Maroon

              "For a Greater Loyola." The Maroon ESTABLISHED 1923 V0L.77 NO. 21 Loyola University New Orleans FRIDAY, APRIL 9, 1999 DANCIN' IN THE QUAD STAFF PHOTO BY CHARLES COSTELLO Members of the N'Kafu African dance troupe perform a traditional dance while others set the rhythm on drums. The demonstration was part of International Week. Online textbooks limit hassles, waits By SARAH SPARKS Editor in Chief Though it jumped on a dot-com bandwagon already trumpeting the likes of Barnes and Noble, Borders Books and Amazon.com, Loyola's online bookstore arrived with a minimalist lack of fanfare. The bookstore quietly entered the Internet last year and began accepting textbook orders from professors in late February. The store's parent company, Follett, rooted its branch offices with a nationwide book and merchandise online registry Jan. 4. Follett set up and maintains the bookstore's Web page, while Julie Rosen, bookstore manager, keeps Loyola's class information up to date. To order books, students type in their course and section numbers, and the site pulls up a list of the books needed, with prices for new or used copies. A student can pay for the books online with a major credit card and have them shipped via United Postal Service in about a week, according to Rosen. "If freshmen want to get books shipped, they're going to have to lug them back here. It's up to them if they want to get a jump start and look at their books," she said. However, the university does not permit students to use their express cards online. Card holders may instead opt to reserve their textbooks online. They go through the same process, but the bookstore holds the copies instead of shipping them. "They just come in and say 'I ordered books online; my name's so-and-so,' and we just pull up a bag and there's all their books alreadyUniversity to lose veteran professor Braden's departure leaves department shorthanded By PIERCE PRESLEY News Editor The Rev. Michael Braden, S.J., will depart at the end of the year, hut | he will still work at Loyola — Loyola College in Baltimore, that is. The loss leaves Loyola University j New Orleans with only one broadcast production professor under contract ! and a scramble to find another before j next year. This will be the third communications position without a permanent professor. Frank Scully, arts and sciences I dean, already has approved the hiring | of a replacement. "They've been given the OK," he | said. "It's only going to be filled on a ! one-year, temporary (basis). "We hope to be able to identify j somebody within the next month." The communications department decided to use the World Wide Web to expedite getting out the word. "We already have an ad on the Broadcast Education Association's Web page," said William Hammel, communications chair. However, the BEA Web page didn't list an available position at | Loyola University at press time. The department also will try its luck at the BEA's convention in Las Vegas April 15-18. Mary Blue, communications professor, will talk to prospective professors at the convention. "Dr. Blue, if she identifies anyone at the convention, [will] have a looksee at them, make sure they have one head and so forth," Hammel said "Then we would follow [he usual thing — invito them to campus for an interview, then, obviously they would have to get the approval of the faculty, the dean and the provost before an offer gets tendered," he said. Hummel said the combination of electronic advertising and convention investigation has the greatest probability of finding a stand-in. "It's the quickest and most efficient way of advertising the position that fits this description. I hope within the month we have a couple of nibbles of qualified people," he said. The convention should be fertile hunting ground for the university, according to Hammel "The Broadcast Education Association is the largest organization of people who teach broadcast production, so we definitely have ... the right place." Baltimore took a much more targeted approach to entice Braden East. Dissatisfaction with his job was not part of the formula, though. "Over the course of two years they've been trying to lure me up there," he said. "I was happy here and continue to be happy here, but over those two years I found myself thinking more and more about how I could be part of that (the- Writing in Media program) and kind of liked the idea of the challenge of what they were trying m to do there (at | Loyola College)." The Loyola-to-Loyola move will put Braden in the position to introduce fgfgf Campus debates faculty evaluation proposal's pitfalls, pluses; Faculty Senate next By ELIZABETH STUART Life and Times Editor The next stop for the Student Government Association proposal for university-wide student-faculty evaluations will be in the Faculty Senate late this fall. Rebecca Gregorio, music education sophomore and SGA College of Music representative, wrote the proposal and met with the college deans and David Danahar, provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, Wednesday. The deans made suggestions on wording of questions in the proposal, Gregorio said. The evaluations will review and rank individual professors' teaching performances, but not all professors will be evaluated this way. Some professors, such as Vernon Gregson, religious studies professor and Faculty Senate chairman, have students write comments on what they like about and what they would change about the course. "I'm certainly in favor of the faculty evaluation," Gregson said. He said his endorsement of mandatory, university-wide student-faculty evaluations would depend on the form's structure. "A faculty member who gives easy grades may get a higher recommendation than a faculty member who gives lower grades," he said. "I think the process they (SGA) have laid out seems fair and reasonable," Gregson said. Evaluations will be anonymous, protecting student identity. The results will be included in the professor's permanent file. No plans have been made yet to have the evaluations published or have the results available to the students. Elizabeth Beard, biology professor, said the evaluations would be more beneficial if they were not published. "It's a private matter between faculty and students, just like student evaluations," she said. However, Beard does think the evaluations are helpful for professors. "They should be used to foster positive results to best meet the needs of the students, not as a weapon against the professor." Beard said. A motive behind student-faculty evaluations is to offer more feedback to professors to improve their teaching skills. Caroline Fisher, associate marketing See BOOKS, Pg. 4 | See BRADF.N. Pg. 3 See EVALUATIONS, Pg. 3 Loyola-sponsored green l|g|S I Baseball a family game to Local Buddhist monk HnEHHA! market bearing fruit. ■ Loyola's Moreau. searches for enlightenment. a* T kms I, .4*T