The University of Washington Tacoma is taking applications from sixth to 11th-grade students who wish to participate in a four-week summer Science, Math and Leadership program. It also offers internships, mentoring, peer tutoring, opportunities to accumulate community service hours and chances for students to meet other students.

The MSL program is designed to encourage students to tackle subjects outside of the traditional K-12 curriculum and to ease the transitions between middle school, high school and college. The MSL Program encourages, motivates, and inspires students to succeed in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and leadership (STEM+L) and pursue a degree in these fields.

For more information, go to the program’s Web site, tacoma.washington.edu/tech/msl

Continued demand for higher education drove enrollment numbers to an all-time high at the University of Washington Tacoma for winter quarter, according to a statement released Thursday. The total headcount reached 3,155 students for the quarter, which began Jan. 4. This represents a 1.4 percent increase over the autumn quarter’s headcount of 3,111. Comparing year-to-year, the winter 2010 enrollment showed a 4 percent increase over winter 2009′s headcount of 3,032.

UW Tacoma saw a continuation of another upward trend. More students are taking a full load of classes. For winter quarter, 67 percent of all students attend full time, compared to a year ago, when 63.8 percent of students were full time. The full-time equivalent, or FTE, numbers show an uptick as well. Winter quarter 2010 registrations reached 2,680 FTE, compared to 2,533 in 2009, an increase of 5.8 percent. The UW Tacoma FTE is nearly 11 percent over the level for which the university receives funding from the state Legislature.

Applications for admission from transfer students rose more than 24 percent over last winter quarter, from 406 in 2009 to 504 this year.

“The campus continues to see growth in applications, as well as more continuing students enrolling at a full-time rate,” said Derek Levy, associate vice chancellor for Enrollment Services. “The result was increased competition for the available spaces for new students.”

The University of Washington Tacoma and some neighboring business owners disagree over whether the school is betraying its commitment to encourage retail businesses in its storefronts along Pacific Avenue.

The business owners are protesting the university’s plans to use retail space it owns in the Russell T. Joy building on Pacific Avenue for a classroom and possibly for temporary faculty offices until it builds an office building elsewhere on campus.

University officials say letting space in a school-owned building sit empty on an over-enrolled campus doesn’t make sense. They plan to eventually lease the storefronts to retailers but say that trying to market them in a recession is next to impossible.

When the retail space is leased, it can’t be to just anyone. The businesses need to offer goods or services that cater to students, university Chancellor Patricia Spakes said in a recent interview.

“We need to put retail along Pacific Avenue that supports the university,” she said. “That was the concept upon which our campus was built.”

Several factors work against putting retail outlets in the Joy building now.

Among them are a general decline in retail sales and a climbing unemployment rate. Plus, the school has another retail bay – in the William W. Philip Hall at 1914 Pacific Ave. – that has been vacant since the building opened a year ago.

The retailers counter that they have made plans based on the promise of being surrounded by other retailers. They also say a classroom and offices do not attract shoppers.

“The classrooms are great for the university, but honestly they don’t support us,” Ken Grassi, owner of Grassi’s Flowers & Gifts on Pacific Avenue, told Spakes recently at a contentious meeting about the plan.

Students “can barely afford books and tuition,” Grassi said. “They’re not our customer.”

Downtown retailers are protesting both the university’s plans and those for Pacific Plaza, farther down on the avenue. The business owners say converting prime retail spots to nonretail use will reverberate longer than the economic downturn.

The owners of Pacific Plaza are negotiating with the city to allow them to lease some of their ground floor space at 1250 Pacific Ave. to the Tacoma office of the state attorney general.

…

NO SPACE, NO MONEY

The campus has 3,111 students enrolled, about 10 percent more than it’s funded for. In addition, the Legislature gave the university about $20 million less than the $54 million it asked for to build more classroom and faculty office space.

Spakes said the school’s decision to renovate the Joy building at 1720 Pacific Ave. instead of building elsewhere on campus shows the university’s dedication to downtown.

“You can get a heckuva lot more square footage for actually teaching students if you build new, than you can if you renovate an old building, and renovating the old building will cost you more money,” the chancellor told about a dozen business owners Nov. 19 at the gathering at Grassi’s.

“We understand your predicament,” said Corky Brown, owner of BKB & Co., a boutique next door to the Joy building. “We’re all working on a very thin line here.”

Spakes emphasized at the meeting and in the interview with The News Tribune that while a classroom will be created on the Joy building’s ground floor, using the rest of the retail space for faculty offices has not been decided.

The Joy building’s renovation is part of a $34 million construction package the Legislature approved. The university had requested $54 million to renovate the Joy building and to build a structure next to the Tioga building, at the top of the grand staircase on Jefferson Avenue.

The new building was to have held faculty offices, while the Joy building would be exclusively classrooms.

When the funding came through markedly reduced, Spakes said, school officials decided to use the money to renovate the Joy building to complete the campus’s Pacific Avenue face.

That created a conundrum.

The university is out of space for faculty offices and has only four classrooms that hold 60 students, Spakes said. The rest are for smaller classes. That’s a luxury the school can’t afford when serving more students and with its most recent budget cut by 21 percent. A tuition increase made up some of that, university spokesman Mike Wark said, but not all.

In addition, Spakes said, the school is leasing office space “with money we don’t have” to free up every square foot for academics.

THE UNIVERSITY’S PLAN

To ease the problem, Spakes and others at the university came up with a plan to use building fees to pay for constructing a four-story building on Jefferson Avenue.

The Legislature and the school’s board of regents must sign off on the plan. Spakes told the downtown group she’s met with Pierce County’s legislative delegation and hopes the Legislature approves the school’s plan after it convenes in January.

In the meantime, Spakes said, the school has started design work and taken other preliminary steps so work on the building could be done as quickly as possible.

The Jefferson Avenue project is not affected by the state’s almost $3 billion budget shortfall because the school isn’t asking for additional funds to do it.

But the perception that taxpayer money would be used for anything other than education is a factor, one Spakes acknowledged during the meeting with the merchants.

She said that when the school made its initial $54 million request to the Legislature, lawmakers asked a lot of questions about why any space in the Joy building should be for retail.

Spakes said she pointed out that part of the urban school’s concept is to encourage private business to make up for student services the university doesn’t provide, such as food.

She told the merchants’ group that if the school’s plan works, the Jefferson Avenue building will open in fall 2011, about six months after the Joy building renovation is complete.

Meanwhile, the school has to come up with a backup plan for faculty offices. And that includes using retail space in the Joy building.

more: http://www.thenewstribune.com/topstory/v-lite/story/973207.html

SEATTLE —Luther Sonny White III says being laid off has transformed into “an awesome opportunity.”

Back in class 40 years after graduating from high school, he is studying for an associate’s degree at Seattle Central Community College so he can switch careers and become a drug and alcohol counselor.

White, 58, is one of the thousands of new college students in Washington, where fall enrollment is setting a record for a second year at the state’s 34 community and technical colleges.

Autumn enrollment is expected to top 146,000 full-time equivalent students at Washington’s public two-year colleges, a nearly 10 percent increase over fall 2008. Historically, college enrollment increases during an economic downturn and decreases as jobs become more plentiful.

“We all hoped for a quicker economic recovery, but it’s clear now the effects of the recession are lingering,” said Charlie Earl, executive director of the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges.

Enrollment in worker retraining programs is up dramatically, but other categories – including college transfer and adult literacy – are also seeing more students.

White, who joined the Navy after graduating from Hill House High School in New Haven, Conn., started college in September, soon after being laid off from his job at a social service organization.

The Renton, Wash., resident says he won’t be distracted by the lure of a new job when the economy improves.

“I’m loving it. I’m like a kid in the candy store,” he said. “I’m going 110 percent – two feet in. I’m not stopping.”

Jill Wakefield, chancellor of the four-campus Seattle Community College District, said the colleges are filled with enthusiastic older students. Enrollment is up nearly 12 percent since last year, or the equivalent of 700 full-time students this summer and fall.

“Our classes are very full. We have waiting lists. We’re trying to accommodate as many students as we can. I’m not sure how long we can continue to do it,” Wakefield said, adding that 32 percent more students say they are unemployed compared with last year’s student population.

Greg Bachar, a part-time English instructor at Seattle Central for the past 11 years, said he’s never seen more nontraditional students in his classes and on campus. Bacher said there simply aren’t enough classes for everyone who wants to enroll.

“You’d think it would be like a restaurant. When there’s more customers, the restaurant booms, but this is a different system,” Bachar said.

Earl said the community college system has been flexible during this time of increased demand, with a total of 20 percent more full-time equivalent students over a two-year period while the Legislature was cutting the community college budget.

“At some point we’re going to run out of options,” Earl said.

Despite the overcrowding, Wakefield didn’t want to discourage anyone from signing up for school. She advised students to enroll early and be flexible about class times.

“If you get in early, there should be a place for you,” she said.

Thea Oliphant-Wells knows all too well what a second chance can do for a person.

Thanks to the University of Washington-Tacoma’s Next Step Scholarship, the Olympic College grad is getting one of those rare chances.

“I had no idea what I was capable of until I tried, little by little, to take on new challenges,” Oliphant-Wells said. “I have had people that said they believe in me and that helped me believe in myself.”

This year, six students were nominated by the presidents of UW-Tacoma’s regional, two-year partner institutions as outstanding scholars, and while Oliphant-Wells was one of them, she was not originally chosen to receive the scholarship.

“I recieved a letter from UWT that said I was nominated, but they had chosen someone else,” she said. “I was honored to have been nominated.”

But the OC grad would soon be contacted by UWT with some phenomenal news.

“A couple of months later I recieved an e-mail and followed up with a phone call and was told that they reconsidered my application and had decided to award me with the scholarship,” she added.

The scholarship provides $3,000 a year, for two years for students to use for tuition and books. Students are expected to stay in school, maintain a cumulative GPA of at least 3.25 and write thank-you letters and updates for the 30 community donors, who contribute $50,000 each to the scholarship fund.

Oliphant-Wells said she got started on her education a little later in life due to some bad years dealing with addiction.

“I had been struggling with substance abuse for many years and finally found my way to recovery,” she said. “I always wanted to go to school, but my drug addiction and lack of ambition held me back.”

Oliphant-Wells found a path back from the abyss of substance abuse in 2005 and proceeded to exceed her own expectations.

“I’ve been clean since July 19, 2005,” she said. “Recovery has allowed me to achieve so much more than I could have imagined. I started my associates degree in 2006 at age 29 and I graduated from OC with dean’s honors and a 3.86 GPA.”

Oliphant-Wells said she had a “life-changing” experience while volunteering at the Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women.

“I don’t believe in lost causes because at one time in my life I could’ve easily been labeled that,” she said. “I believe in the value of the women offenders that I have met at MCCCW. I know that to change my life I needed the help and support of others and I do my best to pass that on. I have facilitated a 12-step meeting and been a part of presentations for Oxford House. Oxford House is clean and sober living. I lived in an Oxford house for about a year and a half and that experience was invaluable in helping me stay clean. Oxford House has a re-entry program to help addicts and alcoholics coming out of prisons to have a safe and stable start back in our communities.”

Oliphant-Wells is now working on a bachelor’s degree in social welfare and said helping people is her greatest motivation.

“I would really like to make a difference in people’s lives,” she said. “I have not always been an asset to society, but I’d like to make up for the years I wasted. Helping others has helped me to feel like a worthwhile person again. I am hoping to be a social worker with great compassion and integrity.”

Oliphant-Wells said she has had a lot of help from counceleors and therapists along her path to success and she still regularly attends 12-step meetings to help her steer clear of her past addictions. According to Oliphant-Wells, she could not have done it alone and had a great deal of help along the way.

“My support network is amazing,” she said. “Without my family I don’t know how I would’ve made it through the tough times. I have had so much support from them throughout my education, I don’t think I could’ve achieved what I have without them.”

She said she has a lot of respect for the teachers and staff at OC and her experience there was nothing but positive.

“My teachers at OC were exceptional instructors,” Oliphant-Wells said. “I had such a positive experience there I sometimes wish I could go back but I can hear them cheering me on as I continue my education at UWT. I have stayed in touch with two of my instructors at OC and hope to continue touching base with them through the years.”

source:http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/kitsap/pat/lifestyle/69322437.html

Down economy means more UWT business school applicants

The days of free parking in downtown Tacoma are officially numbered.

By a unanimous vote, with one member absent, the Tacoma City Council on Tuesday approved two measures paving the way for installing such pay-for-parking stations throughout downtown beginning March 31.

That measure effectively means that by next spring, drivers can expect to pay three quarters or more to buy an hour’s worth of street parking in the downtown business core.

With the council’s approval, City Manager Eric Anderson said the city will move forward with a plan to buy about 150 parking kiosks, with purchase and installation of the pay stations covered by about $2 million in revenue bond sales.

The city will install the kiosks in stages next spring across three downtown zones, from roughly the University of Washington Tacoma campus to the south to City Hall to the north, and from east to west between Dock and Market streets, Anderson said.

“We will be working very closely with businesses and the community,” Anderson said. “We hope it will be a very comprehensive roll-out.”

Initial parking rates are expected to be about 75 cents per hour. But that rate most likely will rise over time as the city seeks to hone in on an optimal per-hour price that ensures a 15 percent vacancy rate among downtown parking spaces.

Estimates show that by charging 86 cents per hour, the city should break even once the system is up and running, Anderson has said.

EARLY OPPOSITION WANED

At times highly controversial, the pay-for-street parking system is a plan “literally years in the making,” Councilman Mike Lonergan said.

Over the past two years, the city has won over some ardent opponents to initial versions of the plan by holding 18 public meetings with stakeholders and residents and hiring a consultant to help craft a compromise.

Still, city officials have said they expect to hear complaints as the system is established – though at last night’s meeting no one came forward to offer public comment about the parking measure.

Before any widespread installation of pay stations, the city plans to introduce the public to demonstration kiosks and spread awareness of the coming changes through an outreach campaign, Anderson said.

source: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/tacoma/story/932294.html