If I even needed another reason to love the library, here it is: “14 Days to Have Your Say!” Starting today, Sunday, February 14th until Saturday, February 27th, students will have the opportunity to enter a conversation about what they love, hate, and wish the Library had. The initiative is headed by amazing Music & Media Librarian, Amy Harrell, 4 Librarians, and 2 members from Information Technology. For once, don’t be afraid to use your outside voice in the Library…because the Library is listening! Visit http://14days.trincoll.edu to enter comments. Please remember to add CMPCNTR\ before your username when signing in. If you would prefer to remain anonymous, you can even drop off your comment in the designated boxes in Mather and the Library.

Post Scriptum: If you have not already, follow the Library on Twitter at twitter.com/trinitylibrary to get all the amazing updates that occur at the Library!

If you do not know me that well, I love the people at the Library. It is really surprising that a lot of the great features that we use on a daily basis are developed and maintained by librarians for students. I just wanted to inform you of some cool tech that is in the Library that you probably do not know about.

1. A mobile-friendly version of the library web site is now available at http://library.trincoll.edu/m You can also access it by clicking on the “Mobile-friendly” link at the top of our the library web site. The mobile version of the library’s web site is designed for viewing and navigating on the smaller screens of cell phones and other mobile devices. It includes just a few of the primary functions of the main web site.

2. If you are using a computer to access the Library’s catalog, and can never remember the books you wanted, the Library now has a quick and easy solution. TEXT MESSAGE! If you find the book you want in the Library’s Catalog, you go to the right-hand column under “ACTIONS” and select “Text me the title and call #.” VOILA! You instantly receive a text message with the Title and how to find it in the Library. It is like Christmas Morning for any academic junkie like myself.

Are you taking a class in Chemistry, Economics, Language & Culture Studies, or Psychology and are required to buy a textbook that costs more than $100? Check the Library’s course reserves to see if a copy is available for you in the Library. To see if your textbook is available on reserve: go to the library catalog’s course reserve tab, for Instructor choose Textbook Reserves, for Course choose Any, then click Search. Alternatively, you can search the catalog by the title of the textbook.

All textbooks purchased for this project will be on reserve as long as they are used for a course. Reserve books can be borrowed for 2 hours at a time.

The project was initiated by the SGA’s Academic Affairs together with the Dean of Faculty’s Office and the Library. Its goal is to provide students with an alternative to buying expensive study material for their classes. During the spring semester, the :ibrary will evaluate the project and hopefully extend it to all departments in fall of 2010. If you have any comments or questions about it, please send them to library-feedback@trincoll.edu or terrence.reillyii@trincoll.edu

The 2010 Winter Election results are as follows:

Executive Vice President: Terry Reilly
Vice President of Finance: Pratheek Kalyanapu
Vice President of Multicultural Affairs: Leslie James
Junior Class Senator: Flo Monier
Senator-At-Large: Camille Abdel-Nabi

Congratulations!

So this past semester I spent a great deal of time looking into the issue of printing dollars. As it stands, each student is given $10 at the beginning of the semester, and each page costs  $.10, whether both sides are used or not. Unfortunately, besides preventing any further cuts – an idea being contemplated – I have so far failed to  make a siginificant chang  e in the polic of hte college. Next semester will afford me some more time to freshly look at this issue. I’m going to be aiming toward some time of program that makes printing more equally distributed. Its a travesty that there are some students who use their printing dollars within the first few weeks of school (many in the humanities departments) and others who don’t use any.

What I’m looking for here are some creative suggestions on how to create an exchange program that increases ‘printing equality.’

Ferris has undergone a lot of change over the past semester and is still in the process of updating equipment and improving the workout experience. Among the changes are a new weight room, as well as new treadmills, ellipticals, bikes, machines, and platforms in the fitness room. Other things are being worked on. For instance, new TVs are going to be installed along the wall facing Crescent St., and a new stretching mat has been bought and is waiting to be installed.

The changes aren’t complete yet. Many issues have been addressed and discussed and are either in the process of being dealt with or have already been dealt with. However, if there is something else you would like to see done in Ferris, please let me know.

Ben

Remember to sign up for Intramural sports when you get back next semester. Activities include basketball, broomball, Zumba, and the Trinity Challenge

http://trincoll.dosportseasy.com/

Hey Everyone,

I’m sure we’re all stressed with finals or busy enjoying must deserved rest, but I just want to take this chance to do an online brainstorm for next semester. What would you like to see the SGA work on? Nothing is too big or too small.

For my part, I would like the SGA to become more active in the planning of next year’s First Year Orientation. I feel like there is never enough student involvement in the planning of these events and the SGA could do a better job of offering constructive criticism from the perspective of students that have been through the program over the last few years.

Have a Great Holiday!

Bryce

Hello,

There are  THREE open Vice President positions on the SGA in the Winter Election (which takes place soon after we get back for Spring semester). These positions are an enormous commitment to the SGA:

–Executive Vice President

–Vice President of Multi-Cultural Affairs (MAC)

–Vice President of Finance

Interested in running for a VP spot? Please contact Andrew.Grubin@trincoll.edu as soon as possible.

Hello all–

So this semester I worked on getting registrar’s forms in Mather and getting a student on the Reading Initiative Committee. So far, both have worked out well. If there are any other forms students would like to see at Mather, please let me know. Otherwise, we’ll try to make sure that all the forms are there.

If anyone has a suggestion for the Academic Affairs committee for next semester please let us know! We are always trying to improve the Academic atmosphere of this campus!

have a happy holidays and good exam week!

Finals are here and we all need to de-stress. Please stop by Gallows on Tuesday, December 15, 2009 from 1-3 for our annual Stress Buster event. The SGA in conjunction with the health center and various student organizations have hired 5 massage therapist, Reiki Master and an auricular acupuncturist to help us relax. If you did not make an appointment, don’t worry, walk-ins will be seen…

There has been a lot of movement. Tomorrow Paul Muton the college’s CFO will be presenting the idea of hiring a disability coordinator at the college’s sr staff mtg. The Center for Teaching and Learning will be having a teaching seminar and simulation next semester as well.

In order to access many of Trinity’s online academic services you must be connected to the Virtual Private Network.  I am taking a course this semester using Moodle instead of Blackboard to house our assignments and important links.  I found out the hard way that Moodle requires users be connected to Trinity’s VPN in order to access some content.  Unfortunately, my VPN connection and current laptop suddenly decided to part ways leaving me in the lurch and scavenging for a solution to my Moodle issue.

I still don’t know what made my laptop or VPN reject each other after such a long and loving connection but I do know that with finals looming I had to get these two back together.  I am not entirely digitally incompetent so I tried de-installing and re-installing.  Then I tweaked firewall settings, edited account details, wrote emails and made calls seeking and implementing advice… unsuccessfully.  As a last resort, I schlepped my laptop down to tech support where after a couple of hours my VPN connection and laptop were finally reunited. 

Allow me to recommend that you go directly to tech support, better known as the Computing Center, if you encounter any similar problems.  Tips and links for self-service can be located at their website http://www.trincoll.edu/RaetherCtr/ComputingCenter/default.htm however I also started that way and wasted allot of time and energy.  No appointment is required for service and the help desk is staffed most of the day and night.  The tech support student employees and staff are probably better equipped than you to troubleshoot your connection issues, plus they can save your sanity.

Sustainability

After conversing with the Sustainability Taskforce representative, it was apparent that the Taskforce had done extensive research and outside consulting to basically quantify all the issues concerning the school infrastructure and superstructure. These are fully included in two documents: Mitigation Strategies by Priority and GES_Trinity_College_Sustainability_Report. Strictly speaking, these documents quantify many aspects of sustainability which have been mentioned before by students. Any feedback on these would be great, especially as to which ones we should focus on and perhaps pressure the administration to adopt. Also, these documents were presented to the President himself, who said he would choose some of these to start now and to accomplish in long term. However, given the current economic crisis, he might find it difficult to commit to some of these expensive short-term but important long-term plans. That is probably where the students will come in.

Cashback

An idea which we had wanted to pursue was cashback, wherein people could use their debit cars to purchase items and then get cash back as an option after swiping. In the words of Chartwells itself, there are two reasons why this is not feasible: 1.The blackboard cash register system we have on campus  which is owned by the college is not able to facilitate this function.  2.  The bank we use will not allow us to do this, It is agaisnt thier policy.  However, I do not fully understand these reasons, and I will do more research on understanding these reasons and potentially finding mitigators for these reasons.

Gallows

As far as Gallows was concerned, we had decided the best course of action would be to install locknetics, which would make it secure and accessible to all students. It turns out that it would cost $4000 to do this, though Sally Katz would have no issue doing this once the funds were provided. It seems both that Jonathan Miller ( who was asked about this by Fabio) and Dean Alford (who we talked to via email) were not averse to this idea, but the main concern is the funding which we have not been able to secure because we were not sure of initial support for this project. We are currently considering how to approach this project, and any feedback would also be welcome.

Nutritionist

As far as the nutritionist is concerned, the search for one has begun, as Mr. Chenette has contacted both St. Joseph’s College and other RD. We will most likely have a nutritionist here, on a 20-hr basis, starting in the Spring semester.

Zipcars

Zipcars is being successful and will continue to be fully utilized here at college. The only loss that Zipcars currently experience is during the summer and winter, but that is to be expected as much fewer people are here. I wonder is there might be some way to mitigate the cost to the school during those months?

Infrastructure

Lastly, is there any issue which the infrastructure committee can address in the future? Please let us know.

Hey all,

I wanted to let everyone know that ACES is having its annual Sponsor a Snowman program.  You can pick up a snowman outside of mather on the window.  The snowman has a childs name as well as a gift that they would like for Christmas.  It’s a great way to spread the holiday cheer and give someone else a nice Christmas.

-Will Seals