Tuesday Newsday
Today I bring you a handful of newsworthy items. Let’s get straight to it!
For our P’25s and transfer families, your Deacs may be thinking about their upcoming course registration. Some may be thinking of taking our intro calculus class, which is part of the pre-requisites for the business school and students in the pre-health tracks. Our excellent Math and Stats Center has a new tool that can help students better discern their appropriate calculus path. Here’s what they told me:
Preparing for MST 111 Calculus I. A student might be scared or uncertain about taking calculus in college. With ALEKS PPL calculus placement and preparation, students intending to take MST 111 Calculus I get a clear understanding of their preparedness before they step foot on campus. ALEKS PPL has a placement assessment that can be taken more than once with review modules in-between. While working in ALEKS PPL, some students may realize that there are a significant number of precalculus topics that they have not completely mastered. These students might consider a one-year pathway through the MST 111 requirement. A one-year pathway will guide students through calculus while providing extra algebra and trigonometry support along the way. Contact mathandstatscenter@wfu.edu with questions about MST 111 and the various ways to complete it.
Who takes MST 111 Calculus I? Students interested in STEM, business, or economics will likely take calculus during their first year at Wake Forest. If a student has scored at least a 3 on BC Advanced Placement or at least a 4 on AB Advanced Placement, then MST 112 Calculus II is a good choice. MST 113 Calculus III is open to students scoring at least a 4 on BC Advanced Placement. Students without at least a 4 on AB will start in MST 111 Calculus I. Talk with an academic adviser if you are interested in taking calculus. The Department of Mathematics and Statistics is also happy to talk with you. Contact the Chair, Professor Sarah Raynor raynorsg@wfu.edu with any questions.
Housing selection is taking place for our continuing students and transfer students (i.e., our ’22s-24s). For any rising seniors who do not choose a room during their housing selection window, they will receive this message from Residence Life and Housing (a similar version will go to rising sophomores and juniors asking them to let RL&H know if their plans for housing have changed).
And just a word of context about the housing selection process: it can be a fraught time for students, because they might have planned for a block of 4 or 6 people and then discover a person within their group has found another opportunity and left their planned block; or they wanted to live in X building but X is at capacity when they log in. In those moments, students can feel frustrated or like they are scrambling to remake their plans – and I remember well being a student myself and every year I wanted to get in Luter, and Luter filled before my selection time. (And I did not spend the entirety of my sophomore year mad that I was living in Not Luter; you get over these things pretty quickly).
Residence Life and Housing told me this afternoon that as we move into Sophomore Selection, we want to prepare students for the second round of our housing selection process. By Thursday afternoon, there may be some students who choose not to select a bed, or find that beds are already claimed. This is a normal part of the process. As the summer goes on, we will monitor continuing students’ plans as well as the size of our incoming class, to make any final adjustments to our housing offerings. For students who end up participating in the second round of housing selection, you will select your housing on Tuesday, July 20. Your selection times will be updated by the end of business on Friday, July 16 and an availability list will also be shared at that time. We realize that it can feel unsettling to students to have to select in the second round. Please know we remain confident in our ability to meet the housing needs of all of our students.
Congratulations to Wake Forest head women’s golf coach Kim Lewellen, who led Team USA to a 33-27 win over Team International after three days of competition at Rich Harvest Farms in Sugar Grove, Ill. Team USA secured the victory on Sunday during singles play when 12 individuals captured victories. Go Deacs!
For those who are interested in our faculty’s work around Leadership and Character, Christian Miller has a new article out in Forbes entitled Do You Come Across As Less Truthful the Longer You Take to Respond? In it, he reviews research about perceived truthfulness and its relation to how quickly people answer a question. It’s fascinating stuff, and I recommend the article to you.
Speaking of articles, Winston-Salem and Wake Forest got a glowing mention in a New York Times article entitled A Second Life for North Carolina’s Shuttered Factories:
“a project in Winston-Salem serves as a shining example of what a smart adaptive reuse project might achieve….Innovation Quarter is no moribund research park. Thousands of workers and students cross its 330 acres daily, and its administrators maintain a busy schedule of yoga classes, food trucks and lunchtime concerts in the park. That dynamism has transformed the rest of Winston-Salem, which now boasts a busy downtown with significant residential growth.”
I had the pleasure of attending a work event at Innovation Quarter last week, and it really is remarkable the way downtown has been transformed (I remember it from the 90s and early 2000s when it was mostly a day-worker area with no thriving social scene). Thanks to the vision of our community leaders, there are great pizza places, and chocolatiers and bakeries, and expert coffee brewers (and breweries!), and an arts district, and plentiful green space and tables outdoors to sit and enjoy; see some here. When you come down to drop your Deacs off at school, or any time you find yourself in Winston-Salem, you should check out our Wake Downtown area (and your Deacs should too!) Here are some pictures of the many activities that have taken place in and around Bailey Park in recent years.
