Franklin College Time Study Project

Each day, about 110 Franklin College students open Angel, fill out their detailed time log for the day, and submit it to the drop box by 5 p.m.  For 14 days students followed this routine. 

Junior Hilary Hauguel, a math major, created a study to analyze student’s time management and behavior.  It all started with a question about which majors spent the most time on homework and studying.

According to Hauguel, she knew she spent a large amount of time doing homework as a math major and wondered how other areas of study compared.  In a conversation with assistant professor of mathematics Dr. Justin Gash, the idea to do a research study formulated.

At the beginning of the year, Hauguel sent a mass campus announcement for students who would be willing to participate in the survey.  Participants would receive $50, and would be required to fill out a time log each day.

Gash and associate professor and chair of English Dedaimia Whitney are co-advisers to Hauguel’s research project.  They helped Hauguel create and shape the template for the study.

“I made a template,” Hauguel said.  “I did it myself, so I would know what I was doing and what I was expecting them to do.  So I gave them an example of a couple days that I did, and gave them the template.”

Hauguel created an Angel page with drop boxes open from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. for the participants to log their hours.  There are multiple statistics that Hauguel plans to extrapolate from the data, but she is focused on two categories.

“Basically there are 10 categories that I asked them to do,” Hauguel said.  “The most important is I wanted to know how much time they spend in class and how much time they do homework.”

The categories range from logging how much time they spend eating, participating in athletics, sleeping, being in class, doing homework, working, etc.  Hauguel also hopes to learn more about students’ sleeping habits and it’s possible affects, once she computes all of the data.

“We think that there’s going to be great interest in this,” Whitney said.  “And that we’ll find out some interesting things.”

Gash believes that the project will spark an interest on campus as well, and hopes other student’s can see by this project that undergraduates are capable of authentic research. 

“She has done something that people will care about,” Gash said.  “It’s going to matter to people.  She doesn’t have a Ph.D., she just had a really interesting question and a drive to investigate. “

Junior sociology major Heather Myers enjoyed participating in the study and taking the time to think about her daily schedule.

“I saw that I usually slept about the same amount of time, which I didn’t really think that I did that, or that I had a sleeping pattern,” Myers said.

Sophomore math major Matt Brems felt the study helped him to analyze how much time he spends involved in activities correlating to each category. 

“I can better manage my time and say, ‘should it really take me six hours to work on this assignment’ or something like that,” Brems said.  “So it’s useful for managing time and just learning for myself.  It’s a good way for us to quantify our priorities.”

The project is ongoing and according to Hauguel, will probably continue into next semester. 

Profile On: Zach Cruse - First Interview

Zachariah Cruse, 19-year-old sculpture major at Herron Art School, is a tall curly blond that has an absolute love for any kind of plain chicken dishes, and a deep-seated hatred for any vegetables or leafy greens.  He has a dry sense of humor and a laugh that makes his eyes squint.  He loves “The Office” and is a fan of Michael Scott.

When asked who or what he would have to have with him on a deserted island, Cruse smiled and mulled over his answer.  It took him a few minutes but he finally said, “Taylor, I’d have to bring Taylor.  He would probably help me survive.”

He jokingly talked about what he and his brother, Taylor Cruse, would do on the island to survive, like building a shelter and watching each other’s backs around the island natives.

“Wait!” Cruse said.  “Can I change my answer to a helicopter? What about a lifeboat?  Do those count?”

He thought over his response for a few more moments, clearly not satisfied with his answer.  He smiled, and I knew this answer should be a good one.

“I would bring wireless Internet and my laptop,” Cruse said.  “I could Google the Bible, talk to everyone I could not bring with me on the island, I could Google plans on how to build a raft and I could watch episodes of ‘The Office’ when I got bored.”

After a second of reveling in his newly thought out plan, Cruse hesitated, and then slapped his palm onto his forehead.

“Oh crap, I didn’t even think about the laptop dying.  I’m an idiot.”

That’s when he looked at me, face completely serious with a hopeful expression.

“Can I include a solar powered charger for my laptop?”

His family, when asked what they think we would need to take with him to survive on an island alone, his mom and brother said the same thing.

“He’d probably take his laptop.”

Profile On: Zach Cruse - The Bunk Beds

It was around 9:30 p.m., the show they were watching had just gone off, and it was time to go to sleep.  That’s when bedtime became playtime for Cruse and his brother.

The two boys, Cruse, who was about nine, and his brother Taylor Cruse, was about five, backed up to the corner of their living room, between the couch and the kitchen, and took off, racing to the other end of the house where their bedroom was located.

It was a competition, one they had participated in before, but races between the two siblings were serious business. 

At the time, the Cruse brothers had bunk beds made out of red steel tubing sections put together. The endgame of the race was to launch their selves onto the bottom bunk, reaching the bed first.

That was the plan until Zach Cruse jumped a little too high. 

Instead of landing on the soft mattress of his bed, he ran into the bottom part of the top bunk head-first.  Instead of a dive into comfort, he dove into steel bar. 

Both Cruse brothers say that he jumped too high, and hit the top bunk by accident.  The force of the blow caused Cruse to be knocked unconscious for a few minutes.

“When I came to, I was lying on my back on our bedroom floor.  Taylor was standing over me, and I reached for my head, to feel it where I hit, and it was wet.  I looked at my fingers and they were covered in blood.”

Cruse was numb from the pain.  He couldn’t really feel anything.  The only thing he felt was anger at Taylor.  He said it wasn’t reasonable, he just knew he was scared and he was mad at this brother. 

Cruse ran out of the room crying, heading straight for his parent’s bedroom.  His mother was on the phone, talking to his grandma. 

According to Cruse, when she looked over and saw him standing there, she said, “Oh my gosh! Zach’s bleeding, I’ve got to go!”  She hung up the phone and picked him up, running to the garage to put him in the van.  She called his grandma before they left, and went to the hospital.

“It was a big ordeal, and I had to get stitches,” Cruse said.  “I remember the next few weeks I would walk around with my eyes crossed, pretending to be Frankenstein, because I had the big stitches right across my forehead.”

Profile On: Zach Cruse - Building an Interest

“Star Wars changed my life,” Cruse said.

It began with a project that his friend sent him a link to.  The guy knew Cruse loved Star Wars, so he sent him a link to a website that discussed how to make lightsabers. 

That’s how it started.  He made lightsaber handles, and with each one he made, he would use different material to keep making it better.   He would research what materials to use and how to use them.

One day, when Cruse was about 15, he was browsing the Internet, and he saw a picture of a Master Chief helmet that was made of paper.  The Master Chief character is from the video game Halo, a game that Cruse enjoyed playing.  The paper helmet sparked an interest, so he decided to Google search the print out for making one of the helmets.

His first print out guide was two sizes to large, so he printed it out again.  The project intrigued him.  He saw what other people could do with the paper helmets, and knew he could do a better job.  It was a challenge.

After Cruse finished cutting, folding and shaping the paper helmet, he decided he didn’t like the look as much.  The shapes were blocky, and the parts of the helmet that were supposed to be smooth weren’t because of using flat paper.  Cruse wasn’t satisfied with that.  He decided to detail the project.

Cruse covered the entire helmet in sheets of plastic and auto body filler called Bondo.  He smoothed everything over to the right shape.  The sanding of all the hard and angular lines took a great deal of time.  Cruse spent about four to five hours a day on his project, for about three months before he finished.  Once he did smooth the helmet, that’s when he painted it.

The project was the first time he ever worked with electronics as well.  The character in the game had four small lights on either side of the helmet.  So to make it realistic, Cruse did the same.  He bought four LED lights with built-in resistors and wired them to batteries, before arranging them in the helmet.

“I consulted with my dad a lot,” Cruse said.  “I would ask him his opinions on building materials and how my plans would turn out.”

Cruse worked in his garage, on a workbench across from the garage door.  That’s where he would use the auto body filler, fiberglass resin and cans of spray paint.  His planning work took place in his kitchen, at the bar. 

He would spend time hunched over the bar, with a piece of his plans scattered to the right, and everything else sweeping out from that point across the surface.  He would tinker with this paper, and then move onto the next.  His tools and methodology were a bit haphazard, unorganized and scattered.  But that’s how he liked to work.

When Cruse finished his helmet, he posted it, like his other work, on the online community.  Cruse said they had an entire website devoted to the paper helmets. 

“The most anyone else had ever done at that point with the helmets was use auto body filler on them, but they would just essentially cover the helmets and sand it down a little bit,” Cruse said. 

The attention to detail on Cruse’s helmet was pretty high.  The response he received from the online users was more than Cruse expected.  He was the first person to take the craftsmanship to another level, and show that much detail and commitment to making the prop better.

After he displayed his helmet, showing his friends and family, he decided to post in on eBay. 

“I sold it for $350.”

The Master Chief helmet was one of the first projects that spurned Cruse on, pushing him to continue challenging himself.  By using electronics for the first time, it began his love affair with putting lighting and wiring in other projects, including building an LED light-up arc reactor from the movie Iron Man, and refurbishing an Xbox in the style of the Iron Man movie.

Through Star Wars Cruse found his love recreating props, and through his Master Chief helmet project, he realized he was phenomenal at it.  So did everyone else.

Profile On: Zach Cruse - The Meet-Cute

In February of this year, Zach Cruse had just come out of a stressful on again off again relationship with his previous girlfriend.  The relationship was a rollercoaster, and the hills and turns had Cruse shaken and disillusioned with relationships in general.  He was over the angst and the anxiety, and was ready to move on and put the whole ordeal behind him.

That was the plan at least, until a local church lock-in happened.

Cruse was in the process of repairing his friendship with his ex-girlfriend, so when she invited him, he said yes to attending their mutual friend’s church lock-in.  He was hoping to gain back civility and erase some of the awkwardness that had appeared between the two.

At the lock-in, the youth group banded together on teams to play broomball, which is a sport that Cruse says is essentially, “hockey, but you wear shoes instead of ice skates, and you hit a ball instead of a puck.”

Indiana’s temperature in February ranges from chilly to down right frigid.  That particular night was cold, although not bitterly so.  The ice rink was alive with chatter and laughter, which helped to keep the chill at bay.

Running on a large sheet of ice in tennis shoes is not one of the easiest activities to participate in.  It took a large amount of energy, and with each breath, the chill made your lungs tingle.  

After playing for a few hours, Cruse decided to take a break.  He felt dehydrated, and slightly sick, so he went to the small and kind of ancient looking concession stand to order a PowerAde. 

As he came back to the rink, he noticed a girl sitting by herself, watching the others slap the ball back and forth and clumsily run across the ice.

He knew her name was Jessica, not because he’d talked to her any, but because Lauren, the mutual friend, had talked about her before.  He slid onto the bench next to her, and she glanced over at him.

“Hi,” he said.  “Having fun?”

She smiled and answered, and from there they chatted for a few minutes about inconsequential things.  He asked if she wanted to take a drink of his orange PowerAde, and then he went back out onto the ice.  “Huh,” he thought to himself.  “She was nice, and kind of cute.”

Broomball continued, neither side ever really winning.  Cruse stayed with his friends, joking around and talking with his ex-girlfriend, trying to achieve his goal of patching things up.  As the night went on, Cruse got even more fatigued, while everyone else hit their second-wind.

The group moved into the sanctuary, when Cruse noticed Jessica again.  He spotted her curled up in a pew, sitting by herself, hugging a pillow and yawning wildly.  She was bundled up in Franklin College sweats, and her sweatshirt two sizes too big. 

For two hours they talked about everything.  Star Wars, Death Cab for Cutie, Star Trek and the Beatles.  They talked about college: her hopes that undergrad would be better than high school, his insisting that it wouldn’t be.  He talked about being homeschooled, his teachers and his projects.  She talked about her love of music.

About halfway through their conversation, Cruse though, “I wonder is she would ever want to hang out sometime?”  He was intrigued and a little bit curious about her.

Eventually the group moved out of the sanctuary, and by then, Cruse and his friends left the lock-in.  He had work early the next morning.

He didn’t get to say goodbye

Profile On: Zach Cruse - Worship Your Face Off

Cruse’s father, Clay Cruse, the youth minister and Terry Waggoner, the worship minister at his church, created a youth worship experience called WYFO, or Worship Your Face Off. 

Cruse invited me to observe their service and how the youth group interacted with each other.  His family is involved in the fundamentals and creation of the youth programs at Franklin Church of Christ, and their delivery.

We walked in and the first thing I noticed was the amount of people that Cruse talked to on the way into the sanctuary.  The congregation knew him, not only on a shallow, acquaintance level, but deeply and personally.

“Hey, Terry!” Cruse said, slinging his arm around the taller man’s shoulders and walking towards the sanctuary. 

The two guys had a brief conversation, but the connection was there.  Cruse was at home in the church and his face only became brighter with the people he ran into.

Once we entered the sanctuary where the other teens congregated, a few members of the grew immediately said hello.  Cruse was a little late, but the service hadn’t started yet.  A few minutes later, Clay Cruse hopped up on the stage and said, “Are you all ready to worship your faces off!”

That started the music.  The booming bass fell over the crowd and the lights were shut off.  The sanctuary was dark, but the group was bright and alive, Cruse being one of the brightest.  He was at ease and comfortable, nodding his head and swaying to the beat.  Every now and then I could hear him singing along to the songs.

His younger brother Matt came up beside him, and they joked around while the music was still playing.  His love for worship and his family combined into one.

“Do you like it so far?” Cruse asked me, still nodding to the beat.

“Yeah,” I said.  “I’m having fun.”

If anything, his smile grew wider.  You could tell he wanted people to share in his love of church.

“Good,” he grinned.

The music picked up and a faster, more energetic song began beating out of the speakers.  The band was in full swing and so was the youth group.   The lyrics were catchy and Cruse began bouncing on his heels.  When the word “run” was emphasized in the song, the  group took off.

One by one the students bolted from the mass huddled at the foot of the stage.

“Do you want to run?” Cruse asked me.

After that he took off.  The energy in the room was palpable.  Everyone was excited and pumped for the lesson to come.  Cruse came back to the group even more exuberant than before.  He was in his house of God and loving every minute of it.