By Courtney Roach staff reporter TCU students will get the chance to preview the TCU Symphony Orchestra's pre-Mexico tour concert, featuring an original composition written by senior piano performance certificate major Arturo Rodriguez, at 7:30 p.m. Monday in the Ed Landreth Hall Auditorium. The group of 80 students will be traveling to four cities in Mexico over eight days on a Spring Break tour accompanied by the orchestra from TCU's sister school Universidad de las Américas-Puebla. Germán Gutiérrez, the director of the orchestra, said the orchestra has been able to overcome its tough schedule this semester and feels prepared for the trip. "This has been a hectic semester, and we are playing these concerts with less than a month's practice," Gutiérrez said. "But the orchestra has responded very well." Maria Lucia Garavito, a graduate performance major, said the orchestra has had a lot to learn without much time but feels prepared. "The Symphony No. 9 'New World' by Dvorak is the best of the pieces because it is a huge piece, and it is great that we are playing it," Garavito said. Rodriguez will get his chance in the spotlight on the tour as a conductor and composer of his original work, titled "Mosaico Mexicano." The piece is a tribute to the noted Mexican composer, Manuel Esperón, Gutiérrez said. "Manuel Esperón is a legend in Mexico," he said. "He could be compared to someone like Frank Sinatra in the United States." Gutiérrez said Rodriguez met Esperón at the 1998 Hispanic Festival Concert sponsored by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. "He was so excited after he met him that he wrote a piece for him," he said. Gutiérrez said Esperón will be attending the tour concerts in Puebla and Oaxaca and is honored to hear a piece that was written for him. Rodriguez's piece will also be performed locally when the Dallas Symphony Orchestra will play "Mosaico Mexicano" at its annual Hispanic Festival Concert on May 5. Gutiérrez has conducted the festival for the past four years and said he selected Rodriguez's piece. "It is very remarkable that a student has composed a piece," he said. "He's very talented and has been my assistant director with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, too." Gutiérrez said students should also look forward to a violin solo by violin director Curt Thompson. "When he played this piece, students just stopped and stared at him and his amazing finger work," Gutiérrez said. Garavito said there is something for all students at the concert, and everyone should be able to enjoy it. "It's a good program for people who like a variety of music," Garavito said. "Everyone will recognize our final piece."
Courtney Roach
By Priya Abraham staff reporter The Faculty Senate passed a motion Thursday for Chancellor Michael Ferrari to begin making faculty salaries competitive. Salaries are currently being affected by compression and inversion, where new faculty members earn more than professors who have taught longer. Senate members discussed ways of retaining good professors who may leave because of the salary inversion or who have been offered higher compensation at other universities. Mike Sacken, chairman of the Budget and Finance Committee, said the university should not delay addressing the issue until the Commission on the Future of TCU has completed its study. He said deciding where to invest money for raises is linked to which fields will be identified as areas of excellence. A concern was raised about whether a specific procedure would be established for departments to make a case for retaining a professor. Another topic of concern was that of depriving other faculty members of salary increases in any department in order to significantly raise the salary of one professor. In other business: - The Tenure, Promotion and Grievance Committee of the Senate will consider ways of cutting down the number of student evaluation forms for different academic units after humanities forms were mistakenly given to the history department last semester. The mix-up has corrupted evaluation averages for social studies and humanities. - Faculty Senate Chairman Roger Pfaffenberger asked the Senate to encourage colleagues to run for Senate seats in the newly created College of Communication and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Three seats are open in each division, and in both, only two professors are prepared to take seats. - The Senate passed a motion to change the lifetime term for the university's chief marshal to four years. The chief marshal represents faculty at ceremonies such as graduation and convocation. Since current marshal Anantha Babbili will be stepping down in May, senators were asked to make nominations for a professor to take his place. - After discussing pedestrian safety on University Drive with Fort Worth city officials, TCU and the city proposed making the street's stretch between West Cantey and West Berry streets a 25-mph school zone. Flashing lights at both ends of the zone and prohibiting left turns from Bowie and Princeton have also been suggested. - Pfaffenberger recommended two spring faculty assemblies where the first-year college experience, salaries and software to allow professors to place course materials on the Web will be discussed.
Priya Abraham
By Priya Abraham staff reporter Inadequate travel funding in the department of art and art history is financially burdening untenured faculty members who need to attend conferences and do research to gain tenure, said Ronald Watson, art department chairman. "The travel funding (is) really critical because you have a short time to produce publications to show you're a contributing member of your discipline," Watson said. But Forrest Newlin, chairman of the theater department, said faculty members should not expect the university to pay for everything they need to be tenured or promoted. "It's my promotion, it's my advancement," he said. "I expect to invest my own money to a degree."In order to gain tenure in the art department, requirements include teaching, artistry and/or scholarship, advising, service to the university, the profession and community and professional development, according to the faculty and university staff handbook. Watson said while attending conferences is not required for tenure, getting published is. At conferences, colleagues give professors feedback on their research, which helps on the road to tenure, he said. Babette Bohn, a professor of art history, said attending conferences is the chief way professors network. "The first one I went to ultimately got (me) a book contract," she said. The lack of travel funding for professional development may be a reason untenured professors leave, Watson said. "They're starting their careers and need institutional support to establish themselves, so it's got to be a factor," he said. The art department's current travel budget is $7,000 a year. Travel locations for this year include Scotland, Italy, New York City and California. Watson said travel money is given to professors on a first-come, first-serve basis. The amount of costs covered by the department depends on where professors are traveling. Watson said members of his department were led to believe the department would receive $9,000 extra in travel funds from the university during Spring 1998, which have not materialized. "We've been trying to track it down now for a couple of years, and we've not succeeded," Watson said. "We definitely need that money." David Whillock, interim dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communication, said he was not aware a $9,000 increment was meant to go to the department of art and art history. "When we went from one financial system to (PeopleSoft), it scrambled some things," he said. "If that money's floating out there, and if, indeed, it was promised to them, we'll find it." Watson said senior faculty members in his department forgo taking trips to allow the six untenured professors more money to travel. "Not only is it a hardship on untenured faculty, it's hard on tenured faculty," he said. "There are people with perfectly legitimate reasons to travel, and they're not advancing their reasons to allow others to go." Whillock said special travel stipends amounting to $500 are available through the College of Fine Arts and Communication. He said the graduate office might also give around $250. Will Powers, chairman of the speech communication department, said he has seen greater support for research and travel at TCU than at five other universities he's worked at. He said lack of travel money does not cause untenured faculty to leave. "People don't leave because they can't go to a convention - they leave because they're not good enough to publish," he said. Bill Ryan, chairman of the communication sciences and disorders department, said his department gives priority to untenured faculty to travel to conferences where they will present papers. He said his department has only one untenured faculty member. "If we had several untenured faculty members, then we'd be in trouble," he said. "The only thing I asked for in next year's budget is increased travel funding."
Priya Abraham
Editor's note: This is the fifth in a series of articles profiling the 17 task forces that make up the Commission on the Future of TCU.
By Reagan Duplisea staff reporter When junior radio-TV-film major Michael Ryan came to TCU, he was excited at the prospect of using a lot of technological equipment in his major, he said. But large classes and few pieces of equipment stopped him from being able to use it right away. "In one class, there are two cameras to about 16 people," Ryan said. "Usually only one camera works when you need it." Ryan said things have improved since his freshman year with the addition of faculty in the radio-TV-film department, but he would still like to see better and updated equipment. The need for cutting-edge technology in the radio-TV-film, journalism and speech communication departments is one issue the College of Communications task force is addressing. The task force is one of 17 on the Commission on the Future of TCU, which was established by Chancellor Michael Ferrari to determine how the university can "move to the next level of academic distinction." Roger Cooper, chairman of the radio-TV-film department and task force member, said it is important for students to work with the best equipment available. "We're discussing technology issues to make sure we are close to state-of-the-art because many of our students go on to work in technology-based areas," Cooper said. Providing students with advanced equipment will help them learn "new-adaptedness" so they can adjust to whatever equipment they will encounter in their jobs, Cooper said. Melissa Young, an assistant professor of speech communication, said better technology would help teach more effectively. "I was teaching a class where I wanted to use my laptop and a PowerPoint program, but it wouldn't work," Young said. "When technology doesn't work, it's very distracting." A technology standard across the department would improve the quality of teaching, Young said. "Linking it all together would give students better learning outcomes," Young said. "Technology and research are very important to our field. To be able to model that in our classrooms would be helpful." Task force members said technology will play an important role in the new College of Communications. Generating ideas for a new school has not been difficult, they said. "We're essentially crafting something new," said Tommy Thomason, chairman of the department of journalism and a task force member. "It's easier to create something new than make changes to something already existing." Thomason said the task force has not finalized its recommendations, but he expects one of them to be turning the department of journalism into a school of journalism and mass communication. "It would be a recognition of the size of the department," Thomason said. There are about 450 students in the journalism department, Thomason said. This is a larger number than the School of Music and comparable to the School of Education. Thomason said a journalism school would be able to draw in more money. "There is a lot of media-related money out there that we believe would be available for us," Thomason said. "This would increase opportunities for us to get grants for the school."
Reagan Duplisea |
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