The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Friday, January 12, 2018 — 3

POP- UP PHOTOGR APHY

ALICE LIU/Daily

The LSA Institute for the Humanities hosts a pop-up exhibition featuring photos by Margaret Condon Taylor titled “An Accidental Photographer: Seoul 1969” at 
the Institute for Humanities Thursday.

identify certain trends that may 

be occurring, such as an increase 
in student suicides within a certain 
school or college.

While this information is not 

released to the public from the 
University, the Suicide Prevention 
Resource Center’s report found 
that 24 percent of U-M students 
think about suicide, 11.3 percent 
have 
“seriously 
considered 

attempting suicide at least once 
in the last academic year” and 
1.1 percent responded to having 
attempted suicide at least once.

Learis said identifying these 

trends can be helpful in providing 
resources to areas where they are 
lacking, as was done last year on 
North Campus.

“I think by having this data and 

seeing just how student suicides 
spread 
between 
majors 
and 

schools, that will definitely raise 
awareness of those schools within 
the University that aren’t having 
their needs met,” Learis said.

Public Health junior Omar 

Ilyas agreed with Learis, stating 
such data can help the University 
identify more specific patterns, 
such as certain times throughout 
the year in which student suicide 
rates may increase or decrease. 

Ilyas currently serves on the 
CAPS Student Advisory Board, 
working with administrators and 
psychologists to bridge the gap 
between student awareness and 
programs offered by CAPS.

“A huge part of being a student 

is you do go through mental health 
issues (while on) campus, and I 
think a large avenue for that is 
depression, and depression in itself 
has so many intricacies … suicide is 
one of them,” Ilyas said.

Out of respect for the loved 

ones of the affected student, the 
Dean of Students office does not 
finalize any information without 
confirmation 
from 
medical 

examiners and related officers.

“We are very mindful of not 

ascribing a cause of death before 
it is confirmed,” Daniels said. “It 
is not for us to decide whether 
something was or was not a suicide 
or whether it was or was not a 
certain cause of death.”

Learis noted, although this 

information 
is 
important 
in 

understanding certain trends, it 
does not provide a comprehensive 
look at mental health issues on 
campus. 

“I think a bigger issue with the 

data collection is for every suicide 
that actually happens, there are so 
many suicide attempts and those 
you can’t really track,” Learis 
said. “So even though we have 
suicide numbers, it’s hard to see 
the total trends.”

When 
moving 
forward 
in 

working 
to 
alleviate 
mental 

health issues, Daniels says the 
Dean of Students office continues 
to partner with organizations, 
such as those Learis and Ilyas 
are involved in, to advocate for an 
increase in student recognition of 
resources available on campus.

CAPS, for example, made a 

series of videos under the title 
“do something: Stop Student 
Suicide.” The purpose of these 
videos, Ilyas said, is to change 
the current dialogue around the 
topic that may be considered 
taboo or kept secret, and to help 
students understand what they 
can do in scenarios in which their 
own friends may be experiencing 
suicidal thoughts.

Additionally, each year, the 

Division of Student Life and 
the 
Association 
of 
Religious 

Counselors 
hosts 
a 
campus 

memorial to honor students who 
have passed away during the year.

“When we experience a death 

in our community, we’re working 
with our campus partners and 
saying ‘what can we do, what do 
we need to do proactively, what 
should we do reactively,’ ” Daniels 
said. “I think we’ll continue that 
work and continue to talk with 
each other within Student Life 
and across the campus to figure 
out how to improve … areas of 
intervention and education, and 
creative ways to influence students 
to talk about resources that are 
available.”

met this growing demand. In the 
last five years, the CSE faculty 
has only increased by 22 percent, 
from 50 faculty members in Fall 
2013 to 61 faculty members in Fall 
2017. 

“This 
is 
something 
that’s 

happening across the country,” 
Noble said. “We sort of knew this 
was happening five years ago 
and so our strategy has been to 
hire as fast as we can and we’ll 
meet the demand. The College 
and University have been very 
supportive of us hiring faculty.”

However, 
high 
enrollment 

rates and low faculty numbers 
are not the only factors affecting 
waitlists. 
Graduate 
students 

have reportedly been registering 
for undergraduate, upper-level 
courses and taking seats intended 
for 
undergraduate 
students. 

Although 
graduate 
students 

are generally restricted from 
registering for these courses, 
some of these courses were 
placed on a different registration 
schedule.

Due 
to 
high 
numbers 
of 

declared students, the EECS-CSE 
advising office organized staged 
enrollment phases to ensure 
students in need of upper-level 
courses for graduation can obtain 
them. Most upper-level courses 
are set on a staged enrollment 
schedule, with the first phase 
from Nov. 20 to Dec. 5, the second 
phase from Dec. 6 to Dec. 8, and 
the third phase from Dec. 11 

forward. According to Noble, 
popular electives like EECS 442, 
Computer Vision, was mistakenly 
not on staged enrollment this 
term.

However, with EECS 442 

not on a restricted schedule by 
mistake, the waitlist skyrocketed 
to 176 students during registration 
and currently still has a waitlist 
of 64 students, according to the 
Winter 2018 course guide. The 
course was consequently filled up 
by masters students, since it was 
the only undergraduate CS class 
they could enroll in.

“What’s happening is a lot 

of the Electrical and Computer 
Engineering masters students 
would like to take Computer 
Science classes,” Noble said. 
“We 
don’t 
let 
them 
into 

our 
undergraduate 
classes 

because they’re reserved for 
undergraduates first, but (EECS 
442) was the only class they could 
enroll in so they flocked to it.”

However, Noble emphasized 

the EECS department grants 
registration priority to students 
with upcoming graduation dates.

“Our number one goal is to 

make sure we meet the obligation 
we committed to get students to 
graduate on time,” Noble said. 
“That doesn’t mean they’ll get the 
classes they want necessarily. For 
courses a part of our required set, 
we try really hard to never turn 
anyone away.”

Although this priority system 

works for some seniors, others 
are still placed on waitlists. Data 
Science major Anna Ten Have, 
an LSA senior, emphasized she 
does not receive as high of a 

registration priority compared to 
her peers. As a result, she will not 
know if she will get off the waitlist 
until well into the semester.

“I only registered for one 

EECS class but I was 37th on the 
waitlist when I registered,” Ten 
Have said. “It’s really annoying 
because it’s a class I really want 
to take.”

However, Noble explained how 

students with earlier enrollment 
times are signing up for extra 
classes during registration and 
dropping them after the first 
couple weeks of the term. This 
method 
subsequently 
leads 

to increased waitlists during 
registration and sudden decreases 
at the start of the semester.

“The students who have early 

enrollment dates know they’re 
never going to get into something 
if they don’t enroll right away, 
or they think that,” Noble said. 
“That happened in the fall, we 
cleared waitlists really deeply. 
In 442, the waitlist has shrunk 
significantly, that’s partly what’s 
going on.”

This 
reportedly 
places 

significant stress on not just 
juniors and seniors, but also 
underclassmen EECS students 
who are just starting out. Data 
Science major Isabelle Williams, 
an LSA sophomore, experienced 
this first hand when attempting 
to register for several EECS 
classes to stay on track with her 
coursework.

“I was waitlisted for the class I 

wanted to take, my back up class, 
and my back up class for my back 
up class,” Williams wrote in an 
email to The Daily. “I was not able 

to register for a single EECS class 
that counted for my major. This 
added considerable unnecessary 
stress to an already stressful end 
of the semester.”

Even with waitlists slowly 

decreasing at the start of the 
semester, students in the same 
situation as Williams will never 
get into the classes they want.

“I dropped the class I was 

waitlisted for because I was 
112th,” 
Williams 
said. 
“Our 

professor said 50-70 students 
were likely to get off.”

Noble 
emphasized 
these 

increased waitlists could also be 
due to the number of non-major 
LSA students who are registering 
for introductory CS courses. 
EECS 183 has increased to one of 
the highest enrolled CS classes. 
As a result, courses like EECS 183 
have unintentionally turned into 
service courses — classes for non-
major students who want to get 
grounding in the field.

“Our 100 and 200 level courses 

have become service courses in 
spite of us, so those courses are 
designed for Computer Science 
majors but lots of other people 
have decided they want to be 
computationally literate,” Noble 
said.

In order to fix these registration 

issues, 
the 
department 
aims 

to fulfill both long-term and 
short-term goals to decrease the 
waitlists while still providing 
students 
with 
the 
quality 

education they were promised.

Pettie said he is working on 

hiring additional temporary and 
tenure-track faculty to make 
up for the department’s current 

gap. According to Noble, senior 
Ph.D. students, as well as recent 
Ph.D. graduates in the area, 
are teaching approximately 10 
percent of CSE lecture sections 
on a temporary basis. Yet, with 
the program in high demand, the 
department has faced challenges 
with hiring long-term faculty 
due to competition with other 
universities.

“We’ve 
been 
doing 
a 

tremendous amount of hiring of 
temporary people to help staff 
our classes,” Pettie said. “We’re 
conducting lots of tenure-track 
searches to increase our faculty 
size and it’s very difficult because 
of the tremendous demand for CS 
courses year by year — it’s greater 
every year.”

Noble emphasized strategies, 

such as increasing lecture hall 
and class sizes and finding 
professors 
without 
full-time 

teaching appointments to teach a 
few classes.

“In the short term, how do 

we scale our classes up, how do 
we find bigger lecture rooms, 
are there more of our very (own) 
senior Ph.D. students that can take 
the time out of their academics 
to teach a class, are there more 
people in the community that can 
teach?” Noble said.

Increasing 
class 
sizes 

and 
bringing 
in 
temporary 

faculty 
can 
also 
come 

with 
repercussions. 
Noble 

highlighted the administration’s 
intent to get as many students off 
the waitlists as possible without 
sacrificing the University’s high 
education standards.

“If 
we 
feel 
like 
we’re 

compromising the quality of 
the 
educational 
experience, 

then the question is how many 
students 
can 
we 
take 
and 

still give them the Michigan 
educational experience that we 
really want to give them,” Noble 
underscored. “We want to make 
that number as big as we can, 
but we don’t want to sacrifice 
quality to do that.”

Many EECS undergraduate 

students 
are 
hopeful 
these 

changes will fix the waitlist 
issues for the future, but current 
students still may not have the 
chance to take advantage of 
every opportunity they desire.

“I came to this University to 

learn from the EECS department 
and it’s unacceptable that I 
may be unable to do that next 
semester because there are too 
many students in my field than 
the University can handle,” 
Williams said.

With 
the 
administration’s 

long-term 
goals 
to 
hire 

permanent faculty and build 
larger spaces for class, such as 
the future robotics building, 
Noble hopes these advances 
will reduce waitlists in the 
coming semesters and provide 
more 
opportunities 
for 

future 
students. 
Ultimately, 

he 
emphasized 
the 
current 

students are the department’s 
main priority.

“For the students that are 

currently enrolled, our current 
goal is to allow them to get the 
major they want in a reasonable 
amount of time and we are 
doing everything to make that 
happen,” he said.

as their supposedly negative bias 
towards Israel. Weiser brought up 
U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley’s 
speech that looked at the number 
of condemnations Israel received 
compared to those of other nations.

“The U.N. gives undo negative 

tension towards Israel,” Weiser said. 
“The Human Rights Council has 
passed 62 resolutions condemning 
reasonable actions Israel takes to 
defend its security. Meanwhile, 
human rights abusers in Syria, 
Iran and North Korea received few 
condemnations.”

Weiser ended on an uplifting 

note, explaining to the delegates 
they should not let the idea of 
perfection disrupt their ability to 
work effectively.

“Change is typically incremental, 

but perfection cannot be your goal,” 
Weiser said. “Someone famously 
said something that I quote often, 
‘Don’t let the perfect get in the way 
of the good.’”

Though 
audience 
members 

appreciated 
Weiser’s 
speech 

and felt his perspective was an 
important one to hear, others 
disagreed with aspects of what 
he presented. One of these staff 
members was Business sophomore 
Lucas Reynolds, who was unhappy 

with Weiser’s U.S.-centered focus 
when discussing the functions of 
the U.N.

“I enjoyed his speech to a point,” 

Reynolds said. “I thought some of 
the things he said regarding the 
U.N. having this vision of freedom, 
I agreed with a lot of that. However, 
I didn’t like how he focused on how 
the U.N. is supposed to be a U.S.-
centered body. I fundamentally 
disagree with that. Especially 
because now the U.N. is dealing 
with a lot of topics.”

LSA freshman Danielle Falling 

shared Reynolds’s sentiment and 
explained while the U.S. was a part 
of the U.N., it did not make up its 
entirety.

“It’s 
not 
a 
U.S.-centered 

organization, it’s the United Nations 
of the world,” Falling said. “I think 
it’s important to look at things with 
a grain of salt so we can’t just call 
the U.N. an ideal pinnacle of unity 
because there are problems.”

Falling also touched on the 

relevance of Weiser’s speech, and 
why it was necessary for younger 
individuals — especially students 
involved in Model United Nations 
— to hear.

“The students here will one day 

become the people in the United 
Nations, so they’re the ones who 
have to think about what they want 
to be changed,” Falling said. “It’s 
important to see the faults so that 
they can do that.”

EECS
From Page 1

SUICIDE
From Page 1

WEISER
From Page 1

Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
Annenberg Auditorium, 1120 Weill Hall
735 S. State Street

Free and open to the public.Lunch served at 11:45 am.
Live webstreamed at fordschool.umich.edu.
Info: fspp-events@umich.edu

Follow us: @fordschool 
Join the conversation: #policytalks

for youth and young adults

INNOVATIVE
PROGRAMS

U-M REVEREND DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. SYMPOSIUM EVENT

Broderick Johnson

Partner, Bryan Cave LLP and 

Former Cabinet Secretary, Obama Administration

MONDAY, JANUARY 15, 2018

12:00 PM (SHARP) TO 1:15 PM

Luke Shaefer

Brian Jacob