Tuesday, October 27th, 2015 | TechNews

 

campus@technewsiit.com

Immunization holds to prevent students from class registration

Kori Bowns
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

With the Spring 2016 class schedule
already published and registration for classes
opening on Monday, November 9, students
across campus are already working out their
preferred class schedules and arranging
meetings with their academic advisors. Before
getting too excited about class registration,
students should first ensure that they will have
no holds on their student account preventing
them from registering for the next semester of
classes.

Holds on a student’s account can
come from a variety of offices for a multitude
of reasons; for example, a student who still
owes the university tuition payment from the

current semester might be unable to register
for the next semester of classes. Another type
of hold, and one of the more common holds
experienced by students at the university, is
an immunization hold from the IIT Student
Health and Wellness Center (SHWC).
According to Anita Opdycke, Associate Vice
Provost for Student Health and Wellness, “All
students who have not submitted or completed
their immunization requirements will receive
a hold on their account, preventing Spring
Registration, on November 3, 2015.”

Illinois state law requires that
university students enrolled in at least half—
time credit hours be immunized against certain
communicable diseases. When students first
enroll at the university, they are encouraged to
submit a record of their immunization history

prior to the beginning of classes. Students
who don’t submit this form or don’t meet the
immunization requirements will need to visit
the SHWC to obtain the proper immunizations
or visit their own healthcare provider to do so
and send their records to the SHWC oflice.
IIT’s SHWC wants to help students
obtain proper immunizations and get their
records up to date to help students avoid
the registration hold. Opdycke added, “The
Student Health and Wellness Center would like
help you meet the requirements set forth by the
State of Illinois in order to achieve compliance
at the Illinois Institute of Technology. You may
contact us at (312) 567—7550 to schedule an
appointment to receive any necessary vaccines
or to determine what vaccines you may need.”
Students who will need their immunization

record updated should contact the SHWC
as soon as possible; appointment slots fill up
quickly and lines at the health center’s office
tend to become very long once students are
being prevented from registering for classes.

In addition to being required
to register for classes, immunizations are
important for the overall general health of
each student and the campus community.
According to the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, the widespread use of
vaccinations in the United States has limited
the occurrence and transmission of preventable
diseases. Students with any questions about
immunizations can contact the SHWC at (312)
567—7550 or student.health@iit.edu.

Students Speak 2015: We want your voice to be heard

Sean Wright
PROJECT LEAD CONSULTANT,
IIT CENTER FOR RESEARCH AND SERVICE

With the approval of the President
and Provost, your fellow IIT students are once
again looking for your input in discovering
how we can improve the quality of student’s
experiences with various service areas and
departments here at IIT. The Students Speak
program aligns with the President’s and
Provost’s commitment to advancing student
satisfaction and the quality of services provided
to students.

The project is headed by a committee
of students, who are tasked with identifying
how the university’s services can make your
lives as IIT students better. Their focus is on
you — their fellow students and they want to
understand what your needs, concerns, and
ideas are surrounding the university. The
committee is made up of a diverse team of
individuals that come from many different
backgrounds, ranging from SGA, ISO, Camras
Scholars, the Leadership Academy, varsity
teams, the Greek community, graduate student
organizations, and more. They are committed
to helping the administration establish

benchmarks of performance for student
services, identify priorities for improvement,
create action plans for change, map progress,
and instill accountability for those changes.

Once the committee has identified
areas within the university services that are
most important to students, they will develop
the survey to focus on each of those key areas
and ask students to provide feedback so that
they can gauge what the university is doing
right and what needs improvement. The
committee will present the results from the
Students Speak survey to the President and
Provost in January and will also give feedback
to the departments and service areas included
on the survey. Student committee members
also submit specific recommendations on how
administrators can make the necessary changes
needed to increase student satisfaction with
their offices’ services. These recommendations
will stem from the survey findings collected
and from additional input from members of
various student organizations.

The Students Speak committee
is supported by Dr. George Langlois, the
Executive Director for the Center of Research
and Service (part of the Lewis College of

Human Sciences) and the IIT Leadership
Academy. For those that do not know him,
Dr. Langlois is an Industrial/ Organizational
psychologist whose office also conducts
the annual faculty survey and provides
consultation to numerous high profile clients
outside of IIT. His knowledge and expertise in
survey design and analysis serves as a valuable
asset to the committee. The Students Speak
project is especially important to Dr. Langlois,
as he received his PhD here at IIT and the
project allows him and his office to give back
to the university by helping to make students’
experiences here the best that it can be.

The committee has the manpower,
the determination, and the contacts, but they
need one more crucial piece in order for this
survey to make a difference — you. They
need as many students as possible to provide
feedback on the various student services in
order to really gauge what has been working
well for students and what needs improvement.
Traditionally, the number of student responses
has been close to half the total student body
and the goal this year is to get an even larger
proportion of students to participate. A couple
minutes of your time is all it takes to help drive

positive change by ensuring that your voice
is heard when the committee presents their
findings to the President and Provost.

As an added incentive for
participating in the survey, there will also
be a raffle drawing that any participating
students will be entered in, where they will
have the chance to win up to $150 in the form
of a gift card. This is your chance to influence
positive change for all IIT students and to
have your opinions heard by the university’s
leadership and senior administrators. Again,
the Students Speak Survey is focused on you,
the student and this is your chance to help
make a positive, lasting impact for current
and future IIT students. The survey goes live
October 26 and continues through November
6. All students will be sent an email with a link
to the survey, but in case you miss it, you can
simply go to (http://www.iit.edu/students_
speak) and complete the survey there once it
goes live, or stop by the kiosk that will be set up
in MTCC during lunch hour. Take the survey
and let your voice be heard — it only takes a few
minutes of your time to make a difference at
IIT!

Lewis College to host data roundtable

Kori Bowns
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

The work of IIT’s Lewis College of
Human Sciences is situated at the intersection
of humans and technology. As a part of
promoting cross—disciplinary dialogue, the
college will be hosting a roundtable event this
week titled “Algorithms: Human Influence on
the World of Data.”

The college’s roundtable event will
be taking place on Thursday, October 29, in
the MTCC Auditorium from 3:30 pm. until
5:30 pm. On the Lewis College of Human
Science’s website, the description of the
event reads as follows: “Algorithms convert

data into results—online news aggregation,
investment trading decisions, and targets of
surveillance programs are all determined
by them. But this process is not morally or
politically neutral; each algorithm carries in
it cultural and political values. Behind every
computation sits a person or group of people
who’ve decided what information to collect,
how to store it, how to analyze it, and how to
use it. In this roundtable, we will discuss how
algorithms shape the information we receive,
and how transparent the social and political
implications of these equations should or
shouldn’t be.”

The event is open to any member of

the IIT community and is free. A reception will
follow the event in the MTCC Ballroom.

Four featured roundtable
participants will be present. Angela M. Cirucci
has her Ph.D. from Temple University’s School
of Media and Communication. She is a current
assistant professor of communication studies
at Kutztown University. Jason Resch, who
received his computer science degree from
Illinois Tech in 2006, will also be joining
the roundtable discussion. Also joining will
be Christian Sandvig, associate professor
of communication studies and information
at the University of Michigan. The last
featured panelist is Nick Seaver, a Ph.D.

student of anthropology at University of
California-Irvine researching how people use
technology to interpret sound. According to
Stephanie Healey, Director of Marketing and
Communications for Lewis College of Human
Sciences, the four panelists will “Discuss how
algorithms affect the information we receive,
and how transparent the social and political
implications of these equations should or
shouldn’t be.”

Healey highly recommends that
students attend the event. More information as
well as an RSVP form can be found at http://
humansciences.iit.edu/roundtable.

Illinois Tech Robotics presents at MSI Robot Block Party

Kori Bowns
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Chicago’s Museum of Science and
Industry (MSI), the largest science museum in
the western hemisphere, premiered its newest
exhibit, Robot Revolution, this past summer.
The exhibit showcases dozens of robots and
highlights the ways that humans and robots
interact and the ways robots make work easier
for humans.

To complement the exhibit, MSI has
also hosted events called “Robot Block Party;”
for these events, the museum invites local ro—
botics experts into the museum to informally

 
   

a i, t l ,,
; g ,
. , ,r ;

present their work to the museum’s audience.
The most recent of these events was held over
Columbus Day weekend, October 10—12. IIT’s
extracurricular robotics student organization,
Illinois Tech Robotics (ITR), was the only 10—
cal exhibitor to present at the museum all three
days and reached over one thousand guests.
Illinois Tech Robotics brought four
items to the museum to share. The most popu—
lar was a project known as mini—Roslund, a
one-half scale functional model of ITR’s oldest
robot, Roslund. Mini—Roslund, armed with a
Nerf dart launcher, was available for guests to
drive around as well as shoot darts at targets
on a field that students from ITR had set up.

   

   

Hundreds of children had the opportunity to
drive the robot and aim the dart launcher in a
rotating target.

In addition to mini-Roslund, ITR
also brought two other robots, Icarus and Pen—
rir. Icarus, ITR’s quadcoptor flying robot, was
available for guests to see up close. Guests got
the chance to interact with the robot by lifting
and turning it and watching the robot’s artifi—
cial horizon display change on a laptop screen.
Fenrir is ITR’s gravity—drive robot, a robot with
two large wheels and a center mass on the axle
between them. Guests who visited ITR’s table
at the museum learned about Fenrir’s similar-
ity to a Segway as well as the sensors necessary

: ' ‘

a

to create a balancing robot.

The last item of interest included at
ITR’s display was their 3D printer, which was
designed and built by IIT and ITR alumnus
Paul Kim. ITR explained the principles and
uses of 3D printing to guests and printed off
small trinkets for guests to take home.

Even though MSI’s Robot Revolu—
tion exhibit will only be open through early
January, ITR looks forward to presenting again
at MSI’s next Robot Block Party event, which
will take place during National Robotics Week
in April 2016.

Photos by Kari Bowns