Morningside setting a new enrollment record for international students is newsworthy. This news is something that prospective students, parents, students, facility, and staff would all find interesting.

Morningside Terri Curry, vice president for student life and enrollment spoke on this topic and expressed, “We are delighted to welcome our largest group of international students to Morningside. Their diverse cultures, experiences and perspectives enrich our academic community, fostering a global learning environment that is both inclusive and vibrant”.

The area where Morningside experienced the most growth was found in the advanced and nontraditional programs. The RN TO BSN program saw a total enrollment increase of 44%, the Doctor of Nursing Practice program realized a 33% increase in part-time students, the bachelor’s completion in education program saw a 14% increase in total enrollment, and the graduate education initial licensure teacher intern saw a 119% increase in full-time enrollment. Each of these programs have been designed for advanced and nontraditional students who hope to advance in their current profession or change careers, and also represent fields where demand for professionals is high.

Not only did enrollment rates rise, but Morningside also experienced growth by having a five percent improvement in its year one to year two retention rate. Mosely shared, “Our faculty and staff remain committed to doing everything possible to support our students as they persist toward graduation”.

These different growths look extremely good when looking at Morningside as a whole. It shows the community that they take pride in what goes into Morningside, as well as what comes out.

Here at Midland Zoo, Homer our 16-year-old polar bear was found dead shortly after his feeding time. Homer could be described as a curious and playful polar bear. Midland Zoo is doing all it can to find out the cause of this death, in order to assure our visitors that nothing like this will happen again.

Chris Bacon spoke on this devastating event and stated,” We will determine how this bear died. Animal welfare and the preservation of species are our primary goals here at the zoo.”

The Midland Zoo is not worried that this is something that will set them back because polar bears have been seen thriving at this zoo since 1985. Bears have the privilege of being able to engage in a natural habitat that allows them to play in manufactured snow, dig in gravel, and hunt trout in the chilled pool. The bears are ambassadors for their wildlife relatives, educating zoo visitors about these threatening animals.

ChatGPT is setting new standards in the artificial intelligence world.

ChatGPT has become insanely popular over this past year. Tons of users are starting to use this platform as a tool to have their questions answered instantly. ChatGPT is popular due to its advanced technology when answering questions. 

Nowadays people do not have the patience to sit and scroll through tons of websites when looking up something on Google. ChatGPT allows individuals to get a response right at their fingertips, without the hassle of looking at a bunch of websites for one simple answer.

Sophomore Morningside student Jordyn Carr had this to say about ChatGPT, “I find it very useful. I use it when I write papers to give me prompts to talk about. It also helps me understand certain concepts that weren’t explained very well in class.”

Not only does ChatGPT provide answers, it also has an option that allows for people with a slight impairment to have the responses spoken out loud to them. It can also summarize the topics or concepts from a course for students with learning disabilities.

ChatGPT also has a tool that allows you to generate AI images. You can plug in any sort of description and it will generate an image for you. These images surface frequently on social media, and can also be very helpful. For example, writers can generate images for their online articles or newspapers. Artists can also use the tool as inspiration for their own art.

Addie Harris said this, “I’ve mostly just messed around on the image generator but I can see how people can benefit from it. I find some of the images on twitter to be very funny, but also weird at the same time.”

Although many benefits come with Chat GPT for students, it raises concerns for teachers and professors. Facility is worried about the lack of academic integrity among students and it leading to the reliance on artificial intelligence instead of them coming up with their own creative ideas.

Ross Fuglsang, the journalism teacher here at Morningside, spoke about his thoughts towards students using ChatGPT and expressed, “It’s a pain in the ass.”

This response is understanding when looking at a professor’s point of view. Professors want to see students’ work that reflects their thinking and not what is coming from ChatGPT.

Overall, ChatGPT can improve content quality, save time, and is a great tool used for learning. However, if this platform is fully depended on, it can cause plagiarism issues to arise and limit creativity. How society reacts to this up-and-coming innovation will shape the future of technology.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/25/technology/chatgpt-talk-digital-assistance.html?searchResultPosition=5