grace smith – The Hilltop Monitor

State of the Campus

Grace Smith — Fri, 17 Apr 2015 22:18:10 +0000

While seniors are planning for post-graduate life and students across the campus are solidifying summer plans, William Jewell College’s many departments are reflecting on the past year and looking for ways to improve the campus in the future. This week, “The Hilltop Monitor” asked four department heads to address the strengths, challenges and priorities for their departments in the next year.

William Jewell College has undergone many changes in the past five years. Jewell athletics joined the NCAA as a Division II program and the face of the campus has changed with the new Pryor Learning Commons. Further, students, faculty and staff are adjusting to Jewellverse with all its associated benefits and challenges.

Dr. Darlene Bailey, director of the Athletics Department, stated that in Jewell’s fourth year as a division two school, the Athletics Department has moved out of the transition phase and into a period of stability.

“We’ve had changes in our program,” Bailey said, “but overall we’ve had good continuity in our staff, and we continue to have pretty good continuity of students in terms of building our teams.”

Now out of the transition phase, the Athletics Department faces challenges regarding resource allocation, regulation compliance and the demands of an instant, digital world. Even with limited resources, Bailey is still feeling the pressure to post instant game scores ad constantly update Twitter feeds.

In light of these changes and challenges, Dr. Bailey stated that the mission of the department has remained the same.

“[The goal is to] recruit, retain, and graduate quality students to be as competitive in our athletic programs as we can possibly be,” said Bailey.

Bailey also identified increasing campus involvement among student athletes and telling the stories of students in Jewell’s athletic program as objectives for the upcoming year.

“I think there’s this notion that athletics are down the hill,” Bailey said. “But if you look at the student athletes, individually and collectively, most of them are involved in a lot of things. They write for the paper, or they’re in a sorority, or they’re in debate, they’re doing research. To be able to tell that story is something I’d like to do better […] to better tell the story of the Division II student athlete experience.”

Dean of Admissions Cory Scheer works to recruit prospective Jewell students as early as their sophomore year in high school.

“We think of our priorities in terms of three year rolling priorities,” Scheer said. “So right now we’re very, very focused on the recruitment of our 2015 class, but we’re also communicating and reaching out very intentionally with rising seniors and current juniors. So we’re really building that pool of students that will look at Jewell in 2016, and we’re also communicating already with sophomores. We know that the earlier the communication is the more opportunity there is for Jewell to be in consideration for their college choice.”

Scheer identified the Admissions Department’s greatest challenge as the same challenge every admissions department faces: making Jewell stand out. In order to meet the challenge, the Admissions Department uses a customer relationship management system to communicate how a Jewell education benefits current students and how it has helped alumni succeed. Admissions also benefits from strong cooperation with Jewell’s faculty. Scheer believes that one of the best ways to communicate the value of a Jewell education and to determine if Jewell is the best fit for a prospective student is for the student to visit Jewell’s campus.

“We have to be able to get students on campus to see whether or not Jewell is a good fit for them,” Scheer said. “Because that’s the most important decision for a student, is it a good fit or not, it’s nearly impossible for a student to enroll at Jewell unless they’ve been to Jewell for something. So we want to make sure they come on campus to experience Jewell, to interact with current students, to talk to faculty, to speak with staff and to experience what Jewell is all about.”

Scheer has been the dean of Admissions at Jewell for eleven months, and he identifies his staff as the greatest strength of the department.

“The greatest strength that we have is our staff and the team I have the privilege to work alongside,” Scheer said. “We have a very, very strong commitment to insuring that we provide an exceptional experience for our prospective students, whether that’s through the events that we host on campus, or when we have students that do individual visits, or our communication that goes out, through paper or publication. It requires a really dynamic and exceptional staff in order for that to occur, so that is our number one strength.”

Chad Martie, director of Campus Safety, is responsible for maintaining the safety and security of the Jewell community. Echoing other department heads, Martie identifies one his department’s greatest strengths as its strong relationship with Student Life and the administration. In addition, the department enjoys a “positive and collaborative relationship with the Liberty Police Department, Clay County Sheriff Department and Liberty Fire Department.”

In case of emergency, all campus safety officials are trained in CPR, AED and First Aid. Nevertheless, Martie identified one of Campus Safety’s challenges in the next year as quickly responding to non-emergencies.

“As on many college campuses, [dealing with] parking and responding to non-emergencies in a timely manner are always a challenge,” Martie said. “The officer on duty must prioritize his calls, and this leads to people sometimes having to wait longer for non-emergency responses than I would like. This is something that we strive to eliminate but does arise from time to time.”

Campus Safety also continues to be challenged by the parking situation on campus.

“The parking is always going to be a hurdle that will need to be overcome,” Martie said. “My staff in part with William Jewell College will continue to try to control and improve the parking issues on campus. Having all members of our community park where they should would really help and would make our campus safer for all.”

In the next year, Campus Safety is planning to advance the building captain program which trains campus citizens to be prepared in emergencies such as tornados or fires.

Behind the scenes, Jason Rombalski for director of Facilities Management, keeps the campus machine running through a cycle of preventative maintenance to the campus infrastructure and the ability to respond quickly to emergencies.

The preventative maintence cycle is a Student Life – Facilities collaborative master plan. This plan includes data on the life expectancy of various objects in the residential spaces such as lightbulbs, furniture, paint and carpet. By documenting the life expectancy of each item, Facilities and Student Life can make a long term plan for maintaining all residential spaces. This process allows for more accurate budget forecasting and ensures that all residential spaces are kept to a certain standard.

Despite data-driven planning, Facilities still faces emergencies such as clearing snow and ice from roads and walkways or responding to unexpected accidents.

“We generally have the ability to respond quickly when we need to,“ Rombalski said. “We have great cooperation within our community to achieve the things that we need to […for example, dealing with the flooding] in Marston, and in that staff, faculty and students have been fantastic to work with.”

In the past year, Facilities replaced the roofs of Eaton Hall and Browning Hall and repaired the roof on Ely Hall. This was a large capital project supplemented by insurance money from storm damage. In addition, the interior of the Lambda Chi Alpha house was painted and community space was added in Jones. In the upcoming year, Facilities is planning to continue updating campus infrastructure and better prepare themselves to respond to emergencies.

Rombalski summed up the feelings of all four department heads about the upcoming year.

“I’m excited for where we’re headed. ‘Improving’ is the word, absolutely.”

Jewellverse, Curry Hall provide research resources for students

Grace Smith — Fri, 06 Feb 2015 20:13:40 +0000

Although there is no traditional research library at William Jewell College, there are a wide variety of resources available to students through the Charles F. Curry Library. The stacks on the bottom level of Curry Hall house almost all of the 126,182 physical books in Jewell’s collection, but this is only 15% of Jewell’s library. The other 85% are e-books that are available through the library catalog and can be read on the iPad with the Bluefire Reader App. In addition, the library provides 61 databases with 82,000 journals. Furthermore, the library staff makes itself available to aid students in the research process.

Both Dr. Stephanie DeClue, Library Director, and Rebecca Hamlett, Instruction and Archive Librarian, advise students to use Summon on the Curry homepage to get begin the research process.

“If you are just beginning and have to start somewhere, I tell students to just go to the library homepage, and go to our Summon tab and type something in,” said DeClue. “You can go from there and refine it, but that’s the easiest way to get everything we have all in one big pot, all of our databases, all of our books, all of our e-books, everything that we have in one search.”

Summon is also available through the Ellucian Go app. After completing a preliminary search, students can use a variety of filters to organize the results of a search.

“Our best resources are our article databases. These include a number of different types of articles but primarily students are going to want to look for scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles,” said Hamlett. “Go to the library homepage. All of our materials are accessible on the iPad and so I would suggest putting a shortcut on the iPad home screen directly to the website.”

In addition, for students who struggle with research or do not know where to begin, Hamlett is available for individual research sessions by appointment.

“Come see me,” Hamlett said. “It’s important to me that students don’t forget that we are here as a resource for them. In navigating the databases, in navigating the library resources, in determining credibility of resources, in determining what types of resources are most relevant and appropriate for students and their research, I can help people with that and that is my primary function here at Jewell. I always recommend that people contact me by email, and set up a one-on-one appointment with me. I am also available to visit faculty classes to give instruction on library resources, and that truly is one of my favorite parts of my job.”

Many Jewell students are already taking advantage of the assistance offered by Hamlett. So far, this semester, Hamlett has visited both a Spanish and Economics capstones to aid with research projects and is co-teaching two sections of Healthcare Research: Theory and Practice.

“Some of the students I see most frequently are nursing students who are doing their literature reviews or their quality improvement projects,” said Hamlett. “In addition, every semester for the second seven weeks I offer an information resource methods course. It is for seven weeks and worth one credit hour. I would typically recommend this course for sophomores in their spring semester and juniors in their fall semester but anyone can take it. It is a seven week course that goes into library resources, other scholarly resources, citation styles, copyright [and] those types of things very much in depth.”

Across the Quad from the PLC, in the basement of Curry Hall, are the William Jewell College Archives and the stacks. The stacks hold all of Jewell’s physical books that are available for checkout, organized by topic . Down the hall are the archives. The archives host two different collections; the first collection hosts documents from the Baptist Historical Society. These documents included Baptist publications, pastors’ papers, files on churches in the area with records of archive materials that mention them, association minutes, annuals, church histories, biographical information, old books and sermons. The second collection is the archive of William Jewell College. This collection includes biographies of former and current students, faculty and trustees as well as yearbooks and campus newspapers. The collection also includes historical records of student and Greek organizations as well as a library of antique books and photos. Leilani Seaborn, senior, is a student worker in the archives.

“We get requests from non-students all the time because we house the Baptist documents,” Seaborn said. “We also get research requests from people who have a parent or relative who went to Jewell. Anyone can email Rebecca requesting information and she will pass it on the student workers and we do the research.”

Seaborn has been working with Rebecca Hamlett and the other student workers to reorganize and inventory the archives so they can better understand the extent of Jewell’s collections. The team is also in the process of digitizing the archives in order to preserve the texts and make the collections available to researchers electronically.

“I would love to have more people know we’re down here,” said Seaborn. Although all the materials must remain in the archives, students and visitors can schedule an appointment to work in the archives by contacting Rebecca Hamlett. During the research process, students are encouraged to photograph the documents with their iPads.

One such teacher is Dr. Christopher Wilkins, Associate Professor of History.

“I think archival research is one of the key elements of working as a historian,” Wilkins said. “Finding information online is wonderful and helpful, but going into the archives and finding valuable information that way provides a different kind of research experience.”

Wilkins has his students use the archives in order to understand how large historical events impact the Jewell community. Wilkin’s students have used the archives to do research on World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War, all in relation to William Jewell College.

“I’ve had student look at the influence of the Vietnam War on Jewell, and the role that Jewell students and graduates played in Vietnam,” said Wilkins. “The students were able to interview several professors who had been at Jewell during the Vietnam War, and find footage of an anti-war protest at Jewell. They made a 25-minute documentary on the basis of their research. I was really impressed.”

Before going to the archives, Wilkins advises that students email the archives ahead of time with their research topic, be prepared to take notes and pictures and utilize the finding aids and archives staff.

“Take notes,” Wilkins said. “Wherever you are, if they will let you take pictures, make sure you bring a camera and make sure that you very carefully write down what file these pictures correspond to, so take very careful notes on where you are getting the information from. Look at the finding aids because the archivists are experts in the topics and they have often gone through and pretty clearly identified what these files represent and what kinds of subjects they will illuminate for you. And be friendly and respectful to the archivists; they know a lot more than you do and if they know what your topic is, they can point you in the right direction.”

Overall, there are both physical and electronic research resources available to students. In order to request a research consultation or make an appointment to use the archives, contact Rebecca Hamlett at hamlettr@william.jewell.edu.

Breaking down the budget: categories of William Jewell’s revenue and expenses

Grace Smith — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 19:42:18 +0000

According to William Jewell College, the annual cost of a Jewell education is $40,030. This total includes $200 in fees for activity and health services, $4,680 for a double occupancy dorm room, $3,730 for a meal plan and $31,420 for tuition. This tuition price is before scholarship. After scholarships are applied, the average cost of tuition is $21,400. This is due to 12 types of academic scholarships, grants and awards ranging from $500 to full tuition; athletic scholarships; performing arts scholarships for vocal and instrumental music; choral scholars ($5,000); theatre; debate; and journalism. Ninety-nine percent of Jewell students receive financial aid.

The three main categories of the College’s program services are instruction and academic support, room and board and student services and programming. Beyond these categories are separate ones for the Harriman-Jewell Series and the Pryor Leadership Studies Program. The first category, instruction and academic support, includes all classroom instruction and library services. The most notable source of revenue for this category is student tuition supplemented by scholarship and financial aid.

The room and board category makes possible student utilization of on-campus housing and dining services. In 2012, there were approximately 850 students being served by William Jewell’s room and board services. This category includes compensation to William Jewell’s dining services contractor, Fresh Ideas, as well as cleaning services, utilities and maintenance for the residence halls.

Student services and programming include athletic and intramural sports, student support services such as counseling and health services, financial aid services, academic record services, student activities such as student organizations and student government. Each student’s $200 activity and health services fee pays into this category, but activity fees are not the only input into this category. In addition, in 2012 the College spent 11 times more on student activities than student activities yielded in revenue.

In order to determine revenue and expense streams for William Jewell College, the Hilltop Monitor accessed Jewell’s 2012 Form 990 through the Center for Nonprofit Statistics and Jewell’s Nonprofit Search Profile from the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation. Since 2012, Jewell has undergone changes that are not reflected in the Form 990, such as switching from Sodexo to Fresh Ideas as Jewell’s dining services provider, completing construction of the Pryor Learning Commons and launching the Jewellverse initiative.

William Jewell College is classified as a 501(c)(3) under the Internal Revenue code. This means that Jewell is a tax-exempt, educational non-profit organization. Under this classification the College is required to file a Form 990 annually to maintain the school’s non-profit classification. The form is a public source of information on the organizations mission, programs and finances.

Revenue comes from both student payments for program services, contributions and other sources. Contribution sources included government grants, fundraising events, gifts to the College and non-cash contributions. Program service revenue includes payments of tuition, residence fees, meal plans, revenue from fine arts and student activity and health fees. Other sources besides programming and contribution sources include income from investments, rentals, royalties and the sales of securities.

Expenses for the College include grants and scholarships provided to students, all compensation for employees including benefits and pension contributions, payment for accounting and legal services, advertising and information technology services. Expense for program services include dining, student programming, performing arts, and library materials.

Overall, for both 2012 and 2013 William Jewell has maintained balance in the relationship between revenue and expense.

Buy from Amazon, rent from the bookstore: a student guide to CTI textbooks

Grace Smith — Fri, 03 Oct 2014 19:44:47 +0000

According to The College Board, a student at a four-year private college will spend an average of $1,253 per year on textbooks and supplies. This is in addition to tuition, fees, a meal plan, housing and social expenses. With students spending an average of $600 per semester, many outlets for textbooks have emerged. Today, students have a variety of options for how and where to purchase their textbooks.

The first option is the William Jewell College Official Bookstore. Jewell’s campus bookstore is one of 700 nationwide that operate in the college division under the umbrella of Barnes and Noble. In addition to college bookstores, Barnes and Noble operates 661 brick and mortar stores and the NOOK franchise. In 2014, Barnes and Noble College earned $1.7 million, 27 percent of Barnes and Noble’s overall sales. The model is hailed as mutually beneficial for the school and store. The stores act as the school’s official bookstore and the school receives a percentage of the store’s profits. As for textbooks, the bookstore offers new, used and electronic books as well as rentals and a buyback program. Benefits of the bookstore include an option to order books with a few clicks from a class schedule on MyJewell, the on-campus location and a variety of used texts that are not available from many online retailers.

Beyond the official bookstore, many students opt to purchase books from Amazon. When purchasing books from Amazon students have two options. First, to purchase directly from Amazon. Most of these purchases are eligible for promotions such as Amazon Prime, free shipping and Amazon Student. Second, students can make a purchase from a third-party retailer that is facilitated by Amazon. These purchases are often not eligible for promotions and have addition shipping fees. Amazon offers mostly new books and a few eBooks. There are very few options for used books and no rental or buyback options.

Another online retailer, Chegg, offers many services that Amazon does not. Chegg is a website that specializes in renting textbooks. The site also sells books, buys used books and hosts internship, job, and scholarship databases. For some texts, Chegg offers a seven day “read while you wait” eBook, but does not offer most texts in an eBook format.

Beyond books, Chegg supports a variety of humanitarian causes from planting trees to domestic and international community service and hosts a college lifestyle blog. The company has also partnered with brands such as Hulu and Redbull to help these brands reach college students.

When it comes to physical textbooks, students have three main options: buy new, buy used, rent new or rent used. In order to determine trends in Critical Thought and Inquiry (CTI) book prices for William Jewell students, The Hilltop Monitorcompared the prices of all required texts for Fall 2014 (CTI) classes between the bookstore and Amazon for buying and the bookstore and Chegg for renting.

This comparison showed that purchasing a new CTI book from Amazon is always cheaper than purchasing a new book from the bookstore. Further, in 18 out of 66 cases, it is cheaper to purchase a new book from Amazon than a used book from the Bookstore. Overall, buying a new book from Amazon costs less than buying a new book from the bookstore, but used options from the bookstore are generally cheaper than new books from Amazon.

The comparison also showed that for CTI books, it is always cheaper to rent a used book from the bookstore than to rent from Chegg. One main reason is that Chegg’s baseline rental price is $9.99 every required CTI texts, such as On Liberty and Herland, which are short and relatively inexpensive titles but Chegg’s baseline has no downward flexibility. Besides the baseline price, the trend of cheaper bookstore rental prices persists into higher priced titles. For example, “Debates on U.S. Immigration,” the most expensive non-math required title, is $58.50 to rent used from the bookstore while it is $101.99 to rent from Chegg. Overall, the bookstore is the cheaper option for renting.