123 help with essay

The newly named valedictorian lost his mother to cancer as a child and soon thereafter, Griffin, his father and his brother had to live in a homeless shelter as they were left almost penniless from all the cancer treatments. They lived this way for two years. CBS 10 News reports that homelessness was one of the factors which encouraged Griffin to work so hard at not just staying in school but doing well in school. Throughout the years, financial security at the Furlong home fluctuated. They moved into a new home after the shelter, but even then food was scarce and money was always a problem: a few weeks before graduation, the family went homeless again. Griffin tells WFTV9 that a part of him wanted to quit at that point—he feels that no one his age (or any age, for that matter) should have to go through that ordeal.

There has been no news yet of word from Griffin’s father and brother. However, after they lost their home, Griffin had to live at his girlfriend’s house for two weeks before moving in with his aunt and uncle. Startlingly, the young man’s grades didn’t slip a fraction: he managed to maintain his 4.67 CGPA throughout the entire ordeal of moving from house-to-house throughout the turbulent weeks leading up to graduation. On June 4^th, Griffin will don his cap and gown and graduate from the First Coast High School at the top of his game. When interviewed by CBS 10, Griffin said that he had no option but to succeed—he knew what was important to him and he wouldn’t let anything take it away from him: his grades are his future; he says that he is doing this for himself, for his mom and for the rest of his family—he goes on to say that this is the only way to make sense of everything that they’ve been through.

The challenges seemed far from over for the formerly homeless teenager—Griffin Furlong plans to attend Florida State University and pursue a degree in Civil Engineering. However, he cannot afford the pricey tuition fee and has had no luck with financial aid yet. In the past 7 days, using the crowd funding resource GoFundMe, Griffin’s woes have come to an end. When he began his campaign, he set a target of $20,000 for his tuition fee, mentioning in his pitch that he hoped not to have to go into debt to attain his college degree. Today, a week before graduation Griffin’s funds raised has far exceeded that number at $28,268.00. The young man says on his page that he is filled with relief, gratitude and excitement to finally be graduating and to have the means to pursue a college degree. He says thank you to everyone who has supported him and looks forward to the end of his long-standing feud with poverty.

Harvey Mudd President Maria Klawe said that she and her administration really campaigned toward encouraging a good number of women to take up STEM courses while also allowing their male students to continue to excel and develop in the field. Ms. Klawe was also the first woman to lead the college in the 60 years that Harvey Mudd has been running. She stresses that it doesn’t have to be one or the other—both men and women are relevant to the sciences.

Elizabeth Orwin, professor at the Engineering College and incoming Engineering College Chair, says that the reason why Harvey Mudd College has grown so popular in the last few years is because they accept students and faculty from both genders, giving all students role models to look up to. She also says that since Maria Klawe took over as president in 2006, they have come up with different experiential programs which help uplift their students and give them confidence that they can perform in the field.

Ms. Klawe states that this is very important to her as someone who felt very out of place during her college years when the ratio of female to male students in STEM courses was significantly bigger—while male classmates can be very nice and direct isolation of women was very rare, she says that for herself and fellow female classmates growing up in a male dominated field, they felt like they weren’t really successful or like they were simply being impostors. They felt they were playing pretend at being successful because they didn’t measure up to their role models, who were mostly male.

Ms. Klawe has held many prestigious positions throughout her career—being the former Head of Computer Science and then the Dean of Science at the University of British Columbia and after that the Dean of Engineering at Princeton University. She said that when she was appointed the President of Harvey Mudd College 8 years ago, she made a promise to herself that she would make the environment one where students of all genders would feel welcome and like they had legitimate chances at becoming successful scientists and engineers.

Harvey Mudd also has the most female professors in its faculty of all the leading engineering and science colleges throughout the United States. Ms. Orwin states that this has helped balance out the way that pupils see the STEM fields—it legitimizes the role of women in the fields of science and gives all their students a real feeling of accomplishment upon graduation. The overall gender ratio of Harvey Mudd College is also one that is rarely ever heard of when it comes to Engineering and the Sciences. While it is still mostly male populated, the figures for a more-or-less equal population of men and women studying STEM courses is promising: Harvey Mudd College is comprised of 42% women students, faculty and staff and 58% men who are enrolled, employed and teaching at the academic institution—a closer call than other leading STEM institutions.

The idea for the official napping area was proposed by Engineering junior Adrian Bazbaz, a Central Student Government (CSG) representative. Being an engineer-in-the-making, Mr. BazBaz himself is one of the 24-hour library’s most avid visitors. On trips there, he noticed that a lot of kids would fall asleep on the desks or would end up lying down on the floor, between the shelves.

The napping area, located on the first floor of the library are intended for 10 to 30 minute naps. Currently, there are cots in place—these are not the original beds ordered by the CSG but they wanted to open the napping area in time for finals week, so these will remain until the better beds arrive. Every cot rented out will come with a locker where kids can keep their things; this locked comes with wipers with which they can wipe down the cot, to ensure good personal hygiene.

The CSG took a survey of 4,000 students who all said that sleep deprivation was one of their biggest problems and that the place where they went to rest most often was the library—sometimes, this “rest” was involuntary and they would end up falling asleep while they were studying. For the project to be credible, they brought in the expertise of Shelley Hershner, M.D. who is an expert in sleep science and research. Her studies influenced the gravity and quality of the CSG pitch, solidifying the argument that sleep is a necessity to the students’ physical and mental health. The nap space hopes to educate students about the dangers of sleep deprivation and how pulling all-nighters can be detrimental to their health and capacity for learning.

Adrian Bazbaz says that since the University aims to educate students in all aspects of life and steer them away from things which might hurt them, this is naturally the next step to take. He says that there are countless ongoing campaigns for the dangers of alcohol and drugs and so there should be something to warn against sleep deprivation which heightens the risks for stroke and lowers a person’s immunity significantly. Sleep is one of the body’s basic needs—it would be ludicrous not to say something about an issue that is so significant and that affects such a high number of the population.

The sleeping space only has 3 rules: that the beds only be taken at 30 minute intervals so that everyone can get a chance to rest, that the students wipe down the cots after and that students who are sick/contagious go to the clinic to rest, instead so as to avoid the spread of germs.

A similar project was recently undertaken by the University of Boulder Colorado, where they opened up a Sleeping Spot on campus (this was, however, not in the school library). Harvard University students proposed something similar in 2013—the program is still being evaluated.

The plan has so far been a success at the University of Michigan, with the post garnering more than 50,000 likes on the CSG Facebook account. The CSG are now taking steps toward opening up a second napping station in the North Campus, at the Duderstadt Center. Irene Suh, a sophomore and one of the members of the CSG who worked closely with Adrian Bazbaz on the project says that the survey they took showed that the average UM student only slept 4 hours every night—something that these nap stations hope to change.

The recent study conducted by the Higher Education Policy Institute shows that these have become obsolete, with attendance dropping below 20% in 2013 for universities who still employed these material-centered lectures. When asked in a survey about their absences, students said that it was due to the availability of teachers’ notes online—why attend a class where you’re hardly paid any attention anyway and compete with other people to take notes when these notes are available online?

David Willets, the Universities Minister, says that this feedback is of the utmost importance when it comes to giving schools, academies and universities feedback. The hodge-podge insertion of technology into the educational system makes it very difficult for both in-person lectures and technological learning platforms to be effective. Mr. Willets says that if they are going to be pursuing either, traditional university lectures need to be set aside to make room for new, well-integrated interactive lectures with smaller classes which treat the academic experience as something more than just note-taking.

As a response to this, several educational establishments including some of the top schools throughout the UK have been coming up with new programs that allow students to gain a first-hand experience that will keep them coming to class. A good example of this is Sheffield University which was deemed by another study as the top school for the student experience in the entire UK.

Scotland is one of the countries in the UK with the highest attendance rate; 70% of Scottish university students attend their classes on a regular basis. The study showed that despite the fact that Scottish university education is supposedly “less premium” than British education because Scottish kids go to school for free and receive a monthly stipend, more than 68% of Scottish university students say that schooling is worth every shilling they spend on education whereas in England, only 41% responded this way.

Universities in Scotland have been noted to have more out-of-the-classroom activities such as field trips, seminars and observational lectures where they are exposed to different kinds of stimuli—these alternative classes are backed up by days during which physical attendance is not required to give them time to work on their synthesis essays which are to be uploaded online. This balances out the need for one’s physiological presence in the classroom and the utilization of modern technological platforms such as TurnItIn and various university-specific platforms.

Mr. Willets says that he, along with the other esteemed faculty and staff of universities throughout England will be looking to Scotland and Sheffield University as they come up with a new model for how lectures in this modern age should be conducted. As of late, Mr. Willets and the top universities in England such including Oxford and Sheffield have been coming up with programs that will be pitched and suggested as they are consulted by the Universities Minister. Mr. Willets says that looking for a way to best integrate the personal and technological aspects of education when coming up with new programs and methods that will enrich the educational experiences of students throughout England is their top priority in 2014.

As a rule, all universities are supposed to find ways—mostly by setting a minimum quotient to be met and implementing different programs—to help encourage students to apply for university despite 2012’s £9,000 implementation of tuition. Mike Sewell, Cambridge’s director for admissions says that the “new” system was just a way of reiterating something which Cambridge has implemented from the very beginning. He stresses that Cambridge University has been and always will be an incredibly selective institution and has always had a quota with regard to the grades and qualifications of their students, if not in the quantity of students admitted: therefore, the drop in the rate of admissions may have been due to the quality of the applications and not necessarily a general change in the atmosphere of Cambridge’s admissions department.

In fact, Professor Les Ebdon, who has been a staple adviser to numerous other institutions over the years and who is currently the head of the Office of Fair Access, stresses that up until this year, Cambridge had a rising admission rate. He says that Cambridge not admitting as many students falls below that increase curve but is still in keeping with the norm of UK universities for admissions and keeps the encouragement factor intact. He says that despite their quota system (which is more concerned with a bottom line than a ceiling against which admissions end) and the fact that Cambridge University can be very stringent with applications, they are definitely one of the fairest institutions when it comes to admitting students.

Mr. Sewell adds to this conversation, assuring the students, their parents and advisers that all of the applications were looked at both holistically as well as on academics alone. This data was also run past an evaluation which considered the major they were applying for and how well they would do, should they be admitted. Furthermore, he says that their targets are well within both their own and national standards—in fact, they are above their 2011 admissions rate which is surprising given the fact that 2011 was part of the pre-£9,000 tuition era. Lastly, he says that the fluctuations in Cambridge University’s admissions rates are testament only to the fact that they value the quality of their admissions over getting a good reputation for admitting a lot of students who eventually drop out or don’t make it—their commitment is to education, not to quotas or meeting targets set to justify tuition fees. At Cambridge, Mr. Sewell says, all students are accepted for their hard-earned qualifications and based on their own merit.

The number of applications to Cambridge University hit an all-time high this year, with 16,185 people applying and only 3,371 being accepted. The number of state school students admitted was 61%, whereas those from independent and private establishments was 38.6%—higher than the previous year’s rate which was 37.6%. Cambridge assures the public: these numbers are significant but random and most definitely not outside the set norm.