News from around campus

Fieldhouse scores new updates

The Fieldhouse saw some new upgrades this year, including a new hardwood basketball court floor — which was manufactured in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula — replacing the previous one that was destroyed in a flood. Wellness Center users are also enjoying an array of updates, including  new rowing machines, treadmills, stair masters, elliptical machines and recumbent bikes. For strength training, the center added squat racks with powerlifting platforms attached, selectorized weight machines, updated free weight stations
and more.

Professors earn prestigious international honor

Three CASL faculty received 2022-23 Fulbright U.S. Scholar Awards. Linguistics Professor Daniel Davis (left) traveled to Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines, where he studied how people in the Philippines use English and the language’s influence on the culture and the culture’s influence on the language. Sociology Professor Paul Draus (middle) worked in a Lithuanian neighborhood to promote and implement environmental and social justice projects. Draus collaborated with faculty at the Vytautas Magnus University to help residents protect their cultural and physical landscapes from developers. Composition and Rhetoric Lecturer Kristian Stewart developed a course teaching English, writing and digital storytelling and taught at the University of the Peloponnese. “Greece has traditionally been very homogeneous in population makeup — and there is a lot of pressure to integrate due to globalization and migration,” Stewart says. “Their society is becoming more diverse. I want to help them think about the diversity of human experience.”

Free football season tickets for new students

To emphasize the strong connection between the campuses in Dearborn and Ann Arbor, UM-Dearborn is providing free 2023 football season tickets to all interested Fall 2023 incoming first-year students who are enrolled with 12 credit hours or more. Other cross-campus benefits for Dearborn Wolverines include participating in the Michigan Marching Band, student section tickets to Wolverine sporting events, eligibility for ROTC and participation in UM-Ann Arbor student clubs. These are in addition to the Dearborn-based student benefits like free membership to The Henry Ford, complimentary tickets to Fair Lane Music Guild concerts, free admission to Dearborn Wolverine Athletics events, subscriptions to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and more.

Campus sustainability effort takes big steps

Back in 2019, the University of Michigan announced a carbon neutrality goal for all three campuses, and ever since, UM-Dearborn has been pushing forward with steps to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels. This year, Executive Director for Facilities Operations Carol Glick says we’re positioned to think big on that front, as her team starts work on a new 10-year comprehensive campus plan. That will help identify potential locations for new thermal storage and solar projects, as well as opportunities for piggybacking energy efficiency projects with planned building renovations. Aside from energy, Glick’s team also added several new water bottle refilling stations, which, to date, have replaced the equivalent of 170,000 single-use plastic bottles. And to help protect the campus from increased flooding due to climate change, the campus recently completed a stormwater infrastructure project near the Fieldhouse and CASL building, which experienced flooding during a historic rain event in June 2021.

Using ChatGPT in the classroom

Folks across higher ed have been reckoning with the pros and cons of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s chatbot that can respond to text prompts with humanlike responses on just about any topic. Because ChatGPT is so good at generating coherent text, some fear cheating could go into overdrive. But curious faculty are also wondering whether embracing ChatGPT might be more realistic — and useful — than fighting it. For example, Professor Paul Watta challenged the senior-level students in his mobile devices course to explore ChatGPT’s coding prowess. The assignment: Design a mobile app that interacts with a web-based API and see how much of the work you can get ChatGPT to do for you. “Some aspects of programming are just plain tedious and thankless work,” Watta says. “So if ChatGPT can help with that, it’s going to free up programmers to work on the more interesting and advanced aspects of software development.” 

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