PI.EDU Class Roster

For most parents of school-age children, the August routine goes something like this;

Jeans, check. Backpack, check. Notebooks and pencils, check. School lunch — oops, just a minute there …

Lunch-packing parents can attest that sending a child off with a tasty, nutritious lunch can seem overwhelming. For starters, you worry about nutrition: Milk or juice? Is a treat OK? Then you just hope your picky eater will actually eat what you pack.

Of course many picky eaters won't venture past peanut butter and jelly or chicken nuggets. The rule of thumb is that most kids need to try a new food 10 times before acquiring a taste for it. And one of the most effective strategies to get them to take that first taste is to serve those foods, flavors or ingredients to the whole family. The worst thing that can happen is that dinner might get a little more interesting.

You also can start out small, by trying to get them to try new breads: introduce them to pita or unusual buns. Or if your kids love tortillas or pita bread, use that as a way to get them to eat new meat, cheese or veggie combinations on their favorite bread.

So with the help from the Texas Dietetic Association, here are options for packable school lunches, hot lunches and at home, nutritious dinners and tasty snack ideas.

TURKEY PITA PIZZA LUNCH

Top a whole-wheat pita with 1/4 cup tomato sauce, 1/4 cup low-fat grated mozzarella cheese, 2 slices lean deli turkey and 1/2 cup vegetables of choice. Serve the pita pizza with Ants on a Log — 2 celery stalks spread with 2 tablespoons of peanut butter and sprinkled with raisins. Send 100 percent fruit juice for a drink.

Makes one serving. Nutrition Supplements: This kid-friendly lunch includes lean turkey, which is a good source of folic acid, zinc and potassium. Cheese and milk provide calcium, which helps build healthy bones and provides vitamin D, potassium and magnesium. Celery and tomato sauce are high in vitamin C, which is supports the immune system. And peanut butter is a rich source of heart-healthy monounsaturated fats.

Some students register for online classes between semesters with goals of graduating early, racking up credits or avoiding more difficult classes at Lehigh.

"I took Finance 125 online over the summer to get ahead so I can go abroad next semester," Brooke Blythe, '10, said.

Joseph Connor, '10, said he registered for Marketing 111 and Accounting 152 online last summer.

"I took the accounting course because it was easier online and I didn't have to go to class and took marketing just to stay a little ahead in case I need to retake a class," Connor said.

With the increasing demand to take online courses at schools across the country, one company has developed a program that allows students to earn a master's degree online by partnering with prominent universities.

CTMF.EDU, which was created by The Princeton Review founder, John S. Katzman, uses Web 2.0 technology to create higher quality and more interactive types of online education.

"I have long felt that there is a gap," Katzman said. "On the one hand are great research universities like Lehigh, which have great faculty and students, but are relatively small. On the other are the for-profits like the University of Phoenix and Devry University, which are uninspired but large and growing quickly."

Katzman said he realized he could start something that was large in scope yet still high-quality by partnering with great universities and adding some key abilities.

For those interested in this online program, age and location are not important; 2tor is for anyone who has an undergraduate degree and is looking to earn their master's. 2tor is the first selective type of online education-to enroll, you have to apply through admissions and be accepted.

Another unique feature of 2tor is that, unlike other online education programs, 2tor's goal is to work directly with universities to provide the same level of education a student would receive had they been in the classroom, said Katzman. 2tor's first partnership is with the University of Southern California's Rossier School of Education.

2tor's program with USC will launch in May 2009 and hopes to reach at least 10 universities within the next few years. For part-time students, completion of a master's degree requires three to five years of education. Full-time students generally need 12 months to complete a master's degree.

CTMF.EDU is primarily looking to partner with large schools, including USC, Penn State University and the University of Maryland.

Some students and faculty said Lehigh's education is too dependent on classroom and student interaction for 2tor to be applied here in the near future.

Professor Matthew Melone teaches business law on campus and online over the summer.

"Certain things are the same in my course, such as the lectures and assignments," he said.

His course uses pre-recorded lectures, interactive recitation and discussion boards. He said students don't always take advantage of the recitations.

"Recitations are the time when students should have questions ready to ask their recitation teacher and fully understand the lecture material," Melone said. "Online, students tend to view recitations as nothing more than a lecture. It could be a lot better."

Melone said he still interacts with students in online courses, but it's still not the same level of contact as in a regular class.

"Online, you don't have the face to face contact that you do in the classroom, which makes it more difficult to make the material interesting," Melone said. "You can learn as much, but it is definitely not as fun."

Connor said that although he did well in his accounting class online, he was nervous to take accounting when he returned to campus in the fall.

"I wasn't sure that I learned the materials as well as I would have if I actually took it at Lehigh," Connor said. "It was hard for me to ask very specific questions that I had, say, on a certain homework problem."

Katzman also hopes to improve the education in urban environments with 2tor. For example, after a student completes his or her Masters of Arts in Teaching at USC, and then decides to teach in a 'high-need' school district for at least three years, the student's entire tuition will be refunded.

CTMF.EDU will continue to partner with academically exclusive schools while offering master's degrees in the areas of teaching, nursing and engineering.

"We are looking to partner with great schools which believe you can be great in quality and great in scale," Katzman said. "Lehigh would be a terrific partner."

Ah, life in the university district. Cheap ethnic food. Vibrant street life. Fresh-faced students whizzing by on bicycles.People who choose to live on the beautiful tree-lined streets surrounding the nation's institutions of higher learning often get a more vibrant experience than they expected — loud parties, rundown student boarding houses and trash generated by weekend melees.

A growing number of universities are starting to take a more proactive approach to monitoring off-campus behavior and neighbors say the efforts are working.

The University of Washington now enforces its campus behavior code off campus as well. A student doesn't need to be charged with a violent crime to activate the campus code at this Seattle university. Being cited for breaking the city's noise regulations is enough to score an invite to the student conduct office.

Architecture professor Earl Bell, who bought a house in the University Park neighborhood 40 years ago, says he has discovered that there's a fine line between convenient and too close.

"We've all got a kind of love-hate relationship with the University of Washington," said Bell, acknowledging that he and his neighbors have noticed a slight improvement lately.

The University of Colorado-Boulder and Penn State also are taking a broader view of offenses that can activate the campus discipline system. In Colorado, the code regulates any conduct that "affects the health, safety or security of any member of the university community or the mission of the university."

Since most college students live off campus, colleges that want to be on top of discipline need to extend their reach beyond their own real estate.

To some, this may sound like an overreaching of university authority; to others, it's a teachable moment.

"We have a responsibility to educate our students about being responsible citizens," said Elizabeth A. Higgins, Washington's director of community standards and student conduct, whose office has "educated" 19 students since the extended code of conduct took effect in January.

The legal ramifications of these policies are not entirely known, said Sheldon Steinbach, an attorney in Washington, D.C., who formerely worked for many years with the American Council on Education, representing school presidents from 1,800 colleges and universities.

"I fully anticipate a judicial challenges over time," Steinbach said.

Penn State's rules are similar to those at the University of Washington, but as university spokesman Bill Mahon points out, he has to first hear about a student behaving badly. Some local police departments work closely with campus authorities, passing along arrest information; others do not.

For example, if a Penn State student breaks the rules over the weekend in State College Borough, the university would probably hear about it on Monday morning, but the same violation in another town would go unnoticed.

"It's an imperfect system," Mahon said.

University of Washington police work with Seattle officers to patrol the area north of campus thick with off-campus housing including fraternities and sororities. Boston College goes further by sending a college official off campus to look for parties and students breaking the law.

An assistant dean of students at Seattle University does something similar via the Internet. A number of parties were shut down this past year after Glen Butterworth spied a page on Facebook publicizing the events. The private university has put its students on notice that cyber-patrolling will continue this year.

The University of Minnesota's campus code is more typical: It is only applied off campus during melees that happen around a campus event. Ohio State University applies its code off campus in cases of assault, drug dealing and major incidents that affect safety on campus.

In New Jersey, Rutgers University polices off-campus behavior only when campus officials have reasonable grounds to believe a student could be dangerous, said university spokeswoman Sandra Lanman. Typically, that means a pending criminal charge relating to a violent crime.

Some universities take their discipline policies a step further. At Duke University, the campus code requires students to report misbehavior by their fellow students to campus officials, no matter where the students find themselves.

In a rural setting, where a university can dominate the community, responsible behavior is much easier to enforce, said Elaine Voss, director of the office of student conduct at Washington State University in rural Pullman, Wash.

A 1998 riot along Greek row and Washington State's national reputation as a "party school" led the university to start taking a more proactive approach to curbing off-campus behavior.

The student code was revised to make the same rules apply to both on- and off-campus behavior. A staff member checks the local police log every day. Campus police forward their log to Higgins' office. Her staff does a lot of on- and off-campus education about alcohol abuse, personal safety and university expectations, including a three-day intensive freshman orientation.

"I think we've made huge strides in calming the place," Voss said.

When college students start the fall term at the state's public universities next week, they can expect fewer choices for majors and classes, more crowded classrooms, and a faculty that's being lured away by other states at an alarming rate.

Deep budget cuts imposed by the state Legislature this year have resulted in the elimination of the industrial engineering major at Florida International University, the Diabetes Research and Training Center at the University of Florida, and many others around the state. The money crunch prompted FIU to put its staff on a four-day work week over the summer.

But even before this year's budget turmoil, Florida's State University System had witnessed at least 10 years of decline in state funding, when adjusted for inflation. That placed the state at or near the bottom nationally in several critical benchmarks of university quality.

Florida now ranks 50th in the nation in faculty-to-student ratio. It is also far below average in funding per student, and last in the number of tenured or tenure-seeking professors per student.

Florida charges the lowest tuition of any state — about $3,500 a year for a full-time load at a four-year institution. That's good for budget-minded students but bad for generating revenue to prop up higher education. And so, programs get eliminated.

"They are cutting too much and eliminating too many programs that could be beneficial to the kids," said Amada Mena, a Miami mother whose two sons attend Florida International University.

To complicate matters, higher-education leaders say a devastating "brain drain" is occurring because professors have received raises in only two of the past five years. Some are going elsewhere. Florida ranks seventh among the 10 biggest states in pay for full-time faculty members, averaging $84,000, according to the National Education Association. Full-time faculty members in North Carolina, the highest paying of the 10 biggest states, earn $97,000 on average.

The State University System is requesting an additional $65 million from the Legislature to give professors a 4 percent raise to stem the outflow. The stewards of the system are asking for an additional $30 million in fresh funding to cover the rising costs of keeping the lights on and the air conditioning running in university buildings. The prospects aren't good, university leaders say, and, in fact, another round of cuts is expected next year.

"I think it's very precarious," Bob Graham, former Florida governor and U.S. senator, said of the system's health. "The university circumstances are the canary in the mine shaft of where the state is going."

ECONOMIC ENGINE

University executives have long argued that higher education is a proven economic engine.

People who obtain a bachelor's degree can expect to earn about $23,000 a year more than those who have only a high-school diploma, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which means about $2,000 more in annual state and local taxes paid by college-educated citizens.

But Florida is 47th in the nation in bachelor's degrees awarded per capita. Only 27 percent of Florida adults between the ages of 25 and 64 have a bachelor's degree, versus 33 percent in the 10 richest states. Florida, which is among those 10 richest, would have to crank out more than a million bachelor's degrees to hit the average.

"The system in Florida is being poorly funded and slowly strangled," said Charles Reed, who headed Florida's State University System and is now chancellor of the California State University System, the biggest in the United States.

"There's no overall master plan for higher education in Florida. There is no single vision."

Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, said the governor believes that "higher learning environments are important to sustaining an enriching and prosperous state." But the governor, through Ivey, declined to be interviewed for this report on his goals for the university system.

According to statistics compiled by the Board of Governors, which oversees the state's public universities, state funding per student in Florida is at a 20-year low, when adjusted for inflation. In 1990, the state provided $15,800 per full-time student. Today: $12,300 and falling.

`BARELY AT A MINIMUM'

State University System Chancellor Mark Rosenberg said the situation needs remedy.

"The mere fact that we are having to turn away eligible freshman, that we are having serious conversations about shrinking the size of the university system, would suggest we're barely at a minimum."

Higher-education specialists are considering a host of possible solutions, including getting the community college system more involved in granting four-year degrees and reforming Bright Futures, the popular program that pays the tuition of students with exemplary grades, said Miami lawyer Dean Colson. He serves on the University of Miami's Board of Trustees and is a special advisor to Crist on higher education.

There are some bright spots. In the past few years, Florida has added three medical schools — at the University of Central Florida, Florida International University (opening in the fall of next year) and Florida State University. And spending for construction is up.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush defended what he saw as key advancements in higher education on his watch. For example, he said that during the past decade, Florida has seen a 64 percent increase in the number of four-year degrees earned by black students, and a 79 percent increase for Hispanic students.

"We need greater accountability in the system," Bush said in a written response to questions. "We should create a statewide plan for each institution that identifies where they should be in terms of graduation rates, retention rates and degree production." But the basic tenets of undergraduate education are in jeopardy.

Take South Florida, where the largest university, FlU, is reducing undergraduate enrollment and receives less funding per undergraduate student than other state schools, according to documents provided by FIU and confirmed by Rosenberg. This year, the university shut its industrial engineering program to cope with budget cuts, despite projections of growing demand for the field made by the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

BRAIN DRAIN

FIU philosophy professor Bruce Hauptli, who was the Faculty Senate representative on the school's board of trustees this year, said all of it is contributing to the brain drain.

"Why wouldn't somebody want to go to another state where they could focus more clearly on their educational objectives, instead of having to worry about cramming more students into a classroom than the fire marshal will allow?" Hauptli said.

FIU receives about 20 percent less per student every year than the average for the State University System.

"There are at least 3,000 qualified students out there, 80 percent minority, who are not attending FIU because we don't have the money," said FIU President Modesto "Mitch" Maidique. "I don't see this letting up. I see us as continuing to bleed."

Maidique said his calculations show that Florida would have to beef up funding for higher education in Florida by $1 billion a year to bring it up to the national average.

But doing so would be difficult — in part because of Bright Futures.

As of 2006, Bright Futures had rewarded 140,000 students, many of whom could afford college on their own, with tuition scholarships amounting to $1.6 billion since 1997.

University of Florida President Bernie Machen said Bright Futures has helped keep many of the state's best students in Florida's schools. But he also said the program makes the Legislature reluctant to increase tuition because doing so would impose a greater financial burden on the state.

One possible solution is to put a cap on the amount of tuition that a Bright Futures scholarship will pay, making the student responsible for the difference. That is already being tested through a program of differential tuition, where the state's top research universities can charge a tuition premium that the students have to pay.

"In Florida, if your family is wealthy and you can afford college, you get it for free," Reed said. "If you're poor, you don't get a chance to go. That's just backward."

NATIONAL RANKING

UF is the only university in Florida ranked by U.S. News & World Report in the top 50 in the United States. This year, the school announced layoffs and program closures. Machen said UF could drop in the rankings if the state doesn't act, threatening to leave Florida the only big state without a single university in the top 50.

"We don't have enough money to remain a high-quality system for very long," Machen said.

Colson acknowledges the challenges facing Florida's universities. He said state schools can expect further cuts in funding in the next two years.

"You can't run a business the size of FIU and not know what the funding will be next year," Colson said. "If you don't stop this slide, you run the risk of hurting our university system for generations."

The University of Southern Mississippi will keep open a residence hall it had planned to close. And Mississippi State University has taken rooms once reserved for overnight renters and filled them with students.

As the start of fall semester approaches, some universities say housing is full or nearing capacity and exceeding expectations. MSU won't say how this year's number of residents compares to last year's. But there is one factor that has the potential to drive growth in dormitory living at all campuses: the economy.

"We saw a slight increase in the number of upperclassmen who wanted to live on campus," said Lorinda Krhut, director of student housing and residence life at the University of Mississippi. "I think it's because of the gas prices, especially if they were commuting from 50 miles away. A lot of students who normally would have commuted may have decided to stay on campus rather than pay the gas prices for going back and forth."

Gas prices this summer flirted with, and in some cases exceeded, $4 a gallon. Last month, the U.S. Department of Transportation estimated that during the first five months of this year, Americans drove 29.8 billion fewer miles than they did during the same period last year. For some students, living on campus rather than buying gas for a daily commute may be a money-saving option.

Ole Miss has room for 3,600 students in residence halls, and Krhut estimates its buildings are about 95 percent full. About 2,500 of those spaces have been assigned to freshmen.

Housing officials won't know exactly how many students they'll have in residence halls until school starts. But as the summer disappears, housing directors are making room for more students.

"We're 98 to 99 percent full in almost every building," said Chris Crenshaw, director of residence life at USM. "In fact, we've got a waiting list for upperclassmen. I have not historically had that problem with upperclassmen."

An increase in freshmen women forced the university to do an about face on its decision to close Elam Arms, a building that historically housed men.

"We looked at our numbers the last of June, the first of July, and we had 300 freshmen women who did not have a place to live," Crenshaw said.

USM is up about 200 students and, given that students show up without having made arrangements, Crenshaw is expecting even more students to apply to live on campus in the next couple of weeks.

It's not uncommon for housing to appear to be full before residence halls open. However, space slowly becomes available during the first couple of weeks of school as administrators re-rent the rooms of students who didn't show up.

"We're bursting at the seams," said Ann Bailey, director of housing and residence life at MSU, where there is room for nearly 4,000 students in housing. "We have several people on waiting lists."

Bailey would not provide numbers.

Since 1993, MSU has used Herbert Hall for conference housing, rooms guests could rent at a nightly rate of less than $50. Because of demand, students have been assigned to live there during the semester. Some students were assigned to Herbert last year but were moved into other residence halls as officials re-rented the rooms of no-shows.

The outcome likely will be different this year.

"There is a great chance people will be in Herbert all year," Bailey said.

Requiring freshmen to live on campus will generate a need for more rooms, but that may be only a slight increase, given that more than 90 percent of freshmen historically have roomed on the Starkville campus.

Not every school has seen a big spike in housing requests. Last week, Jackson State University had assigned around 74 percent of its rooms. Vera Jackson, director of residence life at JSU, said she hasn't seen an increase in students who live within 50 miles seeking housing. Like officials at other schools, Jackson expects more requests for rooms to come in between now and when classes start Aug. 22.

Housing at public universities can range from $1,500 a semester to just more than $3,000 a semester, depending on the campus and the dorm. Given the many who live in apartments have roommates with whom to share expenses, it's difficult to argue that living on campus is always cheaper.

Crenshaw also attributes growth on his campus to marketing the advantages of on-campus living to students and parents. Off-campus apartments, he pointed out, typically don't have staff members who check on students they haven't seen in a few days or provide educational programming. Those who live on campus are encouraged to build relationships with residents in their buildings, a task that might introduce them to a more diverse group of friends than being in an apartment would.

It's this staff-resident relationship Crenshaw and other housing officials tout when promoting dorm life. Housing staff members also share research that says students who live on campus have higher grade point averages, something that might help them get better jobs.

"And because of the social skills acquired from living in a very diverse community like that, (residence hall students) are very successful in their profession when they graduate," Crenshaw said.

On Aug. 14, family members and friends will arrive at residence halls to help students move in. But after all the boxes are unpacked and parents fight back tears, students are left alone to begin a new journey.

Being away from home and living in a traditional dorm with a roommate is a tough adjustment for many students

Sara Beth Pertain, a resident assistant in the Oglethorpe House dorm, provides the following advice on how to survive life with a roommate.

- If something about your roommate is bothering you, don't let it build up.

- Know what bothers your roommate. When Pertain was a freshman, she never knew that she woke up her roommate when she got up for her 8 a.m. class.

- Don't share commonly used things such as a printer or computer. They can become a source of disagreement.

- Set boundaries at the start of the year so you know whether your roommate is comfortable having members of the opposite sex in the room.

- Know that getting involved romantically with someone on the hall can be difficult. Let's face it - it is unlikely you will meet the person you will marry. Break-ups will happen and may not end well.

- Be tolerant of another's lifestyle. If your roommate goes to bed at 10 p.m. and you come back early in the morning, you need to be considerate.

- Be aware that having a relationship back home can be hard because you will go home often and talk on the phone while at school, which will keep you from making new friends.

- Do not isolate yourself by playing video games or by only hanging out with high school friends.

- Make the most out of living in the residence halls, even though it might be rough at times. The people you will meet will be your friends for all of college.

Shopping for accesories for a college dormitory room offers plenty of options. Students can go online to get ideas on how to furnish a room, and some Web sites offer tips on how to think green with the space. Jackson students Abby Agnew and Roderick Tomlin II, who will begin their freshman year in college this month, have their own ideas about how to decorate their dorm room, too.

Consider these student ideas

Dormbuys.com conducted a survey of 1,120 college students in April and found that 92 percent of them think that personalizing their dorm room is an essential aspect to making college living comfortable.

In the survey, students were asked what's most important to them when personalizing their dorm room. Here are their top five answers:

1. Hang pictures.

2. Add color.

3. Hang items of significance, such as posters, drawings or magazine pages.

4. Bring items from home, such as a favorite blanket, pillow or stuffed animal.

5. Add comfortable furniture, from a chair to a futon.

CTMF.edu's decorating tips