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Photo courtesy of DEBBIE WINTERMANTEL
Wesleyan junior and guard on the men’s basketball team Bryan Wintermantel was called to active duty and is now serving in the 3rd Battalion, 111th Air Defense Artillery of the Virginia National Guard. See story, Community page 4. |
The Adult Studies Department at Virginia Wesleyan College has changed its foreign language requirements for Adult Studies students. A faculty assembly approved a joint proposal set forth by the Adult Studies Department and the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature which called for a decrease in the number of credit hours an Adult Studies student must complete in a foreign language.
The number of hours an ASP student must complete has been reduced from four courses to two in one language. The new requirements were approved last November and went into effect at the start of this semester. The changes in the foreign language requirements apply to all Adult Studies students. According to Kate Loring, director of the Adult Studies Program, the proposal sought to alleviate the problems that ASP students were having with the foreign language requirements under the current structure of the program. For several years, the ASP has been offering Spanish, French and German to its students; however, the only foreign language course that has seen consistently adequate enrollment is Spanish. The German and French courses seldom fill up with enough students to allow them to be taught.
Wesleyan’s foreign language requirement went into effect for freshman students in 1991 and for transfer and ASP students in 1995. In the past several years, course scheduling has become increasingly more difficult for ASP students because of the foreign language requirement. “I realized that the structure of our requirement and the structure of their lives didn’t match,” said Loring. It is important to understand that this change in requirements came about because of the special circumstances that exist for ASP students.
Please see Requirements, page 3
To stay or not to stay, that is the question faced by many of Virginia Wesleyan College’s students due to a new 6.2 percent tuition increase for next year, taking the current tuition from $18,000 to $19,200. The increase was decided by the school’s Board of Trustees to offset cost of living increases, according to Eugenia F. Hickman, director of financial aid.
“Because the cost of living goes up, so does tuition,” she said. “The same reason there’s an increase at any school. It’s a normal occurrence in any operating college. This was a slightly lower increase than last year.”
One such school is Randolph-Macon College, located in Ashland, Va., which charges $19,480 for tuition alone. Their room and board is $6,000 plus another $300 for a room deposit. Similarly, Roanoke College’s tuition is $19,186 per year with $6,338 for room and board. “It’s not just Wesleyan’s cost that increases,” added Mary Holland of financial aid, noting that it is standard for tuition to rise each year. “The cost of operating this institution is immense, and the economy is not exactly helping us.”
However, the increase is making some students face a tough reality and forcing them to make a tougher decision. “I’m not happy with the increase at all,” said Monique Valentine, a freshman from Hammonton, N.J. “It made me think about transferring to an instate school but I decided against it because my parents love this school. So they decided to pay it.”
Please see Tuition, page 3
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Photo by BLADEN FINCH
Flags in front of the Godwin Building fly at half-mast following news of the Columbia tragedy. See story, News Page 2. |
Virginia Wesleyan’s own Sigma Sigma Sigma sorority was honored at the end of 2002 by the Tri-Sigma National office with several major collegiate awards. These are the first major national awards that Tri-Sigma has ever received. The awards received by Tri-Sigma are highly recognized honors that come with gratification and high regard among the Tri-Sigma National Organization.
The awards include Recruitment Efficiency, Recruitment Program, Scholastic Excellence Ranking Citations, New Member Orientation Program Recognition, Panhellenic with Five or Fewer Groups, Initiation Success and Chapter Music Program. “Usually these awards are given to larger sororities,” said Kristi Riggs, former Tri-Sigma President. “And for a group that is a maximum of 45 girls, this is a huge honor.”A total of eight awards were given to Tri-Sigma, including two major awards that hold great importance in the Tri-Sigma, organization.
One award was the Mable Kane Stryker Scholarship Award, a $12,000 graduate school scholarship awarded to Wesleyan graduate Melany Tromba. Tromba now attends Nova Southeast University, where she is working on her doctorate in clinical psychology. Tromba graduated from Wesleyan in the spring of 2002. As a student she was extremely active in Tri-Sigma and in other activities around campus. Some of her duties included the position of secretary of the Psi Chi Honor Society and Marshall for the Neptune Festival parade.
The second major award was the Recruitment Program, which was awarded to the whole group. As a reward for this honor, the current president of Tri-Sigma, junior Josette Wade, was invited to the Alumni Collegiate Advisory Committee Woodstock, Va., the Tri-Sigma national headquarters. Wade will be in a panel of five Presidents of different Tri-Sigma sororities across the nation. During this meeting Wade will meet the National Tri-Sigma president, the Alumni vice president and many others. The Panel will discuss their core values, operations of the sorority, services, and ways to enhance Tri-Sigma.
Please see Sigma, page 3
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