Fellers said.  “KSU is growing, and I am extremely excited about being a part of these new ground-breaking experiences.”

LaShandra Little is the new coordinator of residence life for the University Village.  Little earned a Masters in Higher Education and Student Affairs at the University of South Carolina.   According to the residence life Web site, while at USC, Little “coordinated a living-learning community in the first-year experience program.”  She earned her BA in Political Science at Albany State University, where she also gained student activities experience.

“I am excited about the opportunity to work with a great department and a great staff,” Little said.  “I hope I can help make Kennesaw State’s resident life program even better.”

Chris Moore is the new Assistant Coordinator/ Graduate Assistant for the University Village. In the fall, Moore will begin the Masters Program in Conflict Management. For the past two years, Moore was a residence director at Oxford College of Emory University.  He earned BA in Mass Communications and Media at Lander University.

“I am very excited to be at KSU, and I hope I can do a lot for the students,” Moore said.  “I want to be a mentor and a resource for incoming freshmen and returning students.” The department of residence life is located in the Carmichael Student Center in room 156. The department supervises housing and all related
programs for the on campus residents of KSU.

July 21, 2004
0

New system to help detect plagiarism

KSU has obtained a license for Turnitin, a system that detects plagiarism. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines plagiarism as “the act of stealing and passing off the words of another as one’s own: use of another’s production without crediting the source.

Turnitin was chosen by the university system to help keep plagiarism out of the schools. It is available for professors to access.  According to Gary C. Lewis, professor and director of online learning services, some professors are already using the system.

According to the Turnitin Web site, the system scans students’ submitted papers for unoriginal work. The papers are checked by three databases. The database updates at a rate of 40 million pages per day.  Any suspicious text found is underlined, color-coded and linked to the original source.  Professors can submit the work they find suspicious, or students can submit the work themselves. The system can detect copied sentences as well as copies of entire plagiarized papers. Once the work is reviewed, an “Originality Report” is sent back to the professor for their review.

KSU’s policy on academic honesty states” No student shall receive, attempt to receive, knowingly give or attempt to give unauthorized assistance in the preparation of any work required to be submitted for credit as part of a course. When direct quotations are used, they should be indicated, and when ideas, theories, data, figures, graphs, programs, electronic based information or illustrations created by someone other than the student are incorporated into a paper or used in a project, they should also be attributed.”

According to a 1998 survey by Who’s Who Among American High School Students, four out of five college-bound high school students admit to cheating on schoolwork.

A recent Gallup poll indicated that respondents considered a crisis in education and a decline in ethics to be the top two problems facing America today.

Turnitin will serve as more of a preventive measure for KSU.

July 7, 2004
0