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Attending college robot-style

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Based on the decibel level and the foot traffic at Reese Court last weekend, you would have thought Eastern was playing an archrival and that the score was close. Real close. Buzzer-beating close.

You would have been wrong.

It was robots. Lots and lots of robots hooping it up on the basketball court.

Robots

Over the last few weeks, the EWU campus has been home to FIRST Lego robot builders and FIRST Robotics competitors, and this weekend Eastern will host hundreds of students competing in the Washington State Science Olympiad.

Besides being genuinely fun to watch, these events also create a profound love of science in young students. It’s a hardcore, full-on geek love that cannot be stopped by Jersey Shore or Ke$ha or the newest Internet time-suck (I’m looking at you, Ridiculously Photogenic Guy).

It’s the type of love that can make even the hardiest, most overworked, about-to-graduate EWU science major smile out of sheer joy.

Remember the first time you fell in love with a book or a sport or a song? Remember how you just couldn’t stop? That’s what these kids have.

Eastern is quickly becoming a top home for regional science activity. Part of it is the increased emphasis the university places on helping EWU students become fantastic engineers, programmers and designers.

Part of it is the recently built Computing and Engineering Building. It houses robots. Complex machines for testing thermal dynamics and fluid mechanics. Cyber security laboratories. Sweet 3D graphics and animation equipment.

It all comes together to make Eastern a perfect place for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math).

EWU students are passionate about their studies in STEM, which is why so many of them volunteer for these events. It’s a great way for EWU students to share their love of science and help educate the next generation of American scientists and inventors, but it’s also a great way to test real world skills.

After all, if you can explain difficult scientific theories and principles to children and their parents, you can definitely explain them to your peers and professors.

We’ve all read the stories about the decline of science and math education in the United States, but these are the types of events that reverse the trend.

It’s time to get your geek on.

The Olive Garden reviewer

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Palouse

Marilyn Hagerty catapulted to Internet fame for her review of the Olive Garden, and my middle-of-nowhere, small-town heart loves it.

The story, that is, not the Olive Garden. The Olive Garden is sometimes hard to love … but Marilyn—she’s something special. If you haven’t followed her story, here’s the gist of it.

For several decades, Marilyn has reviewed restaurants in Grand Forks, ND, population 66,991. With only 100 or so active restaurants in the whole town, necessity has forced her to review places like Taco Bell and Dippin’ Dots. Desperate times, desperate measures.

When her review of the Olive Garden went viral, people didn’t know what to make of it. Was it irony? Was she totally honest? Was she crazy?

Now that the full story is out, it’s clear that the snarky, hard-working 85-year-old and her friendly reviews embody the absolute best of small-town life.

Some might call it niceness. Some might call it sincerity. We might even describe it as grace or honesty or perseverance or a warm acceptance of small-town reality. Because let’s face it: small towns don’t have the same night-life that big cities do.

If you live in a small town, you know this. Having grown up in a community of less than 5,000 people, it felt like we had survived a nuclear apocalypse and all we got in exchange was a Pizza Ranch with really bad hours. But we still went, because that’s what we had … and we had fun.

Marilyn doesn’t impersonate critics in New York or Paris or someplace else, and she doesn’t come across as cynical or jaded like the food critics in those cities. That’s how her homey review of the Olive Garden captured the attention of so many people: it made people realize you can still enjoy life without living in one of the world’s top cities or pretending that you’re in some posh glamor ad.

That realization makes Eastern great, too. We get the small-town sincerity of Cheney, but we also get the large-city culture of Spokane. You actually get to choose which world you call home. You can even choose both, if you want. Few schools that can say that.

Cheney is the best of small towns, of course. It has a major university and businesses that cater to students. It’s safe. There’s free transportation for students. It has a handful of unique restaurants coupled with all the dives and fast food joints that college students love. (Speaking from experience, Taco Bell at 2 a.m. sounds way better than it turns out to be.) It’s surrounded by adventure including hiking, cycling, skiing, swimming, rafting and rock climbing.


But it’s still a small town, and it feels that way when you step into a café or stop by the grocery store. It’s kind of nice, really.

If small town friendliness isn’t for you, you can choose Spokane and the half million people in the metro area. You can have your arena shows, dozens of coffee shops, nightlife and genuinely amazing restaurants. (The best Italian in Spokane is clearly Italia Trattoria, FYI.)

But that’s the essence of Eastern: having choices. City mouse, country mouse. Small town quiet, big city hustle. It’s entirely up to you, and we love that freedom.

The impartial college

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How do you know you’re seeing the “college” and not just the “marketing”? How do you get to the true heart of a college experience?

Showalter

This week, NPR released new standards for its journalists. For an organization as big and respected as NPR, this is a pretty big deal. It’s like the Seattle Seahawks writing a new playbook, or Daft Punk deciding they’re going to start playing the type of music Nickelback plays. (Scary, right?) In the just-published standards, NPR introduces an entirely new concept: “being fair to the truth.” It definitely has a nice ring to it, and it marks a major departure for journalism in contemporary America. Right now, most news organizations adopt a “balanced reporting norm” approach: both sides get the same amount of air time to create a sense of fairness. Anybody who’s ever been in trouble knows how the balanced approach works in real life: you get called into the principal’s office and tell your side of the story, the other guy gets called into the principal’s office and tells their side, and in the end the principal decides who’s right. In the news world, the audience is supposed to play the role of the principal. Sometimes called the “he said, she said” approach, this approach forces the reader to figure out what’s actually true and accurate. It works great in theory … except there’s always “spin” on the story. If you’ve followed politics at all this election year, you know that someone is always trying to “spin” the story … and sometimes the facts, too. That makes it much, much harder to decide what’s actually true. Something similar happens with colleges. You can read their viewbooks, go online to their websites and open all their emails, but you might never get to heart of the matter. So what can you do?

  • Turn to students already on campus. If you know somebody at Eastern, you should reach out and see what they say.
  • Read the common data set. This is a loooooooooooong list of numbers and checkboxes, but nearly every school has one.. That makes it easy for you to compare schools on things such as cost, average debt load, and financial aid packages. Fair warning, though: some schools don’t give you all the information. You can find Eastern’s common data sets via this page.
  • Visit campus. While many visit activities are planned, you get a chance to see the university without editing, photoshopping or someone’s “spin.” Students are doing what students do on campus. You get to try the food. You can explore the neighborhood or nearby city.A full 71 percent of students say that a visit to campus is the absolute best way to get a feel for the college without the “spin.”

We agree, which is why a college visit, either as part of a tour or as part of an event like goEastern, is such an important part of finding the college that’s the right fit for you. We know that Eastern is the state’s best value and a phenomenal school … but we want you to discover it for yourself without the spin.

Don't miss Wednesday's priority deadlines

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Just a friendly reminder: don't miss the priority deadlines on Feb. 15, 2012.

Is your application incomplete? Be sure to send missing transcripts, test scores and other materials by the Feb. 15 deadline.

What if you don’t have final transcripts? Apply! Apply! Apply! We don’t expect to see your final transcripts until your courses are over or until you graduate from high school. If you’re still in school or taking classes, just send your current transcripts and make sure your materials reach us by the deadline.

Should I mail or fax my materials? Definitely mail! We need original copies.

What if I have questions? Give us a call at 509.359.2397, email us at admissions@ewu.edu or chat online. If you don’t need an immediate response, you can also tweet us at @EWUAdmission or reach us on our Facebook page.

How Facebook affects college admission

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Anyone with a Twitter page, Facebook profile or personal blog knows the risks: most of what you post online is visible to anyone with an internet connection. Your friends, your parents, and even your teachers can see your pictures or read about your weekend adventures.

Normally what you post online isn’t much of an issue, but that changes once you start applying for college. Suddenly the information you share in your online profile can affect your future. What you say, what you do, even who you hang out with: all of it can influence an admissions decision.

First the good news: Eastern never looks at your Facebook or Twitter pages as part of the admissions process. Never. Naturally we love it when your reach out to us through Facebook or Twitter. It’s a great way to get your questions answered … but it’s not part of our admissions decision. We only consider the materials you submit when we make admissions decisions.

Now the bad news: according to a recent report, 24 percent of college admissions offices look at your Facebook page and 20 percent Google you as part of the admissions process. If you’re applying to multiple schools, chances are at least one of them is trying to learn more about you through social media.

Eastern Will Never Search for You

So if Eastern doesn’t use Facebook or Google to learn more about you, why blog about it? Well, we have a few good reasons.

  1. We care about the students who apply here, and we want you to feel confident that your private life is really private.
  2. We want you to know that you’re being admitted based on merit only. If you have great grades and high test scores, it doesn’t seem fair to make an admissions decision based on a few photos from your junior prom.
  3. We want you to lock down your personal info. What’s true of the college admissions process is true of the job market, too, and keeping your private life truly private keeps the focus on your achievements, not the crazy antics of your friends. In 20 years, who knows how you or your employers will feel about what you posted on Facebook when you were 17.

So What Should You Do?

If you’re applying for schools, there are a few quick things you can do.

  1. Lock down your Facebook page so that it’s not available to the public, and untag yourself in any of your friends’ photos.
  2. Delete your Twitter feed. If that’s too extreme, visit the “Account” tab and select “Protect My Updates.” Search engines won’t index protected tweets, and they’re not available on the public timeline.
  3. Make your Tumblr or blog invitation-only unless it paints you in a positive light.
  4. Google yourself and start scrubbing anything that might be considered negative.

Let colleges and employers focus on what you’re capable of … not what you did when you were 15.