By: Roy Aker

With the $2.5 million renovation project to Coffman Union’s second floor starting next week, many student groups said they’re excited for the changes, but some still have concerns.

Historically, the second floor of Coffman has housed office space for more than 30 student groups, but under the new floor plan, only 12 groups have been allocated offices — with hundreds of other registered groups set to share two multi-use rooms.

Rebecca Huebsch, former Biologists Without Borders president said the main loss for the group will be storage space, which the group uses to stockpile boxes of international donations each semester.

Huebsch said she’s curious to see how much storage space will be available now that the group doesn’t have a dedicated office.

Eight large and 36 small storage lockers are planned in the center multi-use space, said Student Unions and Activities Director Maggie Towle.

The lockers will be available to rent for day use with some set aside for semester-long periods.

Meeting space within the multi-use areas will be reserved in a similar process with students allotting group time by online reservation.

Towle said the multi-use spaces, which are new to the floor, were designed so more groups would be able to meet in Coffman.

Three key points the renovation centers on is having the space be more flexible, accessible and visible, part of which involves making it easier for groups to recruit new members.

 “As we’ve had these conversations over the last few years, the student groups got excited about how much more successful their groups will be by having this nice open collaborative space,” she said.

The renovation plan, which Towle said was completely student-run, was headed by the SUA Board of Governors, the Second Floor Advisory Committee and a committee that represented groups without dedicated office space.   

Architectural and interior design firm Studio Hive sat down with committee members to discuss specific changes to the floor plan.

Bringing in natural lighting and opening up the space was a main objective of the renovation with removable floor-to-ceiling glass walls as a main fixture of the design. 

According to Towle, the walls will make it possible to “change the nature of the second floor very easily.”

The move in date for groups is slated for the week of Aug. 26.

By: Branden Largent

After more than a year of offering diversity training workshops for University of Minnesota students, staff and faculty, the Office of Equity and Diversity is still working to expand its reach.

Since its creation in spring 2012, more than 800 people have attended Equity and Diversity Certificate Program workshops, said OED Director of Education Anne Phibbs.

The full certificate programs includes 10 workshops lasting three hours each on topics like race, disabilities, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity.

“One of our central frames is that diversity is everybody’s everyday work,” Phibbs said.

At the workshop, participants develop skills to work and communicate across differences, Phibbs said.

Workshops are offered year-round and continue to fill up, Phibbs said.

“The fact that people continue to register tells me that we’re doing something good,” Phibs said.

She said although many faculty and staff attend the workshops, OED is working to improve student turnout.

“We’re trying to get more student voices into the workshops,” Phibbs said. “We would love to see more graduate and undergraduates involved.”

One of the ways they’re reaching out to more students is by creating workshops tailored to students — like providing training to all 2013 Welcome Week leaders in April.

One challenge for students who want to attend is the difficulty sparing a three-hour chunk of time for the workshops, Phibbs said.

Workshop sessions were originally two hours long, but Phibbs said most participants who attended wanted more time for discussion.

Since the program is still relatively new, trainers continue changing the way workshops are run based on participant feedback, said Kimberly Hewitt, director of the Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action — one of the program’s 15 trainers.

“Our world’s changing,” Phibbs said. “We need leaders who can deal with that kind of diversity.”

By: Hailey Colwell

After 39 years at the University of Minnesota, Executive Director of Parking and Transportation Services Bob W. Baker announced he will retire in early June. 

During his 23 years as head of Parking and Transportation Services, Baker expanded parking space on campus by 50 percent, started the U-Pass program and advocated for the University’s interests in the Central Corridor light-rail line’s intersection of campus.

Baker began his work at the University in 1974 as a residence hall director for Territorial Hall, which was all-male at the time.

He recalled the testosterone-filled dorm as being “kind of crazy” and soon convinced the University to make it co-ed, which he said he looks back on as a big accomplishment.

After about 15 years in Housing and Residential Life, Baker took a job as acting parking manager for the University’s then-called Parking Services, which he helped to expand to Parking and Transportation Services in the early 90s.

One of the biggest problems he worked to address after his move to Parking and Transportation was the University’s shortage of parking spaces, he said. 

“We had about 80,000 people coming to the University and we had about 12,000 parking spaces,” he said.

In response to this, Baker oversaw the building of six parking garages — including the Fourth Street Ramp and the East River Road Garage.

 “There is this perception, I think, that’s still out there that parking is hard at the University,” Baker said. “What we tried to do was we tried to make it easier, we tried to make it friendlier.”

Though he said building parking garages fulfilled a need at the University, he’s most proud of starting the U-Pass, an unlimited bus pass for students. The U-Pass program and a redesign of the University’s campus shuttle system caused campus transit use to skyrocket, which he said was a great way to curb parking demand on campus.

“You simply cannot build your way out of parking demand,” he said. “There’s only so much land and there’s only so many dollars and there’s only so many streets that you can get people to park [on],” Baker said. “We quickly discovered that we really needed to change our message and tell people to leave their cars at home and to look for alternative transportation methods.”

For the past eight years, Baker has represented the University’s interests in negotiations for the Central Corridor light-rail line, which will run through the University when it enters service in 2014. Throughout the negotiations of how the light-rail will affect the campus, he said safety, research, aesthetics and future development opportunities are the priorities he advocates most for.

Most importantly, he said he’s worked to ensure that the many laboratories on Washington Avenue are not affected by vibration and electromagnetic interference from the light-rail.

“That’s what we do at this University,” he said. “We research and we take that research and we apply it through teaching and through various business opportunities that we think will benefit society.”

Transportation Systems Design Manager Sandy Cullen, who worked with Baker for six years on light-rail negotiations, said she’ll miss the “good cop, bad cop” rapport they used in the process.

“It was always great to have that leadership there,” she said.

Baker said he trusts his team will be able to carry on smoothly after he leaves and his replacement has yet to be decided.

“If you’re gonna have any chance of success,” he said, “You gotta be organized, you gotta be at the table when decisions are made and you gotta be able to delegate, because if you try and do everything yourself, it isn’t going to get done.”

He said he looks forward to fishing, traveling and going for long walks with his wife at their lake home in Nisswa, Minn., which they will move to as soon as he retires.

By: Branden Largent

This year’s fourth annual Out Twin Cities Film Festival, which celebrates lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities through film and art, kicked off Wednesday at the St. Anthony Main Theatre.

Thursday night’s lineup features a sneak preview of a Minnesota-made film “The Infamous T,” a documentary depicting a queer family created by circumstance.

The documentary features Jonathan, a teenager taken in by queer host parents through the local Avenues for Homeless Youth GLBT Host Home Program.

It shows the homeless and bullied 18-year-old experiencing a culture-clash with his chosen family and struggling to stay in school. 

The screening begins at 6:40 p.m. and will have a Q & A session with director Melissa Koch, Jonathan and others involved in the film.

By: Janice Bitters

The University of Minnesota began offering free massive open online courses this month, drawing thousands of students from around the world and demanding hundreds of volunteer hours from five professors.

“I’ve probably put 400 hours into preparation,” said University chemistry professor Chris Cramer, who is teaching his first MOOC this summer. “That’s a lot of time. I didn’t sleep much this last semester to be perfectly honest.”

Massive open online courses, or MOOCs, are free online classes that are open to an unlimited number of students from anywhere in the world with access to computers and Internet.

Cramer said his Statistical Molecular Thermodynamics class of more than 8,000 students has the lowest enrollment rate of the five University courses currently being offered. But the high number of students in the course changed the way he prepared.

“[Professors] are used to creating our courses almost on our own,” Cramer said. “You can’t do a MOOC that way."

He said he relies on a production team made up of five University librarians almost every day.

Nancy Sims, a University librarian who is part of the team, said team members have shifted some job responsibilities to support the MOOCs.

“Sometimes people think of the library of just being buildings with books in them, but I think this has shown that this is not what we are…,” she said. “The way the library folks have been able to just dive right in in a short time frame has shown a very high level of amazing talent.”

Karen Monsen, who is teaching a MOOC called Interprofessional Healthcare Informatics, said she also leans on the team frequently for help.

“They are the one who really showed us about the in-video stuff,” she said, adding that they have also shown her how to see the real-time progress of data collection.

Sims said the classes reinforce the University’s land-grant mission "to provide resources and education to the public.”

“This is a great example of the way that MOOCs are being used to create something really accessible and applicable,” she said.

Pick up Wed. May 28's Minnesota Daily for more on MOOCs and student reactions.

By: Branden Largent

As the suburban landscape changes, so has poverty.

The Twin Cities metro area suburbs have one of the highest increases in poor populations in the country, according to a new study by the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington D.C.

The number of poor living in Twin Cities suburbs has more than doubled in the past decade to more than 200,000 people.

The study found population increases and unemployment after the 2008 recession as major factors for the increase.

The growth reflects a national trend in which the majority of poor people are now living in suburbs.

Most federal programs fighting poverty haven’t evolved to address the spread out nature of suburban poverty, according to the study.

Tom Luce, a research director for the University of Minnesota Law School’s Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity, said the institute has known suburbs have outpaced metro poor populations for years and has written extensively on the changing suburban landscape.

“This has been going on for a long time,” Luce said.

 He said the high level of poverty in suburbs should be factored into the creation of new policies in the country, like encouraging increased affordable housing and providing more transportation and transit services in suburbs.

Public transportation choices are limited for suburban people who can’t afford cars but need to access medical care, food and jobs, said Rosemary Heins, a University Extension educator.

Despite the major increase in suburban poverty, the Twin Cities suburbs still have one of the lowest suburban poverty rates among major metropolitan areas in the country, with a rate of 7.6 percent in 2010. Almost one in four Twin Cities residents are in poverty.

Luce also said he’s concerned about how the new data could affect future policies in suburbs.

“You don’t want to allow suburbs to pursue policies that effectively zone poor people out,” he said. 

By: Hailey Colwell

A group of University of Minnesota students, staff and faculty members stood under an oak tree on the St. Paul campus Tuesday, their guide wielding a Nut Wizard — a scepter-shaped tool used to gather nuts — and explaining ways to harvest acorns and eat them.

The urban foraging tour was one of a series of de-stress events put on by University Libraries to help students manage their stress before finals week.

The creative and technology-free study break was created to fit into the topics taught on St. Paul campus, said Kristen Mastel, outreach and instruction librarian at Magrath Library.  

“Students are so tied to technology,” Mastel said, and having a couple minutes to relax while getting their hands dirty can be an effective stress reliever.

In addition to crossing the St. Paul campus to learn about edible foods, students and faculty can plant organic plants and make aromatherapy sachets.

Strolling along Cleveland Avenue by St. Paul campus’s miniature “frat row,” tour guide Charley Underwood explained how cattails are the “supermarket of wild food,” because you can eat every part of it depending on time of year.

Raking acorns into the Nut Wizard with a quick sweep across the ground, Underwood talked about the process of preparing acorn flour. Since the nuts are bitter, he suggested boiling them in multiple batches of water before grinding them in a mixer. The powder can be mixed with what flour to make pancakes, he said.

The flour can also be used on its own as a gluten-free option, he said.

“A lot of things from the wild are sort of flavor-intensive,” Underwood said, and a good forager not only needs to be able to identify plants but have a “discriminating taste” like a cook. 

Educational psychology graduate student Ha Vo said she went to the event because she was stressed from finals week. Since she lives close to campus, Vo said it would be useful to know which plants are edible.

“It’s just cool to know that there are a lot of them around and I can eat them,” she said.

Vo said she particularly enjoyed learning about the barberry bushes, found all around the St. Paul campus, which are currently full of sweet berries that can be eaten off the stem or made into wine.

Thinking about this new food source made her feel less stressed out, she said.

“I just feel like [I’m] in a different world and I can distract myself from my studies a little bit.”

Operations manager for St. Paul libraries Mark Desrosiers said it was really interesting to learn about how plant species like the Ginkgo tree can change gender.

“We Americans don’t really think about food and where food comes from as much as we should,” Desrosiers said.

The other libraries are hosting de-stress events that fit closely with the different locations, Mastel said. Walter Library will hold a gaming study break on Monday and Wilson will have giant crosswords available next week from a faculty member who writes crosswords for the New York Times.

Mastel said she hopes the event helped students get in touch with nature and let go of their stress.

“I think everyone walked away with a little something and got a breath of fresh air as well,” she said.

By: Marion Renault

A new 202-unit, six-story apartment complex will replace townhomes and several small rental houses on the corner of 15th Avenue SE and 7th Street SW, across from the University’s Gibson-Nagurski Football Practice Facility.

CPM Property Management, the company behind student housing projects including upcoming WaHu  and The Elysian, has clinched a deal combining 17 different parcels of land  in what its president calls a “once in a lifetime deal.”

President Daniel Oberpriller said coordinating contracts between 14 different property owners was a challenge.

“It’s almost impossible to assemble this many owners and get them on the same page,” he said. “It doesn’t really ever happen like that.”

The deal, which totals more than one and half acres of land, would provide 643 new bedrooms on the outskirts of Dinkytown.

Oberpriller said after scouting 15th Avenue for five years for possible sales, CPM is looking to begin construction as soon as this summer and open in fall 2014.

The quick turnaround, he said, has to happen because of the complexity of the sale.

“We’re trying to close and bring everything into fruition in 90 days because of how many people are involved,” he said.

The plans for the complex, which include a courtyard, fitness room, lobby and 24-hour management, follow a 2008 Marcy Holmes Neighborhood Association Urban Design Plan for the area, Oberpriller said.

“They’ve designated 15th Avenue to be a high density corridor promenade that attaches Van Cleve Park to the U.”

The upcoming project, he said, would do just that.

Despite its amenities, Oberpriller also said the housing would be affordable for students by increasing density.

“It’s below what the luxury apartments are asking,” he said.

The company has submitted a land-use application to the city and will attend a Committee of the Whole of the Minneapolis Planning Commission on the Thursday, to informally get feedback on the project’s initial plans.

By: Alexi Gusso

The Minnesota Daily sat down with University of Minnesota president Eric Kaler Tuesday.

Kaler, who is nearing the end of his second term, discussed his support for the DREAM Act, why he supports a smoke-free campus and publicizing class evaluation forms. 

A version of the DREAM Act passed the Senate last week. You’ve indicated that you’d support implementing the policy at the University. Do you foresee any possible opposition?

I haven’t heard anything from the [Board of Regents] on this. I imagine I’ll hear some opposition from some corners. It seems to me that it’s easy to find someone who’s opposed to almost everything. But I believe it’s the right thing to do, to provide in-state benefits for undocumented students, and I would advance that for the University.

At Friday’s Board of Regents meeting the student representatives are presenting their annual report. They’re recommending that the University becomes smoke free and you’ve indicated that you support this.  Why do you think the U should be smoke free?

I’ve always supported this despite what I read in your paper the other day. What I was eager to do when this came around the first time was hold a line around being sure that we did a broad buy-in across the entire University population and we have that now. It’s come up through governance and I think we have the momentum behind it to make it stick. 

At the end of the day it’s the people at the University and the community that needs to want to do this, it’s not me or the police force running around giving people demerits for smoking. It really needs to be a community decision and I’m glad to support that, I’m glad that’s where we are now and I’m eager to see it in place.

The student reps are also presenting ways to increase transparency of the University-wide instructor evaluation forms students fill out for each of their courses. What do you think about this idea?

I think student evaluations should be more transparent. The information about the class structure and what and how it’s taught is information that’s useful to know as they make decisions about what classes to fit into schedules.

However, it is clear from the lawyers that the personal information about the teachers’ performance does belong to the faculty member, and so my understanding is that they have to release that voluntarily, but I think some information should be more easily available to students

For the full interview, check out tomorrow's Daily.

By: Cody Nelson

After years of discussion and debate, the University of Minnesota may become a smoke-free campus.

The University Senate passed a resolution on Thursday to make the Twin Cities campus tobacco-free. To take effect, the resolution must be approved by President Eric Kaler — who is now in support of making the University a smoke-free campus.

“Since this issue first crossed my desk, the lack of consensus had been one of the holdups,” Kaler said in a news release. “That is no longer a concern. Frankly, it’s about time for us on the Twin Cities campus.”

Dave Golden, chairman of the University Senate’s social concerns committee, said the move to tobacco-free is to cut down secondhand smoke exposure.

“We are a campus community that cares about health,” he said.

Other Minnesota campuses are already smoke- or tobacco- free, including Minnesota State University-Mankato and the University of Minnesota-Crookston and Duluth campuses.

But some say these policies are difficult to enforce.

Katie Bobich, a Minnesota State Student Association member and student at Mankato, said the university’s smoke-free policy only slightly cuts down on smoking and isn’t strongly enforced.

“It’s pretty much a slap on the wrist,” she said.

At the University, the smoke-free resolution awaits further action. Health officials will begin working on how to implement the plan.

Kaler said he will “gladly be prepared” to go smoke-free once there is a campus-wide consensus.