Student Activity Fees

How the simulation and visualization technologies so pervasive in science, engineering, and design have changed our way of seeing the world. Over the past twenty years, the technologies of simulation and visualization have changed our ways of looking at the world. In Simulation and Its Discontents, Sherry Turkle examines the now dominant medium of our working lives and finds that simulation has become its own sensibility. We hear it in Turkle's description of architecture students who no longer design with a pencil, of science and engineering students who admit that computer models seem more “real” than experiments in physical laboratories. Echoing architect Louis Kahn's famous question, “What does a brick want?”, Turkle asks, “What does simulation want?” Simulations want, even demand, immersion, and the benefits are clear. Architects create buildings unimaginable before virtual design; scientists determine the structure of molecules by manipulating them in virtual space; physicians practice anatomy on digitized humans. But immersed in simulation, we are vulnerable. There are losses as well as gains. Older scientists describe a younger generation as “drunk with code.” Young scientists, engineers, and designers, full citizens of the virtual, scramble to capture their mentors' tacit knowledge of buildings and bodies. From both sides of a generational divide, there is anxiety that in simulation, something important is slipping away. Turkle's examination of simulation over the past twenty years is followed by four in-depth investigations of contemporary simulation culture: space exploration, oceanography, architecture, and biology.

Mandatory student activity fees have been funding extracurricular activities, a hallmark of American higher education, since the turn of the century. During the 1960s, activity fees came under fire from students questioning the legality of their dollars subsidizing organizations not supported or utilized by the entire student body. From many court cases judicial guidelines emerged on the collection, control, and allocation of mandatory student activity fees. Little research investigates if students are aware they pay a student activity fee and the value students place on activities and organizations funded through the activity fees. This quantitative study utilized an online survey to determine if University of Toledo full-time undergraduate and professional students were aware they paid an activity fee, the degree to which students could identify organizations and activities funded through the activity fee, and students' views of the importance of organizations and activities funded through the activity fee.