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2 THURSDAY. NOVEMBER 18, 2004 Alumni teach Americas youth Tepper, others work to change lives •Y JULIA FURLONG staff writer Matt Tapper traded the brick lined paths of Chapel Hill for the streets of the South Bronx after he graduated in May. Now. the former student body president, one of 51 UNC alumni currently involved with Teach for America, teaches literacy to sixth graders in a New York City middle school. Its an extremely tough experi ence, Ttepper said of his first two months in the classroom. “And I thought I had a busy year last year. ... I’m always exhausted.” Tfeach for America, a member of the national service organization AmeriCorps, is a nationwide net work of college graduates who com mit two years to teach in low-income urban and rural communities. The elementary and secondary schools involved in the program characteristically under-perform and have poor resources. When searching for college grad uates to participate in the program, recruiters try to draw from as diverse an applicant pool as possible, said Melissa Casey, regional recruitment director for Teach for America “We need students who have demonstrated a track record of achievement, leadership potential and the ability to set ambitious trUucturk • waiter edict, extrude, Chapel Hill Raleigh 452 West Franklin St Cameron Village 919.933.4007 919.832.1234 open every day www.uniquities.com V / Defending Mexican Nationals On Death Row iiiiii Internationa] Law and the Administration of the Death Penalty in the United States Sandra Babcock International Human Rights Lawyer and Advocate Thursday, November 18, 6:00 PM Richard White Auditorium East Campus, Duke University Coordinated by the Latino/a Studies Initiative at Duke and co-sponsored by the Carciina and Duke Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Duke's Latino Graduate Student Association, and Duke's Mi Gent©: La Asodadon de Estudiantee Latinos, and the Duke Human Rights Initiative This event is free and open to the public. Far mare info contact la^ikiuke.edu. goals,” Casey said. About 2,000 graduates from a variety ofbackgrounds are selected each year for the corps. They attend a summer institute that provides classes on effective teaching strat egies before moving on to regional orientations, which prepare them for experience in real classrooms. These training sessions provide some of the first lessons in teaching that corps members receive many members hail from fields including government, language and other social sciences. Only 2 percent of last year’s Teach for America group majored in education. Lisa Guckian, who graduated from UNC in 1996, first encoun tered the program when she was a high school student in Warren County. Both her history and Spanish teachers possessed an unusual energy and perspective and both were members of Teach for America. The young corps members relat ed to high schools students well and were creative in making the curric ulum relevant, Guckian said. “They allowed me to look past my current world,” she said. After graduating from the University, Guckian joined the corps and began teaching math and science to seventh- and eighth grade students in the Bronx. ~ . Kjk . >3Hf vr I COURTESY OF MAH TEPPER UNC history professor Richard Talbert speaks to students in former Student Body President MattTepper's sixth grade class at a Bronx middle school. “Its an extremely tough experience. And I thought I had a busy year last year.... Tm always exhausted.” MATT TEPPER, 2003-04 unc student body president, teach for America participant She quickly realized the realities of an overcrowded urban school system. “I had 35 to 40 students in one class, with some students not even on grade level.” Despite the daily challenges, Guckian noticed an overall trend of growth and learning and felt supported by other teachers in the school and the families in the com munity, she said. The drive she puts into her cur rent work in education policy at North Carolina’s Hunt Institute is a result of the people she was surrounded by during her work with Teach for America, she said. “Knowing my impact can be great er, that is my drive. I want to help schools like the one I worked in.” Within North Carolina, Teach for America sends teachers to Charlotte and eight eastern counties. And the program offers appli cants much more than a salary and additional educational awards of up to $9,450, Casey said. “There’s the idea of joining a movement, a unique opportunity to have both immediate and direct impact,” she said. “Corps mem bers are taking on a tremendous responsibility of providing stu dents with the education they are entitled to.” EXCITE ATOMS WITH A CONCENTRATED EMISSION OF ELECTROMAGNETIC ENERGY. (OR NUKE IT, DEPENDING ON YOUR MAJOR.) flj| IT FILLS YOU UP RIGHT." ©CSC Brands, L.P. 2004 News The program has two application deadlines for each new corps class. This year’s Oct 24 deadline yielded 5,797 applicants nationwide, 37 of whom were UNC seniors. The remaining due date for 2005 is Feb. 18. Senior Kasey Johnson, a mid dle school education major from Asheville, plans to participate in the second round of applications. She wants to help out in schools that are in need of teachers and would like to experience “some where big” like New York City or Chicago, she said. For Tepper, days in the Big Apple are unpredictable, and he never knows when he’ll go home excited or frustrated. He still isn’t sure what he’ll pur sue after his two-year commitment ends, though law school or journal ism school seem probable, he said. But Tepper said he knows he’s in the right place when he sees the looks on his students’ faces when they grasp a concept. “You get that feeling, you know you’re supposed to be there, and you know you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing.” Contact the Features Editor atfeatures@unc.edu. Campus tries to attract diversity BY KELLI BORBET STAFF WRITER Native Americans make up the smallest portion of the University population, representing only 0.8 percent of the entire student body. To help increase the small per centage, students and faculty at the UNC Graduate School are hosting events such as the Native American graduate student recruitment weekend in attempts to attract diversity. Officials have held several other events this year catering to the group as part of their diversity ini tiative. “By encouraging Native under graduates to get to know our University campus and to meet current Native American graduate students, we think it will help them to understand what Carolina offers and hopefully choose to attend Chapel Hill for graduate study,” said Sandra Hoeflich, associate dean for interdisciplinary education, fellow ships and communication. North Carolina has the largest Native American population east of the Mississippi River, but the group traditionally has been underrepre sented at UNC, Hoeflich said. Officials said the recruitment efforts are aimed at creating a more diverse campus population. “We have a very welcoming com munity here,” said Graduate School Dean Linda Dykstra. “We are hop ing to attract and convince others that Carolina is a good place for Native Americans.” The Graduate School recent ly held a recruitment weekend for Native American students. Organizers said they aimed to give students from around the country the chance to learn what graduate studies at UNC can offer to Native Americans. Although nine different tribes are represented at UNC, Derek Oxendine, a senior psychology major and a member of the Lumbee tribe, said it is sometimes hard to maintain his sense of culture. “It is hard maintain a balance between the contemporary and traditional worlds that we live in,” Oxendine said. “We are proportion ately the smallest minority group (Dip Doily (Tar Uwl on campus, and that makes us a minority within a minority.” Cookie Newsom, director of diversity education and research for the Office of Minority Affairs, emphasized the recruitment as a way for UNC to serve all citizens of foe state. But officials also said recruitment efforts should not be restricted to in-state students. Students from as far away as Washington and New Mexico attended the weekend. Hoeflich reiterated the point that the addition of more Native Americans would create a more diverse community and University. “We all can benefit from a diverse culture and a diverse student body.” Jennifer Taylor, a Cherokee and a doctoral student in biology, said she left California for UNC not only for academics but also to share her culture with other students. “We bring our culture with us when we come to Carolina, whether it is Lumbee, Cherokee, Chickasaw or any other tribe, and we share that culture with others,” Taylor said. Josh Barton, a Lumbee under graduate student, also said Native Americans can benefit attending by UNC and strengthen the culture of its students by creating a more diverse atmosphere. “Carolina allows us to be exposed to other cultures,” he said. “It makes us as Native Americans appreciate who we are and where we come from.” Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu. CLARIFICATION ■ The Nov. 16 story “Pope funds prompt uproar” states that during a protest, some people held signs asking the University not to take money from a “controversial con servative think tank.” Many signs at the protest did, in fact, urge UNC not to take money from a “hateful” group, and sources are quoted as saying that the group in question the Pope Foundation is against UNCs ideals. But the foundation officially is a charitable organization not a think tank. It provided some of the original funding for the Pope Center for Higher Education Polity, a think tank that has been critical of UNC’s policies. To report corrections, contact Managing Editor Chris Coletta at ccoletta@email.unc.edu. Saily (Tar P.O. Box 3257, Chapel Hill, NC 27515 Michelle Jarboe, Editor, 962-4086 Advertising & Business, 962-1163 News, Features, Sports, 962-0245 One copy per person; additional copies may be purchased at The Daily Tar Heel for $.25 each. © 2004 DTH Publishing Corp. 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Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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