Michel Bafondoko/The Mirror
From left: Chemistry lab instructor Diane Pullman guides two Chem/Phys 115 students through an experiment on Wednesday.
Freshmen science majors
learn to adjust study habits
Dylan West
THE AUGUSTANA 737717r7n
must sees
i Alumna rejoices over
health care bill Page4
Student-run theater
11 production opens this
Z. weekend Page6
Men's basketball seniors 3 earn high honors for
season Page 9
Friday, March 26, 2010 1908 • 2010 • AUGUSTANAMIRROR.COM
Vol. XCVIII No. 16
By Alan Thompson
Mirror Staff Writer
More than 43 percent of incoming fresh-men
were classified as natural science ma-jors
in the fall, a number that has barely de-creased
since.
While 187 of the 431 entering freshmen
began as natural science majors, just seven
students dropped biology for a humanities
or social science major. In fact, most stu-dents
that do switch from biology or chem-istry
end up in another science major, like
nursing or exercise science, according to
Registrar Joni Krueger.
Freshmen biology major Christina John-son
knows that biology is the best fit for her.
In high school, she disliked chemistry and
physics, and her love for science drew her to-ward
biology because of both academic and
personal interests.
"I love learning about science because, for
me, science is our way of discovering God
and understanding his creations," Johnson
said. "The parts of science that interest me
the most are cell biology and genetics, be-cause
they explain our bodies and the bodies
of other animals and plants at an incredibly
small level."
One of Johnson's cousins has mitochon-drial
disease, so she is also interested in
learning more to see what she can do to help.
"I want to understand how cellular res-piration
works, how her particular disease
works and if there
is anything I can do
in my future to help
her and others who
have the same dis-ease,"
Johnson said.
Freshmen bi-ology
major and
hopeful pediatrician
Dylan West stays
positive despite the
rigorous, vast material covered in the intro-ductory
science courses.
"The hardest part about biology for me
so far is that Biology 120 and 121 are classes
See SCIENCE MAJORS, page 12
Sessions
challenge
Midwestern
stereotypes
By Mike Hight
Mirror Guest Writer
Midwesterners are non-com-petitive
and uncreative by nature
- or at least that's the stereotype
that Hugh Weber, owner of Deep
Bench Strategies, will be trying
to debunk at his OTA sessions.
The OTA sessions, which rep-resent
Minnesota, North Dakota
and South Dakota, are called
such because all three states end
in O-T-A. This serves to dispute
the notion that no creative work-force
talent is produced in the
Midwest.
Hugh said that his motiva-tion
for putting on the inaugural
event came from growing up in
the small town of Milbank, SD.
When Weber was younger,
one of his teachers acknowl-edged
how his creativity sepa-rated
him from his other class-mates.
That teacher told him
that to get somewhere, he would
need to get out of South Dakota.
He was told there would be no
future for him in the Midwest.
"When I was looking into
where I was going to go to col-lege,
I was encouraged to go out
of state," Weber said. "And when
I was getting mentored about fu-ture
employment, I was also told
to go outside of South Dakota to
find success".
Weber wanted to make a
statement with his OTA sessions,
See OTA, page 12
Legislature passes changes for South Dakota Opportunity Scholarship
By Jenny Lockhart
Mirror Staff Writer
The South Dakota Legisla-ture
recently passed several bills
pertaining to the South Da-kota
Opportunity Scholarship
(SDOS), but the budget that will
determine scholarship money
for thousands of students re-mains
on the table until later this
month.
Recipients of the scholarship
currently receive $1,000 their
first three years and $2,000 their
fourth year toward tuition at a
higher education institution in
South Dakota. Ten institutions,
including Augustana, partici-pate
in this program. To be eli-gible,
students are required to
meet specific course require-ments
in high school and obtain
an ACT score of 24 or higher.
House Bill (HB) 1190, recent-ly
passed in both the South Da-kota
House and Senate, allows
for students to take technical
courses in high school in place
of world language courses. The
changes, which will start with
next year's high school fresh-men,
were opposed by the South
Dakota Board of Regents.
"We don't disagree that pro-viding
students with opportu-nities
for career and technical
education will prepare them for
college, but students who take
the foreign language will be bet-ter
prepared," said Paul Turman,
Associate Vice President for
Academic Affairs of the South
Dakota Board of Regents.
"South Dakota is only one of
four states that don't require for-eign
language for admission to
public universities," he said.
Turman also said that by re-moving
the foreign language
requirement from the SDOS
requisites, South Dakotan stu-dents
are at a disadvantage. If
a student chooses not to take a
language, they could be denied
admission to a school in one of
the 46 states that requires world
languages.
Representative Oran Soren-son,
a former South Dakota edu-cator,
pushed for the bill to pass.
"I do think the foreign language
requirement may have had some
merit, but the problem is that
most high school career and
tech classes are offered at the
same time as the language class-es,"
he said. "I simply felt it was
wrong to deny so many students
the chance at this scholarship
because of a scheduling problem
that was no fault of their own."
See SDOS, page 5