Senior center Andrew Smith of the men’s basketball team has been named one of 10 finalists for the sport’s 2012-13 Senior CLASS Award.

The award is given to seniors who have excelled in four areas: community, classroom, character and competition.

The acronym CLASS stands for Celebrating Loyalty and Achievement for Staying in School.

Smith said Butler has equipped him well in balancing classwork and basketball.

“It really helps for me to go to a school like Butler,” Smith said. “They just kind of set you up for success in the classroom and on the court as well.”

Smith is a finance major and carries a 3.55 grade point average as an honor student.

“It’s all about time management,” Smith said. “Fortunately, we have guys like Matt Howard. He was a finance major as well.

“He kind of took me under his wing and kind of gave me the ability to help me with what classes to take and teachers to take, and he really helped me manage my time and figure out how to be a successful student-athlete.”

Smith was selected to the Capital One Academic All-District V Team last month and has previously been named to the Butler Athletic Director’s Honor Roll and the Horizon League Academic Honor Roll.

Coach Brad Stevens said the Senior CLASS Award ranks among the highest honors a college player can receive.

“As a senior, to me, there are probably two recognitions that you can really look at nationally that are ones that we really value,”  Stevens said. “That’s being named one of the Senior CLASS finalists because of all that it entails when it considers and takes into account character and community service, and certainly academic achievement and achievement on the court.”

This is the third consecutive season a Butler player has been a finalist for the Senior CLASS Award.

Smith joins former Bulldogs Howard—a finalist in 2011—and Ronald Nored (2012) as finalists for the award.

“It means a lot to me to be in the same category as them as far as this award, and I’m glad to be able to represent Butler and this team,” Smith said.

Stevens said it has not been tough to bring in players that are just as talented academically as they are athletically.

“I don’t think that’s the difficult part,” Stevens said. “These guys are ambitious guys. They want to do well on and off the court.
“Andrew’s always been a good student and certainly has really found his niche in the School of Business and what he wants to do after school is over and after his playing career is over.”

Voting is underway, and fans can vote on the Senior CLASS Award website or the Senior CLASS Award Facebook page until March 25.

Fan voting makes up one-third of the total vote.  NCAA Division I coaches and national media account for the remaining two-thirds.

The winner of the Senior CLASS Award will be revealed at this year’s Final Four in Atlanta in April.

Butler was attracted to the Atlantic 10 Conference for many reasons, but one of the biggest highlights was the potential effect on student-athletes’ overall academic experience.

“Academics is always our focus and priority,” President Jim Danko said in an interview last week. “We figured out that despite the further travel, our athletes will be spending more time on campus.”

The Bulldogs began studying, competing and cheering in the A-10 this year. The A-10 made an accelerated timetable possible after Butler decided to forgo an extra season in the Horizon Leauge.

“Ultimately it was in our best interest to reach an agreement with the Horizon League for immediate departure,” Athletic Director Barry Collier said. “We are grateful to the Atlantic 10 for welcoming us into the fold a year ahead of schedule.”

The administration does not expect the new athletic schedules to take students out of any additional classes compared to previous years.

This is mainly due to differences in the setup style of schedules in the new conference.

“The structure is different,” Collier said. “The A-10 does not play as many mid-week games as the Horizon League.”

He said this is a major reason that athletes will miss fewer classes.

“Whether you’re on a bus or in a plane, you’re still missing class, but that’s not the case when we don’t have the games during the week,” Collier said.

Sonya Hopkins, coordinator of academic support for student-athletes, said she doesn’t think this schedule will have any more of an adverse effect on students than any other scheduling formats they have previously endured.

“Our athletes are not going to miss the extensive amount of classes that people assume would be missed because of the destinations,” Hopkins said. “I think anytime you have something new, there’s going to be a level of excitement that just kind of infiltrates everything.

“But the bottom line is you’re expected to perform in the classroom no matter what.”

Collier also cites the experience of new places and the lessons that can be learned in these travels as two big factors attracting Butler to the conference.

“That is the kind of thing that can be very positive,” Collier said. “I think, ultimately, this will be better—a better experience for (our student-athletes).”

As a whole, the athletes will be traveling to and experiencing the nation’s capital and the financial center of the world.

“Those are two pretty big things,” Collier said. “If we don’t see beyond whether the ball goes in the hoop, you miss the big picture.”

Academically, the A-10 also poses a bigger challenge for Butler athletes.

The Horizon League named 743 student-athletes—98 from Butler— in its academic honor roll last spring, based on a 3.2 GPA requirement on a 4.0 scale.

Meanwhile, the A-10 named 1,369 students to its spring 2012 list, even with the increased requirement of a 3.5 GPA.

“One of the first things we see is that, academically, Butler is a great institution,” A-10 Commissioner Bernadette McGlade said in a press conference last spring. “Institutionally, they are a perfect fit for the league and bring a tradition of excellence in academics, athletics, integrity and personnel.”

Starting this year, Butler University students interested in the field of art have a new major choice to consider.

The new art and design major explores art in a technological setting.

The program consists of 33 hours and requires a thesis and an internship for completion.

Associate professor of art Gautam Rao said “it was definitely student interest” that led to the creation of the new major.

Rao added that the most interest in the new major has been shown by students in the Jordan College of Fine Arts and the College of Communication.

Junior music major Rachel Anderson said part of what makes this major interesting is that “it is a unique and different approach to art.”

Anderson said she is excited that  this program integrates classic visual arts with a technological approach, something that is becoming more of a necessary skill in this field.

Even though she is already in her junior year, Anderson anticipates being able to complete the program on time.

“It’s nice that it will fit into my schedule,” she said.

Rao said the new major will be very helpful in providing students with an enviable skill set that will benefit them in the future.

“We wanted a major that would combine marketable skills with creative thinking,” he said.

He is not the only one who believes that such an integrated art major will significantly affect students’ career options and skills in the field.

“I’d like to work in some type of studio,” Rafael Porto, sophomore vocal performance major, said.

He believes that going through this program will be very helpful to his future career plans.

Porto plans to combine this program and his current major into a double major.

“I do a lot of photography on the side,” he said.

Porto said he sees himself benefiting from the digital media aspect of the art and design major.

“I think the design skills are going to make them instantly marketable,” Rao said. “They translate well on a resume.”

Rao explained that not only is the program unique in its approach to the study of art, but it is also not offered everywhere.

“We haven’t found any other program across the country that integrates in this way,” he said.

Not only will students have a more attractive set of skills to list on their resume, but Rao said he believes that the art and design major will truly help students grow as artists.

“Creative thinking will sustain the students for a lifetime,” he said.

Following the interest of many current Butler students in the program, Rao believes that interest will only grow as the program develops.

A Butler University journalism class is teaming up with a local web site, the Indiana Insider Blog, to gain professional experience.

The class, tourism promotion and destination marketing, is taught by Bob Schultz, who was contacted by the managers of the blog.

“Several months ago we were brainstorming internally about how to do more with less,” Jeremy Williams, production manager for the Indiana Office of Tourism Development and blog manager said. “Like a lot of other businesses, our budget [has been] continually dropping. We needed to figure out how to do more with less money.

“We had a relationship with Bob Schultz because he used to work with the Indianapolis Visitor’s Center, so we got in touch with [Schultz] to see if there was some way we could work with him and his class in a way that we would be able to get some content and the students would be able to gain more professional experience as well.

“A blog seemed like a really perfect fit for them.”

These student bloggers are receiving an immense opportunity working with the Indiana Insider Blog.

“By the end of the semester, the students are going to have a portfolio of about 10 posts on a blog that reaches many people,” Williams said. “Then we [at Indiana Insider Blog] will have posts from these 15 students that will fill content on our site for this semester and beyond.”

The Indiana Insider Blog (www.in.gov/visitindiana/blog), is a site aimed at informing Indiana residents and visitors
of different tourist activities in the area.

According to senior Liesel Kasdorf, the bloggers’ job is to find out about restaurants, events, fairs, shops and festivals in order to relate them to the public.

“For the most part, the bloggers have the latitude to write about what they like to write about as long as it relates to tourism in Indiana somehow,” Williams said.

“They have the freedom to write about what they choose.

“But there are occasions when our office has something we are trying to promote.

So every once and a while, we will ask our bloggers to write about specific things or other times I will forward them suggestions and ideas.

Senior Lynzy Stover said she was excited about the opportunity to gain experience in the blogging community.

She said she found the process of writing for Indiana Insider to be relatively simple.

“We either have to visit the attraction that we are blogging about or do research about the attraction,” Stover said. “After we decide and research our topic we use WordPress to compose our blog.”

Once the students write their blogs, they submit them to be reviewed by Indiana Insider.

When all edits are complete, the blog is posted to the Indiana Insider site.

“I think this will be extremely beneficial towards my major and career,” Stover said. “All of the posts that we compose are put into a compilation of everything we have ever written.

“Once we are finished we can use those blog posts to show potential employers that we have something that has already been published and used on a legitimate blog.”

Williams said he agrees that the blogging process is an important concept for students like Stover to have a grasp of before graduating.

“I think that in the business world, blogging is something that has become increasingly important over the last few years,” he said.

“I am actually a little bit surprised by how little the students had blogged before.

“Blogging in general is just a great way to build up important and relevant content on Web sites for different companies.

“In our case it is a great way that we can quickly post a paragraph about an event that is coming up.”

He said the benefit of the blogs is that they will still be there next year when people search for things to do in the area on Google.

“I think that the real benefit for blogging is that content lives on forever as opposed to copy on a Web site where it is up for two weeks and then deleted so you they run something else,” Williams said.

“The blog content constantly gets recycled, so even though it may not be on the front page, it’s all available through search.

“[Blog content] can also help your Web site and business to grow.”

The students will work on their blog entries throughout the semester-long course.