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The clock is ticking to file a grade appeal. If you believe the grade you earned is different than the grade you received, stop by Conflict Resolution and Student Conduct Services to learn about the grade appeal process.
Category: "Campus Announcements"
Power up your RamCard
This semester, you can make your RamCard work even harder by turning it into a free public library card.
Through a collaboration between CSU Libraries and Poudre River Public Library District, Colorado State University students, faculty and staff can now add all the perks of a PRPLD library card to their existing RamCard. This gives the campus community access to free ebook, movie and music downloads and so much more.
Once activated through RamWeb, your super-charged RamCard can be used to take advantage of the public library’s notable collection of resources, including popular fiction and nonfiction ebooks, electronic magazines, videos and audio books.
“The PRPLD popular and recreational library resources complement the CSU Libraries' extensive research resources, including more than 150,000 academic ebooks, databases and scholarly journals,” said Pat Burns, vice president for IT and dean of Libraries. “We are happy to be able to provide access to titles frequently requested by the campus community while maintaining our focus on academic publications.”
This program is open to everyone with a RamCard, even if you already have a PRPLD card.
For more information about giving your RamCard a new superpower and instructions on how to opt-in to the public library card program, go to the CSU Libraries website.
Around the Horn starts service; design revealed
Around the Horn, a new, free cross-campus shuttle, will start service on Monday, Aug. 18, with a limited schedule.
All students to receive Microsoft Office, other benefits
All students to receive Microsoft Office, other benefits
August 4, 2014
Thanks to support from The Associated Students of CSU and the University Technology Fee Advisory Board, all CSU students may download, install and use Microsoft Office, free of charge, throughout their time at Colorado State.
Students: Don't buy Office!
Colleges and departments at CSU have partnered with Microsoft to leverage their Office 365 Education web-based services for students, faculty, and staff. Additional student benefits of this software subscription service include a one terabyte (1TB) cloud drive, and the ability to install and use up to five copies of Microsoft Office on the computers and devices of their choosing: PCs, Macs, desktops, laptops, smartphones, tablets, and more.
Starting this fall, all undergraduate and graduate students at CSU are eligible. Here's what's included on up to five desktop/laptop computers (PC and/or Mac) per student:
- Microsoft Word
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft Outlook
- Microsoft Access
- Microsoft Publisher
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- Lync Online (secure chat)
- OneNote
- Office Mobile Word
- Office Mobile Excel
- Office Mobile PowerPoint
- Username: ename@colostate.edu - (The @colostate.edu part is required here, but not with other eID logins such as RAMweb – don’t forget it!)
- Password: your eID password.
Perception of public higher ed does not match facts
One trillion dollars. We've heard the statistic and the conventional wisdom: Student loan debt, driven by recklessly out-of-control tuition, will stifle our economic future.
On the surface, it rings true. But as a scientist, I have a penchant for data, and have found that simplistic narratives are often, well, overly simplistic. This can become a real problem when we use those simplistic narratives to drive public policy decisions.
Multiple culprits have driven student loan debt to current levels: the recession, fewer families saving for college, rising graduate school expenses, the surge of for-profit education providers, and rising enrollment. The debt has also been driven by tuition increases, but at public universities, these increases correlate — nearly dollar for dollar — with cuts in per-student state funding. In fact, at my university, if we adjust for inflation, we have held the cost of education per student steady for two decades.
While the level of national debt is real, the picture for the average student is less bleak. Seventy percent of students who borrow to fund their undergraduate education owe less than $25,000 at graduation — 40 percent owe less than $10,000. Two-thirds of Americans still enroll at state colleges and universities, and those students carry a smaller individual share of the $1 trillion debt than their peers at private and for-profit colleges.
Then and now
At Colorado State University, our students have lower average debt and among the lowest loan default rates in the nation. And while tuition certainly has gone up at our state schools, this doesn't reflect skyrocketing cost increases but who's paying. Twenty years ago, the state paid two-thirds of the cost to attend college, and students paid a third. Today, that's reversed.
Our grandparents believed higher education was a public good, not an individual commodity, and invested in us. Over the last 20 years, we've backed off that notion and pushed the costs onto students, with almost no discussion about whether this was the public policy we wanted. The result: Students are paying more because we, as taxpayers, are paying less.
Still, those students who take out loans to attend our public schools are essentially borrowing capital to invest in a business plan with a wonderful track record and a bright prospectus. College graduates earn on average $1 million more over their working lives. The Brookings Institution calculates the return on investment on a student loan at 15 percent annually. Each successive increase in educational attainment cuts the rate of unemployment. In Colorado, the average college graduate pays back the public investment in their education in just over three years through their taxes on higher income.
Higher ed and the debt crisis
Yet we feel we need to do something about the debt crisis, so we're now seeing proposed solutions that involve regulating tuition at only public institutions — even when all evidence suggests they aren't the problem. Nearly 60 percent of all federal loan debt is held by students who attended for-profit private schools. They account for around 13 percent of all students but nearly 50 percent of loan defaults. More than half who enroll in two-year for-profit colleges never finish.
Regulation that only impacts public higher education places our state schools at a competitive disadvantage, with the risk of lowering quality and driving students to more costly options. It puts us in the position of regulating the one segment of higher education that has the most straightforward rationale for cost increases, lower average student debt and, from a social escalator and R&D impact perspective, the greatest benefit to the taxpaying public.
We know that the students who are harmed most by debt loads are those who borrow unreasonable amounts for educational programs that don't end in a four-year degree. If we want a viable solution on the student debt crisis, we need to be honest about how we got to this point, and not risk treatments whose side effects may be worse than the disease.
Tony Frank's commentary first appeared in the Denver Post July 27, 2014.
Eddy Hall gets long-awaited upgrade
Work on a $12 million renovation of Eddy Hall began on May 27 and will take more than a year to complete. Eddy Hall, constructed in 1963, currently houses the English and Philosophy departments, and will house Ethnic Studies when complete. It has undergone no major renovation in its 51-year lifespan. “We are very excited at the prospect of a remodeled and revitalized Eddy Hall,” said Ann Gill, dean of the College of Liberal Arts. “Undergraduate students from every CSU college attend classes in Eddy, so there will be much to celebrate when this project is completed.” Grand entrance The current 69,457 square-foot building will include nearly 3,500 square feet of additional space when completed. The highlight will be a two-story glass-enclosed entrance on the building’s east side that will both enhance the building’s aesthetic appeal and alleviate crowding at the entrance that is common at Eddy. Other improvements include updated classrooms and faculty offices, wider hallways, new paint and new carpet. The building will also include community gathering places called “Eddy’s Eddies.” Improvements inside and out The building’s exterior will be re-clad in brick and stone to make it match the red sandstone theme on campus, and a landscaped plaza will be added. Phase I of the project, set for completion in December, will focus on construction on the south and east sides of building. Phase II, which begins in January 2015 and is scheduled for completion in August 2015, will focus on the north and west sides of the building. Working in shifts Half of the English faculty will be in Eddy north hallway and half will be in Ingersoll southeast on the first and second floors during Phase I. In Phase II, half of the English faculty will be in Eddy south hallway and half will be in Ingersoll southeast on the first and second floors. The Writing Center will be in Johnson 119 for the duration of the project. The philosophy department administration will be in Ingersoll southeast 166 for the duration of the project. In Phase I, philosophy faculty will be in Eddy north hallways. In Phase II, philosophy faculty will be in Eddy south hallway. New home for Ethnic Studies Ethnic Studies, currently located in Aylesworth, will be relocated to Eddy second floor (the old Communication Studies space) when the remodel is complete.
City adopts a new residential parking permit program
The City of Fort Collins has launched a new parking permit program to ease on-street parking congestion in several neighborhoods.
The Residential Parking Permit Program, called RP3, helps to provide close and convenient on-street parking for residents, using a system that limits parking in a neighborhood to only those residents and their guests with permits.
The Spring Court, Sheeley and Mantz neighborhoods are the first to adopt the program; additional neighborhoods are exploring the program. Each neighborhood in the program has its own unique parking requirements. For more information, visit the City of Fort Collins website or call (970) 416-2036.
Don't park in these neighborhoodsStudents and employees should avoid parking in all neighborhoods near campus and consider taking advantage of local alternative transportation options, such as MAX or Transfort, to commute to campus. Students and employees who do choose to park in a permit program zone will receive a citation.