Getting ready for move-in? FAQ's! (Updated 6/19)

Hey everyone!
Hope the last few weeks have treated you all well and you're getting excited about coming to Boulder next fall!

This summer I've gotten a few comments/emails with questions about move-in/dorms/general life, so I figured I'd post answers for everyone to check out. PLEASE do not hesitate to email me your questions- I love answering them and giving you guys the inside scoop :)

Am I going to be stranded if I don't bring my car?
Not taking a car to school is a great idea! I brought mine since I wanted to be able to home when I wanted, but it also allowed me to be lazy and not take the bus to do stuff like go to target. The buff buses (from WV to campus) run until midnight every night, until 3 a.m. on weekends and every 20 minutes on weekends which hooks you up to nearly all the main bus lines which for the most part stop by the UMC or throughout campus. Boulder is also very bike-friendly and the city has been really successful in creating bike lanes and nice bike paths all over. Plus then you get some exercise! :)
I would also reccomend committing to staying in Boulder every weekend (if you live in the area) for at least the first month of school. I had a really hard time adjusting because I booked it out of town most weekends first semester while everyone else stayed in the dorms and got to know each other. The last thing you may want to do on the weekends is hang out with all the people you don't know, but if you make the decision to stick with it even when you're sick of the dorms it will pay off.

What's the difference between a 2-student room and a 2-student apartment? What did you have?
So an apartment vs. room- on your housing assignment letter it will say "You have been assigned to Room # in --- Hall, a 2/3/4 student apartment/room." If it says apartment, you have an apartment style room with a kitchenette/living room in addition to the bedroom(s). If it says 2-student room, you will have the basic dorm room with 2 people and closets which is still totally manageable. :)

Is it true that I can get a season ski pass to Eldora for $99?
Eldora season pass for $99- TRUE! This only happens for like 2 days at the beginning the semester. come to school with a way to get one because when you hear that they're at the UMC you should go snag a pass! I missed out big time and didn't get one, and going to Eldora twice would pay for that pass (Single day tickets are around $75 I think...). Plus it's really easy to do half days of skiing/snowboarding at Eldora- there's a bus every hour from Boulder up to the slopes that is free with your student RTD bus pass that you automatically get when you enroll at CU. I would recommend getting this, even if you are getting another pass because it's nice to be just an hour away from home versus going all the way up to Breck/Copper/wherever your skis may take you.

What are the rooms like in Williams Village? (All towers)
Most of the rooms in WV are very similar to my pictures- but what's cool is that in each tower each floor and room are slightly different floor plans. For example, in Stearns East where I lived, the top 4-5 floors were all 4-student apartments, and any rooms below 9 were generally 2 student rooms. Some rooms are a bit bigger or smaller, but for the most part my pictures are of a pretty average sized bedroom. Here's some more pictures of other rooms in WV:
Normal 2-student room:
2-student room with bathroom:




Should I loft my bed?
I had my bed lofted half the year and had it taken down at semester- with the amount of space we had (I was in a 2-student apartment, not a 2-student room) I really didn't need the bed lofted. I got tired of climbing up to my bed all the time, but I was also used to doing homework/generally hanging out sitting on my bed so it was an adjustment. Lofting definitely gives you more space but is sort of a pain- I'd try and convince your roommate to loft their bed :P It does make for some more interesting ways to organize your room and a pretty good amount of additional space.

Can I put up Christmas lights around the edge of my room? Can I tack them up or use a staple gun?
You're not technically allowed to put holes in the walls- plus all the walls are made of brick so you can't really tack into anything right along the ceiling. One of my favorite things about WV though is that most of the walls are covered in tack board, so you could hang lights on that! Or you can also buy little sticky-back light hooks made for people's houses and hang your lights, which is what we did in my room. Purple lights are only $3 at during Halloween at target :) I always liked it when people put lights around their windows because you could always see it from outside, which looked really neat.

Finals Time!

I am very sorry to everyone for the sparse posts the last few weeks, but life and school are both moving at warp speed and it's hard to keep up! Today I have my first final in my Sex, Gender and Society class, and then 3 more finals in the following days. Ahhh! With turning in final projects- at my last count I had 3 papers, 1 German presentation and 1 essay portfolio to get ready- and wrapping up classes at the end of spring semester feels much busier than it did in the fall. Nice weather doesn't help with trying to stay inside studying either, since all I really want to do is go outside and enjoy the sunshine!
Moving out is no fun either- having to take down all the posters that made my room so cheerful is a total bummer. Goodbyes are rushed as people leave for the summer at different times because of different finals, and vague plans are made to see other in-staters during the break. Last night our floor took a few pictures of everyone in their rooms and wondered about who would be living in them next year. It seems so strange to think that anyone else has ever called our space home! :-) But Williams Village has been around since the seventies- I heard about a girl who was living in the same tower her dad had lived in when he went to CU. So as I'm getting ready to go and finally have a moment or two to breathe, I'll try and keep you more updated as to how the year ended and what move-in will be like in the fall. Cheers!

Pictures from around Campus- Springtime!

The new visual arts building, brick by brick!

Conference on World Affairs- Flags [Norlin Quad]

Farrand Field greening up after rain, but still snow in the Flatirons! [Farrand Field]

There are tons of bulbs around campus. [Engineering Quad]

Again, still snow in the mountains after hitting 70 for a few days.

Marketing Town Hall Meeting- Unanswered Questions

Thank you to the students who came to the Town Hall meeting. The faculty is grateful that you took the time to speak with us, and we thank you for being candid about your concerns and generous with your appreciation.

Issue #1: Students are hungry for “application” in the marketing curriculum.
Within the group at the Town Hall Meeting, there seemed to be a consensus that “application” meant 1) creative production, such as creating advertisements, and 2) software products, both for creative production and other uses.

Questions about differences between advertising and marketing in the Business/Journalism Schools:

Q: Can marketing majors use business courses as prerequisites for upper level courses in the Journalism School?
A: Marketing students may enroll in 3000-level and 4000-level courses in the School of Journalism on a “space available” basis. Regarding prerequisites, the Journalism School has their own 1000-level and 2000-level courses that serve as prerequisites for their 3000-level courses for their own students. Journalism will allow business students who have taken BCOR 2400 to enroll in their 3000-level courses in lieu of having the 1000-level and 2000-level courses that Journalism students must take. However, the Journalism 3000-level course (Principles of Advertising) must be taken in order to enroll in their 4000-level courses.

Q: Can upper level Journalism courses count as business electives?
A: Unfortunately, no. While courses in other departments may have similar sounding names, they are usually taught very differently, i.e. from a creative perspective vs. a strategic/managerial perspective. Consequently, the courses are not equivalent and the journalism courses count as non-business electives.

Q: What about non-for-credit workshops on using certain software (e.g., Adobe Illustrator) that has value in the marketplace?
A: Jenni Schrader made this suggestion at the meeting. We think it is a great idea! Jenni came and met with me (Donnie Lichtenstein) and Professor Laura Kornish to talk more about this idea on Friday April 10. Jenni had the idea of a student-run workshop series. She is taking lead on this idea to determine the feasibility and student interest in running such a series of workshops. The idea might be something like this: a student group organizes the workshops, perhaps run in the Leeds School computer labs in the evenings, on topics Introduction to Adobe Illustrator, Using Excel for Composing Graphs and Charts, as well as other such topics. Knowledgeable students may conduct some workshops for their fellow students, or perhaps in some cases, an instructor may be hired. Students participating in the workshops may be asked to pay a fee for this service to go towards the cost of conducting the workshop, and perhaps as a fundraiser for the student organization. This is very much in the “conceptualization” stage, so these are just some preliminary ideas. Jenni will be investigating this further over the summer, to gauge demand for workshops on different software packages, and checking in with us periodically for counsel. If you have recommendations, questions, or want to assist Jenni, feel free to email her at Jennifer.schrader@Colorado.edu.
That said, there are other venues at CU where certain software-related skills can be gained. For example, as noted in the Town Hall Meeting, the Journalism School offers several such courses. Additionally, the Technology, Arts & Media Program (housed in Altas) offers a certificate program that entails many courses that seem to be “right on target” for the types of courses students were asking for. Click on the “courses” tab to review the semester-by-semester course offerings. You can also read a blog about the certificate here.

Issue #2: BCOR 2400 and the Marketing Capstone Course
Meetings, including Professors Donnie Lichtenstein and Laura Kornish, as well as Associate Dean Cal Duncan, were scheduled with the marketing capstone professor and the BCOR 2400 professors to discuss both negative and positive comments about the courses.
We take student concerns seriously; we want you to share them; we hope that was evident at the meeting. We find feedback the most helpful when it is constructive. We are never going to have 100% of students satisfied with every course. But, we can shoot for listening to 100% of the constructive comments offered in a helpful spirit.

Issue #3: Students discussed the pros and cons of a grade distribution; some really thought a forced grade distribution was a recipe for disaster.
The marketing faculty have spent a lot of time in the past few years talking about grades and grade distributions. Each faculty member has his or her own take on the subject, but there is a strong consensus that grade distributions serve two functions for students. The first one is that they make grades mean something. If there are too many As, then an A doesn’t signify excellence. The second one is that they set student expectations about the workload and level of challenge in the course. We want our students to come prepared to work hard. We have good students, capable of good work. Having a grade distribution is one of many ways a professor (or a department) can send a powerful message that the course will be challenging.

In addition to those reasons, departments often impose grade distributions because of some not-often-discussed realities. In particular, there is a positive correlation between the grades a professor assigns and the ratings students give the professor, and a negative relationship between the level of rigor in a class and the ratings students give professors. I just analyzed the data in the last month for all faculty in the Leeds School over the last three years and this conclusion is unambiguous. (Over 721 course sections delivered over the last three years, the partial correlation between grades a professor gives and student evaluations of the professor, controlling for rigor, is .37, p < .001). As a faculty member in this school for 21 years (including 3 as Associate Dean), it is also unambiguous that in annual faculty ratings by the Leeds School Administration, higher student evaluations of faculty have typically led to administration rating the faculty as a “better teacher.” Therefore, historically there has been an incentive for faculty to give higher grades. Thus, we are using a grade distribution to avoid the problems associated with having truly outstanding students receiving the same grades as students who are “simply good,” and students that are “simply good” receiving grades similar to students who may not be well-suited for college at this point in their lives. Q: Does this result in an unfair outcome for our students?
A: The faculty members in the marketing division do not believe that is the case. (We voted as a group to support the current grade distribution in our BCOR 2400 class. It was not a decision made by a single faculty member in isolation.) We believe the grade distributions in the marketing courses leave room at the top to recognize the hard work and accomplishments of the many gifted, hard working, and great students that we are fortunate to have here in the Leeds School and in the marketing division. And, those same distributions also leave room at the bottom for the classmates who would rather be on the slopes or spending time on Facebook, or whose work product for some reason doesn’t achieve the quality we were looking for.

Conference on World Affairs!

Last week was absolutely crazy around campus, thanks to CU's annual Conference on World Affairs. A week-long conference involving presenters from all over the world discussing current events,the CWA involved presentations on everything from Facebook to terrorism.
For many of my classes and even CU-Gold, going to a CWA event was required or got me extra credit- so I definitely went to several panels! Most of the events were actually panels in which the audience could ask questions, and with presenters ranging from a fire-dancing rocket scientist (I went to that one!) to the screen writer for the show Band of Brothers. There were lots of Boulder residents all over campus which was strange, I'm not used to seeing anyone older than 25 on campus en masse. Sadly it was mostly adults at the events, but there was definitely something that for everyone because there were so many events. I'd be sure to check out at least one event next spring, just to see what CU is presenting to Boulder and the rest of the world versus what we see as students.

Sewall Hall

So for the next few posts, I figured that it would be helpful to give all of you incoming freshman a look inside a few of the residence halls you could be living in next year- starting off with Sewall!
Sewall is definitely one of my favorite halls on campus, mainly because it's such a beautiful building! In the video below this post, you can see the front part of Sewall, which faces away from campus and isn't usually used to enter the dining hall.
Sewall and Baker (my old hall) were both build really early on in the history of the school, so they both face towards what used to be the heart of Boulder. According to an informational plaque I read on Pearl St., this was done to keep the school tied to its roots within the town.

Sewall's residents are required to participate in its RAP (Residencial Acedemic Program) which is all about the American West. Even if you aren't a history major,you need history credits for CORE requirements, so Sewall could still be a good option for you.
In Conclusion:

Pros

• Beautiful Building
• Delicious dining hall
• On-campus but in a quiet location
• Close to the Rec Center
• Close to many large lecture halls and Norlin Library
• Convinience store in dorm
  

Cons

• Grab'n'Go is so-so
• Not near any other dorms- closest is College Inn
• No air-conditioning (W.V. is the only place that has A.C.)
• Far away from any bus stops (Buff bus or city busses)
• Leeds is really, really far away- 20 minutes at a leisurely pace

Settled in- Boulder Boulder Boulder!

Libby, my favorite dining hall on campus [Libby Hall]

While considering what to write for this evenings blog post, I realized something very important about where I was sitting. Not only did it dawn on me that I was totally comfortable in my surroundings in the dorms, but that I was totally comfortable at CU as a whole. It was amazing- I can't believe it was every scary to try and find my way around campus now. Somewhere along the line the adjustment happened and being down in Boulder feels so much more like home than when I first arrived.
Even just taking care of every day business- advising appointments, getting homework and papers done, readings- is so much more natural than when I first started. I feel like I came into college with so many expectations that I wasn't prepared for the expectations there were for me, which definitely caught me off guard first semester. Being here takes more work than I was used to in high school, and suddenly... I feel used to it. :) Now I'm getting all set up for next year and it's so exciting- I get to study German, which I love, and get ready for study abroad, which I am beyond psyched for. Both of those things really helped me settle in at CU and feel like I was part of campus.
So make sure that when you get here (new freshman- get excited!) you give everything you can a chance- try anything that comes your way, because it could end up rocking your world.