With another semester at Tech in session, the clear skies and warm nights are calling students out of their dorms, apartments and classrooms and into the beautiful Atlanta summer. For Tech students on the hunt for interesting ways to spend their evenings this summer, the Flicks on 5th Summer Film Series offers an inexpensive possibility.

Each Wednesday evening in June, Flicks on 5th will show a recently released film in Tech Square. Admission to the films is free.

This summer marks the eighth year that Flicks on 5th has set up shop in Midtown, and many students are eagerly anticipating its return.

“Flicks on 5th made it easy to find something fun and free to do on campus,” said Keenan Jones, a fourth-year AE major. “I can’t wait for it to start again!”

Students like Sid Desai, a second-year IE major, enjoy the relaxed atmosphere and convenient location that Flicks on 5th offers.

“It’s like a drive-in theater on campus without any cars,” Desai said. “And instead of eating crappy nachos, you can just go to Moe’s.”

The movies are shown on a gigantic film screen that nearly spans the width of 5th Street. Audience members are invited to bring their own seating, whether it is a simple fold-up lawn chair, a lawn towel or even an old couch to seat multiple people.

Every Wednesday, seating starts at 7 p.m.. In the time before the movie begins, moviegoers enjoy a carnival-like atmosphere, which in the past has included entertainment ranging from live music to arts and crafts to face painting.

Regardless of festivities, no party is complete without the addition of food and snacks to munch on, and nobody seems to know this better than Flicks on 5th. The event offers free popcorn while supplies last, and local restaurants such as Chuck’s Famous American Sandwiches, The Barrelhouse and Subway combine to sweeten the pot by offering meal deals on movie nights.

After the festivities come to a close, the audience can sit back and enjoy the show. Flicks on 5th will present a total of four movies this June. There will be something for everyone; the four films will cover a vast range of genres, ranging from romantic comedies to zombie apocalypses.

The series kicks off with a June 5 showing of Identity Thief, starring Jason Bateman of Arrested Development fame and Melissa McCarthy, who students might know from Gilmore Girls.

The fun continues on June 12 with a showing of action thriller Snitch.

On June 19, women will rejoice and men will groan as Silver Linings Playbook takes center stage.

On June 26, the last Wednesday of the month, the 2013 edition of Flicks on 5th will come to a close with zombie apocalypse-themed Warm Bodies.

While the festivities and movies are set to proceed rain or shine, be sure to check for weather updates by following @flickson5th on Twitter, checking out Flicks on 5th’s Facebook page, or by visiting www.flicksonfifth.net.

I’m surprised I don’t envy my summer vacation days from elementary school.

Three months of a purely comatose state on the couch, mindlessly flipping through TV channels, surfing the interwebs and essentially being completely chill and not worrying about a single thing. After a rough semester with weekly all-nighters, insane amounts of homework and questionably unnecessary social obligations, the image of laying on my couch and doing absolutely nothing was beyond paradisal.

Now, I’m up at midnight on a weekday writing an editorial, and will probably be up for some time working on the first issue of the Nique’s 99th volume, after an 8-hour workday in a rigorous chemistry lab.
“Three months of breaking from the routine…not just for pure relaxation and entertainment, but also for self development.”

I think, however, that there is something to be said about productivity in the summertime and, in particular, the kind of experience this season can foster and add to their life.

Think about it. While a good eight to nine months of the year are devoted, for the average college student, to academic studies (lest he or she attend U[sic]GA), the remaining three months offer a respite from the relatively monotonous doldrums of classes. Three months of breaking from the routine and trying something different – not just for pure relaxation and entertainment, but also for self development.

This isn’t to limit my opinion to those who get no play during fall or spring. Although many students are able to live it up during the semester, I feel that most are susceptible to falling into a routine. For example, while, as a friend of mine likes to say, getting turnt up on the weekends is plenty entertaining and the maintains the play in “work hard, play hard”, most students may not do anything that differs from a methodical frat-hopping way of getting turnt up.

But the summertime offers a great way to expand on these scenarios – for me, I think the best way to capitalize on this free-time is through a job and using most spare-time in doing interesting activities.

Having a summer job not only can help finance additional side activities you may want to engage in, as well as saving money for the regular semesters, but also help keep the mind mentally engaged and acute to critical thinking challenges that are encountered both in the workplace and in school.

Although a 8-hour workday can be taxing, either mentally or physically, the true benefit is, and at times should be, the ability to leave work at work and enjoy home. This extra time after work, which during the semester is generally spent doing homework, extracurricular activities or the routine methods of relaxation, provides an opportunity to expand one’s self out of the comfort zones that Tech sometimes makes it so easy to stay inside of.

This is limited to merely socializing – but rather, taking advantage of unique activities that build some sort of interesting skill.

For example, think about how much more of an interesting person you would be if you took, say, a class on beer brewing or sushi rolling. And how about skydiving or  taking a bike tour of the Atlanta Beltline. And this is just local – imagine the endless possibilities of being able to work in another location or abroad. Finally, this could even be a time to revisit old activities that were once cherished – such as volunteering, reading books for pleasure or woodworking.

Strapped on cash? No problem. The beauty of living in a big city like Atlanta is the large deals that Living Social and Groupon have for various activities – notably, their 50 percent off for whatever activity.

For me, researching during the week, taking an online class on Coursera to supplement the work I do in lab, and working at the Nique are ways I’m able to keep my mind up and running. But on the weekends and days when I get off work, I’m either relishing my time in the gym, exploring the Atlantan boroughs and experimenting with entirely random cuisine in the comfort of my kitchen.

If you play your cards right – and being at Tech you most likely are – you have your entire retirement to relax. So why waste the precious time of energetic youth in doing just that?

The increasing student-faculty ratio continues to raise concerns about the quality of instruction students receive in the classroom. The student-faculty ratio has gone up from 18:1 to 24:1 since 1996.

“The impact of faculty on the increase student-faculty ratio happens in two ways. One is the class size will get bigger and the other is they’ll teach more classes,” said Dr. Donna Llewellyn, Associate Vice Provost for Learning Excellence and Director of the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL).

According to data from the Department of Institutional Research and Planning, the number of classes containing less than 40 students decreased by 43, while the number of classes containing over 40 students increased by 46 since 2006.

“I think if you go from a class size of 19 to 23, the effects are really negligible, which is what the institutional growth has been over the past few years,” said Vice Provost of Undergraduate Studies Colin Potts. “If you go from classes of 20 to 30 students to classes of 60 to 70 students, which is what’s happening in some of our majors, then that does affect the experience. Not necessarily worsens it, but it does change it.”

Potts observed that the faculty must change their curriculum to accommodate the larger class sizes.

“I teach the computer science ethics class, and you just can’t have a class discussion with that number of students,” Potts said. “If you insist on continuing to teach a class the way you really wanted to do it when you designed it, you’re not going to do a very good job and the students aren’t going to be served. I can’t just turn my back and say, ‘It’s tough, I’m a boutique instructor, I don’t do large scale classes’.”

Departments across campus are trying to combat this trend through a variety of methods.

“The good side is that once the class gets bigger, the students are forming a community of learners rather than relying solely on the instructor to be the front of all knowledge,” Llewellyn said. “To me, that’s a positive. We want students to learn from each other, to interact with each other…Once a class size gets bigger, doing that in an organized way that’s built into the curriculum is positive.”

“What you have to do is break classes into small discussions,” Potts said. “What we don’t want to do is for those subjects that are very problem oriented or case-based or discussion-based to turn them into lecture courses. By a lecture course, I really mean that students are sitting in rows up front and a professor is talking at them.”

Notably, technology has allowed the creation of these more conducive environments for learning.

“When I first heard about [PRS] clickers, I thought, ‘Well, what a stupid dehumanizing technique that is, you go to class, you’re not even talking now, you’re just pressing buttons. It’s like a TV remote control’,” Potts said.

However, Potts acknowledged how the Responseware systems could be effectively used.

“The real value is in…voting on an answer choice that’s right,” Potts said. “The professor can say, ‘Well, actually a third of you thought this, and it’s a very reasonable wrong answer and here’s why its a wrong answer’, and everyone feels like their personal question has been answered without any kind of stressed level.”

Other, more innovative approaches to conquer this higher SFR have been the implementation of problem-based learning (PBL) in engineering courses and the use of Twitter in one management class.

PBL

Problem-based learning, an approach used in medical school education, has been gaining momentum in engineering classes.

“I got the highest average scores on the first midterm that I’ve gotten in 10 years,” said Dr. Donald Webster, a CEE professor, who is one of the professors who implemented PBL in his fluids mechanics class. “It seems like this pedagogy of getting students to actively problem solve and actively think about them has dramatic effect on doing the problems and their ability to score well on the exams.”

“[In PBL], you present the analytical stuff, typically stuff you would work out on a board, in 10 minute bite sized pieces,” said Dr. Laurence Jacobs, Associate Dean of the CoE. “The students have to review them before class and in class…students [work] in teams…and they have a series of problems that are based on the lecture they did outside their class.”

“The content delivery is done outside and the hard work is done inside,” Llewellyn said.

“It has worked out extremely well. Students are very actively engaged – I have two of my grad students in the classroom with me, when the students raise their hand, we’re able to give them immediate feedback. It allows us to give them almost 1-on-1 tutoring in a classroom setting,” Webster said.

Students in the classroom also expressed appreciation for PBL.

“Student feedback has been far better than I imagined,” Webster said. “It has been overwhelmingly positive…Uniformly, they said they prefer because they have more control, if they miss a comment or miss a point, they can back it up very easily watch it again.

Twitter

Management Professor of Practice Bill Todd, in his case-based Management 3150 class, faced the dilemma of limited classroom time for discussion.

“One of the comments [from surveys] was from non-native speakers,” Todd said. “You put so much emphasis on participation, yet we do not feel comfortable in our English skills. While we’re constructing our comment in our mind and by the time we feel comfortable with it, you’ve moved onto something else. And so that made me think, something else needed to happen.”

These concerns and an ever-growing size in the class’s section forced him to pioneer an innovative method of fostering discussion in the classroom — through the use of Twitter.

“We put up both screens with a live Twitter feed, #mgt3150,” Todd said. “The very first time we tried it, four students that never opened their mouth made very good comments. And they were non-native speakers.”

“The Twitter feed gives everyone an opportunity to share their thoughts,” said Melanie Holthaus, a fourth-year ISyE in the Principles of Management class. “It kind of sparks more discussion sometimes, based on what people are saying on the Twitter feed, and you can get kind of a more, ‘That’s a great idea. I can build off that’.”

Ultimately, whether or not these innovations can serve as permanent solutions to the rising ratio is unclear.

“I do fear we’re very close to the breaking point, if we’re not already there,” Jacobs said.

As Tech’s budget comes to the legislature, the student-to-faculty ratio (SFR) is one of the key areas of focus on.

“It’s an important theme to us,” said Executive Director of Institute Budget and Planning Jim Kirk. “It’s a theme that we’ve hit on since I’ve been here, this slippage of the ratio.”

Since 1996, the total student-to-faculty ratio for the Institute has increased from 18.0 to 24.0, according to statistics released by Institute Planning and Resource Management.

“You keep adding students, but are you adding enough faculty to teach the students and are we maintaining a quality of instruction and assistance to students that you guys deserve?” Kirk said.

The student-faculty ratio can be computed in a variety of ways, but the most prominent is determined by the number of students present divided by the number of full-time tenure and tenure-track faculty.

John Leonard, the Associate Dean for Finance and Administration in the College of Engineering, believes that this number can be understood from multiple perspectives.

“Someone will say that well our student faculty ratio is above 30 and someone else will say…it’s 18. And both people are correct,” Leonard said. “Generally if you’re applying for college, student-faculty ratio is a big measure…what that doesn’t tell you is the balance across the different programs because you don’t go to a university—you major in something at a university.”

By colleges, the College of Engineering maintains the highest student-faculty ratio at 32.69, with the biomedical engineering department having the highest ratio on campus at 61.48 students to each faculty member, according to statistics provided by the Office of the Dean of the College of Engineering.

According to Gary May, Dean of the College of Engineering, the trend in what engineering major is the most preferred, which can change every five to six years, changes faster than the hiring cycles for faculty, which run on a different time scale.
The problem for engineering, then, is that it is unable to hire enough additional full-time faculty to accompany the large rise in student enrollment.

“The challenge is, students move at eight year cycles or six year cycles, depending on the market and where students are chasing jobs,” Leonard said. “Basically, the time to graduate is the period in that system and a faculty hire is for thirty years or forty years. Those systems move much slower and that’s what we’re trying to juggle.”

However, other departments across campus are hiring faculty at rates higher than their respective enrollments.

“By growing the tenured and tenure-track faculty, we hope to broaden and enrich our course offerings, allow for some smaller class sizes and continue to build a critical mass of world-class faculty who are recognized as leaders in their fields,” said Dean of the Scheller College of Business Steve Salbu.

The College of Business has experienced the largest overall growth in faculty over the past five years of any other college across campus, increasing its full-time faculty by 42 percent. At the same time, its undergraduate enrollment has increased by 27 percent.

“Given constraints on state funding, much of our hiring over the past five years has been self-funded, through revenue-generating programs as well as ambitious fundraising,” Salbu said. “Both the Scheller gift and other gifts to the College have contributed enormously to our faculty hiring over the past five years.”

The Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts was the other college to hire faculty at a larger rate than its enrollment change, which increased its full-time faculty by 12 percent, although enrollment in the college actually decreased by 15 percent.

“The Ivan Allen college teaches all GT students,” said John Tone, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies at the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.”Besides our major classes, we teach the english sequence, 12 hours of social sciences, six hours beyond english of humanities and in addition we teach students who are getting minors…Our’s is a blended mission where we have majors and a service mission to the rest of the Institute.”

To offset the rising student faculty ratio, individual departments have the ability to hire part-time faculty to offer additional sections for a course.

According to data provided by the Office of Institutional Research and Planning, nearly a quarter of the instructional faculty at Tech are non-tenure, non-tenure-track and visiting faculty.

However, funds for hiring these instructors are limited based on the budgets each department has to allocate. Although this may buffer the ratio, the current system provides no permanent solution to the high student faculty ratio.

Earlier last weekend, Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) hosted its annual Penn State Dance Marathon (THON).
Essentially, it’s a 46-hour dance marathon that raises money for children with cancer, where the participants in the marathon are not allowed to sit down for the duration of the event. THON drew together a crowd that filled the performing center, capable of seating over 16,000 people, to full capacity.

But the highlight of the night was that this event raised over $12.3 million.

Let me reiterate that.

There are a lot of opportunities available for all students to get involved on campus.

In 46 hours, Penn State students raised $12.3 million for cancer.

It was a bit unfortunate that, on one side of my Facebook newsfeed, I came across this phenomenal event from my friends up north; and on the other side, various Tech students complaining about how their lack of sleep causes them to engage in questionable behavior. By questionable behavior, I mean exhibiting ADD-like symptoms and questioning life.

Now I’m not arguing that the enterprise of using Facebook to disclose irrelevant personal details about your life is a waste of the bytes of space a status may take on the Internet. But when juxtaposed with what Penn State just did, I asked myself, “What are we doing?”

There are a lot of opportunities available for all students to get involved on campus. No matter what kind of person you may be, the student organizations, Housing and the administration have programs going on to help get you engaged in the community.

But that’s the thing. It seems that these organizations, while tailored for a specific group of people, may not be tailored for all Tech students. It’s great that Tech students have an incredible diversity—it is what makes us a unique institution. But in that diversity, there must be a string of unity that links us together and allows everyone to gather for a greater cause.

For me, football season seems to beckon the greatest conglomeration of Tech students and a feeling of community. However, this doesn’t always engage the entire student body, especially when the seasonal performance does not fare well.

And of course, it falls on us as students to create this communal atmosphere.

So what’s the solution? I have no idea. But I do know that efforts are being taken—maybe not directly addressing this problem, but a certain degree of it.

For instance, SGA’s installation of an international football clinic is a step in the right direction. By engaging the international student body more in football season, I’m sure it will create a larger sense of community between Tech.

So what about spring? Perhaps the administration will come up with something greater. The campus climate survey sent out earlier last week has tremendous potential in understanding the dynamic of the student body as it stands today.

And of course, it falls on us as students to create this communal atmosphere. Some students may want to remain confined to their current social strata, whether it be out of satisfaction or lack of desire to get out of it.

I know there exists no solution in this editorial to a problem that I perceive and wish away. That’s not what they pay me the big bucks for. But solving it, whether it be through students or administration, may begin alleviating the negative, socially secluded and desperately geeky image Tech can have at times.