A University of Oregon student was arrested by Eugene Police early Friday morning following a domestic dispute.

The student, 21 year old Kun Qi, has been charged with three misdemeanor accounts of strangulation, 4th degree assault, and interfering with making a report. Qi was booked in the Lane County Jail at 5:30 Friday morning.

Given that the incident was a domestic dispute, no details about the case were provided, Eugene Police Department spokesman John Hankemeier told the Emerald.

Kenny Jacoby contributed reporting to this story.

The post Student arrested on domestic violence charges appeared first on Emerald Media.

A variation of the famous photo documentary series Humans of New York, Ducks Change the World has made itself well known on campus over the past year. The Instagram account documents the stories and ambitions of students at the university with a headshot accompanied by a short caption.

Jordan, a freshman political science major, shares his dreams and aspirations (Ducks Change the World)

Since its first post in July of last year, the account’s creators Joshua Ekberg and graphic design student Trenton Marquart have gained over 3,000 followers and told the unique stories of 64 UO students.

Ekberg, a resident of Eugene and Marquart, a junior majoring in graphic design, view their photos and captions as a platform for student’s voices.

“If you fast-forward 20 to 30 years, it’s possible that some of these college students could be in Congress or CEOs,” said Ekberg. “We believe that every college student has a desire to change the world, so we created a platform to vocalize that.”

While their captions are short, Ekberg and Marquart’s conversations with students are in-depth and personal. According to Marquart, the method of finding random students and initiating a conversation often leads to the student discussing their purpose and ambitions.

“If you approach them correctly, they’re really responsive and enjoy the communication,” Marquart said. “They appreciate that you take the time to check in with them. We try not to make it all about Ducks Change the World, we want to make a connection.”

The creators say that despite students seeing each other on campus, they rarely take the time to listen to each other and check in with one another.

“We’re a society of people who just talk,” Ekberg said.“We never ask the question of why we do what we do. Trenton and I care why people do what they’re doing. If people are able to slow down and remind themselves why they do what they’re doing, then we’ve succeeded.”

Ekberg says his favorite participant in the series is freshman Justin Gallagos.

Gallagos has cerebral palsy, a condition which impairs muscles and coordination. Despite his condition, he is a devoted member of the UO Running Club and runs several times a week.

Gallagos says his dream is to raise awareness for disabled athletics and to promote  accessibility to quality equipment. In addition to supporting the school and family and friends, Nike has played a crucial role in Gallagos’ mission by allowing him to test prototypes of their latest shoes — the Flyease, a shoe designed specifically for disabled people or those who have difficulty putting on their shoes.

“Knowing that I’m part of something revolutionary is mind-blowing,” Gallagos said. “This isn’t some ordinary shoe some company can make a copy of, it’s about making a statement to say that Nike is expanding its boundaries in terms of accessibility to all athletes. Disabled athletes are much bigger of a deal than people think they are.”

Ultimately, running has proven to be beneficial for Gallagos’ well-being.

“As a kid I turned my feet in and dragged them,” said Gallagos. “I got to an age when I did not want to do physical therapy anymore. Once running came into my life, it, in a way, became like my therapy because it has made me stronger both mentally and physically. It’s even improved how I walk.”

With the account’s success at UO, Ekberg and Marquart plan to expand their influence and creativity across other college campuses through a network of friends at other universities.

As their number of followers and likes grow, so does their vision. They hope to expand the message behind their account beyond social media.

“We have a vision that’s outside this Instagram page,” said Ekberg. “We hope to make people more relational to each other — whether you’re an alumni, a student or somebody who has a career.”

The post Campus Instagram account shares the dreams and hopes of students appeared first on Emerald Media.

The university’s applied sustainability think-tank, the Sustainable Cities Initiative (SCI), is harnessing the ambition of students and the knowledge of faculty members to help promote sustainable urban development and lead the global initiative to fight climate change.

Founded in 2007, SCI promotes education, service, public outreach and research on the design and development of sustainable city infrastructure, such as developing bikeways and improving pedestrian mobility. It also serves as the umbrella group for a variety of other projects that work to develop said sustainable cities through .

SCI’s most prominent program, the Sustainable City Year Program (SCYP), partners an Oregon city seeking sustainable and innovative ideas for development with university members across multiple disciplines. Students and faculty from architecture to planning, public policy and management collaborate with city staff and elected officials to complete city-designated projects and provide creative proposals for sustainable development.

Dr. Marc Schlossberg, co-director of SCI and a Planning, Public Policy and Management professor, encourages students to realize the potential of bikeways and public transportation in cities through his work with the initiative. Schlossberg explains that incorporating students in the development and planning process takes pressure away from city planners, who often avoid taking risks due to the nature of local politics.

Removing this risk allows for the exploration and experimentation of new ideas, Schlossberg says. Because students are still learning, they have unique perspectives to propose bold solutions.

“Students are able to find this sweet spot between realistic approaches for the community and a sense of utopian idealism,” Schlossberg said.

Schlossberg explained that SCYP benefits not only the city involved with the program, but also students and the community in general. This year, the program partnered with the city of Albany.

“SCYP connects students with tangible projects which count as real work experience,” he said, “as well as addressing critical societal issues around sustainability, climate change and efficiently using taxpayer dollars.”

Mikailia McNeill, a graduate student who participated in this year’s SCYP project, says the experience of breaking the mold of the traditional classroom benefits students who seek a more practical and applied education. McNeill explains that the work done in her SCYP-affiliated class was much more than busy work.

“This program allows you to be in a class, but also gain real life work experience. The deadlines are real, and your work impacts more than yourself,” she said. “This is how I see real life work experience, hopefully in this field, your work will always be affecting more people than yourself.”

At the end of the year, students from twenty classes representing more than ten disciplines logged roughly 40,000 hours into more than 20 different projects, ranging from architecture and design to economic planning.

SCYP plan to expand urban bikeways (SCI)

In June, students and faculty presented their projects to Albany’s citizens, city staff and elected officials. Now, it is up to the city to choose which projects to implement.

According to Ed Hodney, Albany’s Park and Recreation director, the SCYP energized the city staff. Hodney says that students have the time, creativity and drive to do what city planners wanted to do, but could not.

“With SCYP, we got many hours from students that generated tons of ideas which would not be generated by city staff due to the lack of enough time or resources to do the required critical thinking.”

Next year the sustainability program will take on its largest project yet: partnering with TriMet, Portland’s public transportation agency. SCYP will work with TriMet on dozens of projects aimed at expanding Southwest Portland’s public transportation infrastructure from its transit system to pedestrian crossings.

Initially, the program was known as “the Oregon Model,” a reference to its roots at the university. But since its inception in 2009, other universities across the country and overseas expressed a great deal of interest in model, and ultimately, adopted and integrated it into their institutions.

This group of universities that use the “Oregon model,” comprise the Educational Partnerships for Innovation Communities-Network (EPIC-N). Together, they represent dozens of states and over 30 universities spanning from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Chico, California.

Schlossberg explained the reasons behind EPIC-N’s success boil down to common traits present at every university: there are students who desire to change the world by applying what they learned in classes, and communities have problems without the tools to solve them. The EPIC-N provides a model for universities across the country to deploy passionate students into communities looking for a helping hand.

The nationwide success and replicable nature of the program’s framework attracted the attention of federal organizations such as the Environmental Protection Agency, which specializes in researching sustainability. Like the cities involved with EPIC-N, the agency lacked the mechanisms required to translate policy into practice. The EPA came to the same conclusion as many city planners: students are the bridge between research and application.

After EPIC-N’s recognition at the national level, sustainability movements within larger global organizations such as the United Nations became interested in testing the model in developing economies, many of whom are particularly vulnerable to climate change. By collaborating with the EPIC-N, countries located in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and Central and South America are working to implement sustainable framework within their cities.

Barney Dickson is the head of the Climate Change Adaptation Program, a sustainability movement within the United Nations Environment Program. Dickson says the EPIC-N model could be a game changer for fighting climate change in developing countries.

“Extending the EPIC-N model to other parts of the world is an invaluable initiative that can help cities address the challenge of building resilience to climate change,” Dickson said.

Given the differences between regions’ geopolitical situations, it was unknown if the EPIC-N model would be applicable in other countries. Knowing that these countries operate under different circumstances, Schlossberg headed to Bonn, Germany in May with an open mind for the EPIC-N’s first international workshop.

Schlossberg and 18 pairs composed of university and city representatives from various developing countries met to discuss the EPIC-N. Despite Schlossberg’s initial uncertainty, the pairs were enthusiastic when it came to implementing the EPIC-N framework and the universal nature of the program became evident again.

Pairs discuss sustainable infrastructure at the 2017 EPIC-N conference in Bonn, Germany (SCI)

According to Sean O’Donoghue, the manager of the climate protection branch of the environment department in Durban, South Africa, the results shown from the Bonn workshop are promising for developing nations in Africa.

“The EPIC-N approach will appeal to the partnership between African universities and cities because it’s the most affordable way to drive collaboration between departments and creating innovative ideas,” O’Donoghue said. “Pooling the available capability of African universities will help to fight climate change.”

As a response to the enthusiasm shown in Bonn, there are three follow-up workshops planned in South Africa, the Philippines and Ecuador.

While the international political dialogue around climate change will continue, the EPIC-N’s community-based initiatives provide a sustainable path forward for both Albany and Africa.

In Schlossberg’s eyes, students are taking the initiative to provide a better future.

“The EPIC-N framework harnesses existing resources to bring value for community, students and faculty,” he said. “Students are the mechanism for cities and universities to interact in a robust and fairly large-scale way.”

The post UO students lead the way on sustainable urban development appeared first on Emerald Media.

Faculty members are trying to change course evaluations to better assess how student learning is gauged because studies show discrimination skews the results.

Part of course evaluations that rely on student input are frequently referred to as student evaluations of teaching (SET). The results of SET, which are intended to evaluate the effectiveness of a faculty member’s teaching, are critical in determining which faculty members receive tenure and pay raises.

But academic studies show trends of discrimination within the course evaluations based upon factors such as faculty members’ physical features, gender and race.  

After becoming aware of the studies, economics professor and Faculty Senate President Bill Harbaugh sponsored legislation designed to reevaluate SET and course evaluations at the university.

“People who are prettier or handsomer get better course evaluations,” Harbaugh said, “and taller men, white men get better course evaluations. That suggests that unless you believe those types of people are better teachers, then yes, there is discrimination in teaching evaluations.”

Economics professor and Senate President Bill Harbaugh (Samuel Marshall/Emerald)

In May, the Senate approved the creation of a Teaching Evaluation Task Force designed to evaluate, revise and improve the university’s current course evaluation system through a series of experiments over the next year.

In addition to reducing bias against faculty members, the new course evaluations will work to accurately gauge how much students learned during the class.

The Task Force’s chair, Professor Sierra Dawson, said she wants to examine the question of how teaching effectiveness should be measured. She said that it would be beneficial to keep the current methods of teaching evaluation; however, it is necessary to critique them so they produce the most accurate and honest results.

Teaching effectiveness is currently measured in three ways: student input from course evaluations (SET), peer review from other faculty members and a faculty member’s presentation of their own methods.

But Dr. Lee Rumbarger, Director of the Teaching Engagement Program at UO, said the current system for student evaluations of teaching does not necessarily assess student learning.

Course Evaluations icon in Duckweb. (Picture from Duckweb)

“There’s one study where students who did better in follow-up courses actually gave lower scores to the initial class. In other words, despite learning more, something about the difficulty or nature of the class made students score it lower” Rumbarger said.

She said the bias creates substantial problems due to the fact that professors who teach effectively are rated poorly by students.

Rumbarger will work within the task force to help faculty make changes to their teaching methods and give them the confidence to experiment with new ideas.

Also, the group plans to talk to students about the learning goals of the classes, the degree to which those goals were met and the strength of the faculty member’s methods.

Dawson said these changes are mutually beneficial for both students and faculty members in the long run.

Amanda Johnson, a freshman biology major, perceives course evaluations as useful tools for professors and students alike to judge their progress over the course of the term. “I think that the purpose of course evaluations is for professors to see how well they’re doing and to see their progress. You can also see how much you actually learned and the effectiveness of your study habits” she said.

Since the proposed changes to course evaluations are currently in the experimental phase, students should expect to see the changes roll out in the next few years.

“At the end of the day, students went to class to learn and the tool they should be offered helps them to give feedback about that learning and how effective it was.”

The post Faculty want to change course evaluations, citing discrimination appeared first on Emerald Media.

The lights dimmed as students and guests took their seats for the evening. Chatter filled the room like the smells from the cuisine from the continents of different countries. UO Africa Night — the largest cultural event on campus — was about to begin.

The annual UO Africa Night offers cultural education and a showcase of the school’s diversity through student performances. This year, the free event was held at the ERB Memorial Union at 6 p.m. on Saturday.

The audience was treated to a colorful display of dancing, acrobatics and balancing acts. After completing an intense session of flips and acrobatics, one group of three performers lifted each other to the ceiling in a display of strength that had the crowd erupt in applause. Later, the entire room held its breath as a performer balanced himself headfirst on a tower of chairs stacked to the ceiling.

“I think it’s great that our school puts on a show that lets us see the talent within the student body,” said first year student Sydney Kobak, majoring in human physiology. “Without something like this we wouldn’t be able to see it.”

Sophie Patterson shares a similar sentiment as Kobak. She works to coordinate scholarships with the International Cultural Service Program (ICSP), which provides tuition scholarships to students across the world who could otherwise not attend UO. Patterson explained that she came to watch her students tonight and was amazed by their performances. In addition, she believes that the event brings out students rich traditions from their home countries: “Africa Night shows that UO is more diverse than many students think it is,” she said.

Africa Night is not all about showcasing talent; it emphasizes education as well.

“Africa Night is a great opportunity to learn about Africa in a way that promotes and tells all of the beautiful things in the culture,” said African Student Association Director Ellen Bakira, “There are so many great things about the continent that are often overlooked.”

Bakira explained that Africa is often given negative stereotypes by the media and that this event works to counter those ideas. “We work to show that we are more than the stereotype of children starving and extreme poverty,” she said.  

In addition to cultural education, Africa Night acted as a venue to raise awareness about environmental sustainability and conservation; the continent is home to a variety of endangered species whose populations are threatened by global crises such as poaching and habitat loss. One endangered animal made an appearance — Pancake the Cheetah and her canine companion Dayo. Pancake was born into captivity at a Wildlife Safari in Winston, Oregon. Pancake and Dayo travel to schools, businesses and birthday parties.

Bakira explained that the support from ASUO was crucial the success of the evening.“We are so thankful that ASUO continues to fund our night which makes it possible for us to host such a large event each year,” she said. “The audience gets to go outside their borders and see how other cultures experience life.”

Correction: Patterson’s quote was updated for clarity 

The post UO Africa Night event showcases dance, music and a cheetah appeared first on Emerald Media.

International students make up 13 percent of the student body and the languages they bring with them help broaden the university’s understanding of the world’s many cultures.

For students who wish to practice their foreign language skills with native speakers, the Mills International Center in the EMU offers the opportunity to hear the many languages of the world.

“I love working at the Mills. It’s such a great place to spend time,” said interim associate coordinator Kate Stoysich. “I get to meet people from all over the world.”

Stoysich said her Spanish skills allowed her to dive deep into the cultures of the countries she visited while working in the Peace Corps. On top of the connections she made with those in Spanish-speaking countries, she believes that language serves as a way to expand one’s perception of the world.

“How I think about things in the world is a reflection of how I understand things as an English and Spanish speaker,” Stoysich said.

Each term, Stoysich collects data on UO students’ languages. The results show that students speak a variety of 40 languages, ranging from wide-spoken ones like Mandarin Chinese to less common ones such as Marshallese, the language of the Marshall Islands, located in the central Pacific Ocean, west of Hawaii.

Scroll to view the languages found by Stoysich’s survey ↓

Preserving a language

Senior linguistics major Yu Lha hails from Tibet, a country in Central Asia. In addition to English, she speaks four other languages.

Her mother tongue is Khroskyabs, an endangered minority language in Tibet. Khroskyabs has approximately 5,000 speakers who reside in only three to four Tibetan villages.

“It’s an oral language; we don’t have a writing system,” she said. “This makes Khroskyabs very vulnerable because the two dominant languages — Mandarin Chinese and Tibetan — both have writing systems.”

On top of finishing her degree at the University of Oregon, Yu Lha is working to preserve and document her language. She explained that she is working to develop the language’s first writing system. She hopes her efforts will lead to more people using the language in different contexts, such as on social media. 

In addition to developing a writing system, Yu Lha documented the oral traditions, proverbs and tongue twisters of her mother tongue in a book titled “Warming Your Hands with Moonlight,” a translation of a Khroskyabs proverb.

Yu Lha explained the meaning of the proverb: although moonlight is bright, it offers no actual warmth. It is a humble way to refuse someone, a way to say that one is looking in the wrong place. 

According to Stoysich, the Mills Center is a place for students who are looking for new viewpoints, insights and conversations.

“Speaking foreign languages adds to our diversity of perspectives. It changes how the brain processes information.”

Correction: The spelling of Yu Lha’s name was corrected

The post UO is home to at least 40 languages, according to Mills International Center study appeared first on Emerald Media.

At Yogurt Extreme on 13th Avenue, students unwind from the stress of upcoming midterms and top off their bowls of frozen yogurt with a colorful assortment of candy, ripe fruit and delicately placed whipped cream. A group of a dozen students sits in the corner, crowding around the circular tables. The tables are small, but the group fits in as many chairs as it can to make sure everyone has a seat. While the day of cramming for exams and filling in study guides is coming to an end for some students, the planning is just beginning for this group.

This is the meeting of the Rhoyals of University of Oregon and Emerald’s Interest Group of Kappa Delta Chi; two multicultural Greek Life organizations which hope to make their presence known on campus. Once officially established on campus, the Rhoyals and the Emerald Interest Group will be chapters of Epsilon Sigma Rho fraternity and Kappa Delta Chi sorority respectively.

“Once we complete our required events, do our interviews, create our profile, and finish our pledging, we’ll be founders of the colony on the University of Oregon campus” Rhoyals founder and Internal Vice President Tre’Von Robinson said.

Although he did consider rushing fall term, Robinson ultimately decided to create his own fraternity in order to promote the inclusion of people of color within UO Greek Life. The university is classified as a predominantly white institution (PWI), meaning that over 50 percent of enrolled students identify as white. In the eyes of many students of color, the Greek Life system does not feel entirely representative of the entire UO student body.

Kappa Delta Chi member Maria Gomez-Leon says that given the growing Latinx population at the university, it is necessary for Greek life to reflect the blossoming diversity within the student body. “If we are going to be inclusive to everyone on campus, we should be inclusive within Greek life and have the entire student population represented if it’s already represented for most other people” Gomez-Leon said.

For many students of color, simply walking to class at a PWI is an entirely different feeling.

“Walking around campus and having people look at you is just a different feeling,” Robinson said.  “[It is the feeling of] walking around campus and being that black male student that you rarely see.”

For students of color who may share similar feelings, Rhoyals and Kappa Delta Chi can be places for them to relate to the common issues they encounter at a PWI.

In addition to welcoming brothers from all cultural backgrounds, the Rhoyals are working hard to ensure that those from all socioeconomic backgrounds are able to join. While the cost to rush has not yet been determined, Robinson and the Rhoyals hope to keep the costs low so that money is not a deterrent to those who want to join the brotherhood but are not able to spend large amounts on the rushing process.

From Robinson’s perspective, it is essential that everyone has a seat at the table, just as they do at Yogurt Extreme’s tables.

“People from all walks of life come together to become a part of Epsilon Sigma Rho and that’s what makes us stronger because we’re able to bring our cultural differences together.”

Follow Michael on Twitter @MichaelTobinUO 

The post New Greek Life chapters hope to promote diversity and inclusion appeared first on Emerald Media.