Community service earns national recognition 
Fresno State is among 12 California State University campuses on the Corporation for National and Community Service’s Presidents Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll for General Community Service. The award recognizes the efforts of 6,300 Fresno State students who logged 485,300 hours in organized community service-learning during the 2005-06 Academic Year: the equivalent of a $10.4 million donation to benefit the region. For more information about Fresno State’s student community service, contact Chris Fiorientino, the director of Civic Engagement and Service-Learning at 278.7079 or at chrisf@csufresno.edu.  Click here for more information on the award.

Preventing cheating in the classroom
Two faculty members’ preliminary research found 39 percent of the Fresno State students responding in workshops on plagiarism admitted they had submitted as their own class work words, ideas, data or writings of others. The workshops conducted by Ida M. Jones (Finance and Business Law) and Judith Scott (Communication) were presented to more than 1,000 students in an effort to prevent plagiarism. The students were taught what plagiarism is (some said they had plagiarized inadvertently) and how to properly paraphrase and cite. The workshops also offered strategies to avoid plagiarism. The preliminary research by Jones and Scott is available to faculty through the Resources Folder of the Blackboard--Faculty Forum. Survey results are in the folder Plagiarism, Paraphrasing, Quotation Marks and Citations: Explaining Plagiarism in a "Copy & Paste" Environment.

Fresno State team pioneers harvesting system
Robert Wample, director of Fresno State's Viticulture and Enology Research Center (VERC), led a team of university and industry researchers, developing a breakthrough winegrape harvesting system using satellite, computer and infrared technologies. The system employs near-infrared equipment to check ripeness of different grapes in one vineyard and global positioning satellites to make a computerized map that directs a mechanical harvester to pick only the optimum grapes. Wample?s colleagues on the research and development team are Robert Cochran, VERC research technician; Dr. Balaji Seth, an industrial technology professor; and Sivakumar Sachidhanantham, a student research assistant with the Industrial Technology Department. Click here for details. 

Holidays close campus twice in November
The campus will be closed Friday, Nov. 10, in observance of Veterans Day, and again Nov. 23 and 24 for Thanksgiving. Legislation signed by Gov. Schwarzenegger last year mandated the Veterans Day closings on California campuses beginning this year. To mark Veterans Day on campus, Fresno State’s Air Force and Army ROTC units will join at 4 p.m. Nov. 9 for a ceremony during the weekly retreat (lowering of the American flag and escort away for safekeeping) outside the North Gym. To honor military veterans, dozens of trees have been planted along the walkways between the Memorial Fountain and the Maple Mall. On the Maple Mall, itself, are 65 tulip trees planted to memorialize the men who died in Navy submarines lost in the 20th century. Nov. 22, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, is an Academic Holiday, but not a day off for faculty and staff.  Questions about holidays should be directed to Human Resources at 278.2364. Click here for more details on the Thanksgiving holiday.

Proposition 1D would help campus
One of the items to be decided in Tuesday’s election is Proposition 1D, a statewide bond issue that would provide money for kindergarten through university-level public schools. Included in the proposal is $14 million for Fresno State projects: $1.2 million for nursing classroom renovation to add student capacity; $6.8 million for furniture and equipment for the expanded Henry Madden Library; and $6.1 million for Americans with Disabilities Act upgrades, minor classroom/lab upgrades and heating, ventilation and air conditioning improvements. Click here for arguments for and against the measure.