Hi, my name is Michele and welcome to San Francisco State University. Thanks for tuning in to our audio campus tour! We'll be checking out the sights and sounds of our beautiful campus, and maybe even get the chance to grab something to eat while walking around. As a fourth year pre-med student, I've been able to make a lot of new friends while a student here and we'll be seeing a few of them during the tour. This audio tour is divided into eight parts. If you've downloaded the map, you can follow along by selecting the corresponding track number on your mp3 player. If you're using an ipod or ipod nano and downloaded the S-F-S-U notes, you can look into the extras folder and select the notes feature. There, you'll be able to navigate the audio tour using hyperlinks like a web browser. So are we ready? Let's go! We'll go ahead and start in front of the Student Services Building. This yellow and green building is the newest building here on campus. If you walk through the first floor, you'll find an area similar to a bank lobby called One Stop. Each of the walk up counters in the lobby is fully staffed and provide services for all students. As a prospective student, you can visit with the admissions office or talk with a counselor in Financial Aid. Once you enroll here at SF State, you can go to the registrar's office to obtain a transcript or find out information about the C-S-U campus visitation program. This program allows you to enroll at another C-S-U campus for a semester or a quarter and then come back to SF State with those course credits. Also at one stop is the bursar's office where you pay university and course fees. Down the first floor hallway, you'll find O-S-P-L-DÉthe office of student programs and leadership development. We have over two-hundred clubs and student organizations here on campus, including fraternities and sororities. O-S-P-L-D registers these organizations and assists them with their campus events. At the end of the hallway is D-P-R-C. The office of disability programs and resource center is available to promote and provide equal access to the classroom and campus related activities. Up on the second floor, you will find our E-O-P office. The educational opportunity program is for our students who are educationally and finally disadvantaged. We also have a wonderful career center upstairs. They help students find all sorts of jobs: on campus, off campus, part-time, full-time, internships, volunteer, and summer jobs. Whatever you might be looking for, you can find through the career center. They will also help you draft a resume if you don't have one or help you spice it up a bit if you do. When you are asked to a job interview and you feel rusty or if you've never been on one, you can even schedule a mock interview to help prepare you to land that job. Down the hallway from the career center is counseling and psychological services. We have licensed and professional staff available for students to talk about anything. From personal problems to emotional and social difficultiesÉthere is always someone to talk to and all that is discussed is kept strictly confidential. NowÉif you are outside and facing the student services building, you can look to your right and past the grove of eucalyptus trees and you'll find our parking structure on campus - lot 19 and 20. The top floor is for our faculty and staff while the bottom 4 floors are for the students. We have almost 29,000 students here at San Francisco State and only 3,000 parking spaces, so parking is definitely a challenge here for our students. Currently, parking is a dollar an hour or five dollars for the whole day. Just make sure you place the daily parking permit on your dashboard. Past the parking garage is University Park north. The beige colored apartment towers that you see off in the distance is one of the on-campus housing options students have here at SF State. There are one, two, and three bedroom accommodations and they are available to all students. Now lets walk up the set of stairs to your right to our next stop. OkayÉto your right, you'll see an orange and yellow building. This is Frederic Burk Hall and is named after the first president of the university. San Francisco State was established in eighteen-ninety-nine as a teacher's college and remains today as one of the university's key programs. You'll find all of our teaching programs inside this building in addition to apparel design and merchandising, interior design, consumer and family studies, dietetics, and nursing. If you are interested in apparel design and merchandising, interior design, or nursingÉ these are our only impacted programs on our campus meaning that you must apply to these programs separately after being accepted to our school. This comes around your junior year after you finish prerequisites, and/or portfolios. On the top floor we have the vista room where you can get a fine dining experience. The vista room is a five star restaurant run by the students in the dietetics and hospitality management departments. It's fourteen dollars a person for a three-course meal. You get real food, not like the burgers and fries, and chicken strips at the Cesar Chavez student center. You get seafood, filet mignon, crme brule and hot fudge sundaes. You must make a reservation at least twenty-four hours in advance and only an S-F-S-U student may do so. They are only open from eleven a-m- to two p-m for lunch. You definitely get your money's worth. This is probably the only place on campus where you can get silverware, glassware, and actual plates rather than the paper plates and plastic forks you'll find elsewhere on campus. You can think of it has a high-end cheap date!!! (laugh). Now if you look towards your left, you'll see the blue trimmed ethnic studies and psychology building. The psychology major is the second most popular program right behind business administration here at the university. San Francisco State University is proud to say that we are the only university in the United States to have a college of ethnic studies. You can receive degrees in Asian American Studies, Africana Studies, Raza studies, or a minor in American Indian studies. I never thought I'd be taking an Asian American Studies history course, but I realized my first semester that I was tired of taking the typical u.s. history, u.s. government class. So I took an Asian American studies history course and absolutely loved it, fell in love with the material and so I kept taking all these classes and last yearÉ I found that I already have a degree in Asian American studies. Don't know how it happened, but it just did. That's how I became a double major. I never intended for it to happen. It's a humbling and an eye opening experience. I'd recommend it to anyone. Finally, if you walk a little farther down the pathwayÉ you'll see the student health center. Actually, you're standing on top of it. The student health center has several programs including physical therapy, a women and men's health clinic, and pharmacy services; all these services are accessible to all students since it comes from your students fees every semester. If you're paying for it you might as well use it. If you need medical attentionÉmake it all worth your while. We have a pharmacy here that's 30% cheaper than your local Albertsons, Longs, or Walgreen's. The only catch is that you can only get prescriptions filled if they're prescribed by our own physicians. You can't bring in grandma's prescription and say, I'd like to get this filled. Doesn't exactly work that way. We have almost a full medical staff here. We have an optometrist, ophthalmologist, podiatrist, and dermatologist. Whatever you might need. We unfortunately do not have a dentist on staff. We have board certified doctors, nurses, and nurse practitioners, not med school students or pre-med students like me. There is no experimenting or poking around that goes around here Éso not to worry. Let's go to our next stopÉthe gymnasium. NowÉover here to your left is the gymnasium. Our gymnasium is occupied by our athletics, kinesiology, and physical therapy departments. Our gym houses a lot of different recreational facilities including an indoor heated swimming pool, a couple of basketball courts, and a weight room equipped with anything from cardio equipment to free weights. Recreation hours are posted in front of each facility and throughout the hallways. Only S-F-S-U students can use the gym so take advantage of it while you can. If you are interested in playing sports, we are an n-c-double a campus and belong to the California Colligate Athletic Association and compete with schools like U-C San Diego and C-S-U Chico. We also offer intramural sports for students who just want to be active in a competitive setting, in front of the gymnasium in the temporary trailer is the community involvement center. The C-I-C can place students into non-profit agencies in the bay area and offers them university credit for the volunteer work they complete in their internships. Now, let's start walking towards the orange colored building, which is our next stop I'd like to welcome you to the San Francisco State version of the Winchester mystery house. The science building is absolutely insane. There is a hallway that starts on the first floor and ends on the second but you don't feel an incline so you think you're going crazy. There's a staircase that starts on the first floor and ends on the third completely passing the second floor and you don't even see it so you think you need more sleep. Ironically enough, this is where you'll find the engineering department. If you're interested in political science, engineering, international relations, or child and adolescent developmentÉgood luck to you on finding your departments because they're in there. There is a door that opens up to a brick wall, offices that were bathrooms, and bathrooms that were offices. I had a very interesting first day of college. I found the door to the brick wall. I opened up the door and saw this brick wall in front me and the first words that come to mind are not why is there a brick wall in front of me? , it'sÉ I have a class in thereÉhow am I going to get in. (pause) you got to find the other door that goes into the room. It's around the corner, kind of hidden. When facing the science building, look over to your left and you will see a very tall building. This is Thornton Hall. Thornton Hall holds what we like to call, "the dead sciences." these include: computer science physics, astronomy, mathematics, chemistryÉ anything that does not live is in there. On the top floor we have our observatory where you can do some wonderful star gazing by using our high-powered telescopes. I know what you're thinking, we're in San Francisco when do we ever see the sunÉ never!!!! So, on the 4th floor you can visit our planetarium to do some fake stargazing, watch fake star shows. Either way, they're 2 great places for a cheap date!!!! To the right of Thornton Hall, we have Hensill Hall or our "living sciences." building, these include: biology, all the way to zoology. On the second floor, we have our human anatomy museum. The most fascinating museum here on campus!!! At least I think so, and then again if could be weird. You can see a real human intestine wrapped around the room to see how long it really is within our bodies, human organs preserved in mason jars, and a variety of different biological labs. Really cool stuff!!!! Altogether, these three buildings make-up the science complex here at S-F-S-U. Before we walk to our next stop, I just wanted to point out the red emergency phone with the blue light on top. This is one of many phones located around campus set up for your safety. All the phones are connected to our university police department here on campus who serve the San Francisco State community twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. We even have an escort program that has public safety officers take you to your car, classroom or apartment. You can visit the S-F-S-U website for more info about their services. So lets start walking to the business and h-s-s buildings The white building with the brown trim on your right is the business building. It holds our college of business programs such as marketing, finance, international business, and management. Anything to do with money is located in here. The college of business is the most popular college here. About 1 in 4 students is a business major. Now because the college of business is so popular, the entire second floor is made up of a computer lab, not just for business students, but all S-F-S-U students. There is a computer lab located in each building around campus, so you never need to worry about finding a computer to use. The only piece of advice I can give you while walking through this building is to be very cautious while walking through the hallways because the hallways are extremely narrow and the doors are extremely wide, so stay close to the center of the hallways to avoid getting hit by a door. Trust me!!! I was walking through the building my freshman year and it was the first day of school so I was super excited. I was thinking to myself, yes first day of college, fresh slate, start over, I'm independentÉsort of and a door swung open and hit me. I landed flat on my back and till this day, I have a problem walking through this building. Onto your left, we have the h-s-s building. You'll find the school of social work, and the departments of environmental studies, sociology, economics, geography and political science. On the second floor we have our 2 free tutoring centers. One is called the learning assistance center and the other is the community access retention program. These are also known as L-A-C and C-A-R-P. They will help students in any area: math, English, the sciences. They are also our largest student employers on campus. If you plan on working through college, we highly recommend on campus jobs. As we start walking to out next stop, let me tell you what you'll find on the other side of this building. Just around the corner.is nineteenth avenue. We're in a residential area so you can get all your work done here, but if you're looking to have a good time this is where you can catch public transportation and get around the bay area. There is MUNI, which is the public transportation system that serves the city of San Francisco. There are several bus lines that stop in front of our campus. There is the twenty-nine bus which takes you all around San Francisco. We have the twenty-eight, which takes you directly to the golden gate bridge and the marina district and also to the Daly City BART station. There's even a light rail station in front of campus that will take you to downtown San Francisco to do shopping or to A-T and T Park to watch the Giants play. We are in a great location here at SF State. We are in walking distance to the San Francisco zoo, which is great because the first Wednesday of every month, there is free admissions so it makes it another great place for a cheap date! Now on the corner of Nineteenth Avenue and Holloway is the administration building complex. We have the new and old administration building I'm sure you can tell the difference. One's small the other's big, one's grungy looking and the other pretty. (laugh). There are two important offices on the second floor of the old administration building. We have the undergraduate advising center where the undergrads get their general education advising. If they need to see a major advisor, they contact their departments and find a major advisor through the departments. Across the hallway of the undergraduate-advising center we have our office of new student programs, which handles the orientation during the summer and winter. If you plan on coming in as a first- time freshman, orientation for you is highly recommended. This is probably the best tip I can offer you. We want to be able to get you adjusted to college life. You go through helpful workshops, and get to speak with peer advisors who are experts within their departments. These peer advisors help you figure out your fall and spring class schedules. You register for your fall classes on the day of orientation, and get your I-D cards as well. So sign up for orientation early and sign up for an early orientation date! If you plan on coming in as a transfer student, orientation for you is just recommended. You've already had taste of college life, however, you learn how to register for classes, go over graduation and general requirements as well as speaking to peer advisors to figure out your next semester's schedules. This is just a basic outline, please read more about this in your admissions packet. If you are interested in studying abroad, check out the office of international programs and study abroad on the fourth floor, room 450 in the new administration building. If you are thinking about studying abroad and planning on attending a c-s-u campus like ours, this is the place where you want to be. San Francisco State University is ranked number 1 within the C-S-U system for our study abroad program. A few reasons are these: we offer seventeen countries to visit with thirty-three different schools to choose from. The only difference from studying abroad as opposed to staying on our main campus besides the weather of course is living expenses. Living out here in the city can get pretty expensive so a student might study abroad for the cheap living costs, depending on the country of course. Financially, you should not be hindered to study abroad because our university fees are the same as if you're staying here on campus, if you have financial aid or scholarships, they go with you. So, it's a great opportunity to take advantage of. We do have semester and yearlong programs available with the yearlong programs being much more popular. To the right of the Administration complex, you'll see a very large building, the library. The library is our largest building on campus and will get even bigger within the next couple of years with an expansion project. The library holds four point four million pieces of items. These include: books, magazines, D-V-Ds, audiotapes, electronic reserves and archives. On the lobby floor through the glass windows, you'll notice tons of computers in that one particular area. This is one of the most popular computer labs on campus, known as the twenty-four hour computer lab, open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Next to the computer lab, we have the twenty-four hour quiet study area also open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. On the third floor we have our media access center. If at any point in time, you were unable to make it to class and the professor had shown some sort of video, and you need to make it up or watch it againÉ you can go up there and they'll set you up in a sound proof room with a nice set of headphones so that you can watch your video on a twelve inch screen t-v. What's also great is that if you ever feel bored or if you had a rough day and want to relax, you can go and watch any of your favorite movies like Little Mermaid, Finding Nemo, and Aladdin. I'm a big Disney fan. It's also another great place for a cheap date, as long as your date doesn't mind wearing a set of headphones. Finally the top floor has our de Bellis collection of rare Italian art. What you see up there you don't see anywhere else in the world. There's a piano worth a half a million dollars. If you want to know why, you can check that out after the tour today. We also have a Wi-fi network throughout the library and on campus so as long as you have a wireless system on your laptop, you can get Internet access at any time. Now lets turn and walk towards the center of campus, where you'll find an oddly shaped building with bleachers on the roof. This is our Cesar Chavez student center. This building is called the student center not only because it is the physical center of our campus but also because this is where almost everything is located and events take place. If you go down to the basement floor, we have a few eateries and rack-n-cue, which are our pool tables and billiards spot. An arcade is located down there as well. If you come up one floor, we have our lower conference level which holds a whole bunch of conference rooms. When you come up to the lobby level, we have many things. We have many eateries and our S-F-S-U bookstore as well. The S-F-S-U bookstore is where the students get their textbooks, apparel, paraphernalia, trinkets, souvenirs and much more!!! It's the best place to shop, especially around the holidays for our students because it's located right here on campus. I know for Christmas, I got my mom her fourth SF State mom sweatshirt, a different color and design of course, got to give her a variety. Funds are running a little low for her birthday, so I'll be getting her a SF State mom coffee mug which has a little cute flower design on it. I think she'll like it, but I'll soon find out. The next level is the mezzanine level which has some of our clubs and organizations located there as well as our student body government known as the associated students incorporated, A-S-I. Finally the top floor is the terrace level which holds Jack Adams Hall. That's where a majority of the orientations are held . There is also Rigoberta Menchu Hall. It's a great place to study, hang out, chitchat with friends, and sleep because we do have long couches for students to lay on for their mid-day naps. This hall is the most popular place to be during the winter because there is an indoor fire pit to keep students nice and cozy warm and dry during the rainy and cold days. So, if you are ever looking for me in the winterÉ that's where I'll be! In front of the student center is Malcolm X Plaza. During the first two weeks of every semester, you'll find the different student groups tabling here and on the quad. This is a great time to find out about the clubs and get involved in a student group. Also, on the stage in Malcolm x plaza during the school year, you'll find different live performances ranging from cultural dance presentations to concerts. If you're interested in the visual and performing arts, that will be our next stop, creative arts corner. Here to your right is the Fine Arts building. This building holds all of our visual arts. So, ceramics, sculpture, painting, drawing, photography and cinema are all located here. These are just a few. On the second floor toward, we have an art gallery. So, if you'd like to see what our art students are doing, you're more than welcome to take a look. All the art department facilities are located towards the rear of the building. You'll find their kiln, dark rooms and painting studios tucked away in the back. The cinema department on the other hand occupies the other half of this building and is nationally recognized. The cinema facilities are partially funded by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Francis Ford Coppola. So we have great networks with these three people and receive many resources from them as well. On the first floor, we have Coppola Theatre. What's great about Coppola theatre is that we have a lot of sneak preview screenings in there for free to S-F-S-U students as long as they have their student I-D cards. A few movies that I've seen here, just so that you have an idea of what we play are Troy, Alexander, Cheaper By The Dozen, Finding Nemo, Ray, Chainsaw Massacre, and March Of The Penguins. Also on the first floor is the cinema sound stage which was actually designed by Francis Ford Copolla. On the top two floors of this building, you'll find various cinema facilities including an animation lab and a Foley studio where you can make sound effects for your movies. Opposite the fine arts building is the Creative Arts building. This is where you'll find all the performing arts. This building holds the school of music and dance, and the departments of theatre arts and broadcasting. Known as BECA. BECA stands for broadcast and electronic communication arts. If you are interested in broadcasting, our program is nationally recognized and is one of the top broadcasting programs here in California. So take advantage of it. We have three television studios, a recording studio, and a radio station, all inside this building. The Creative Arts building even has theatres like McKenna theatre, which can hold up to seven hundred people and is our largest theatre here on campus. You'll also find our music practice facilities and little theater, the main theater arts stage where they have had Broadway productions such as Stephen Sondheim's assassins and West side story. NowÉas we walk to the Humanities When you reach the near end of the pathway, you will see the humanities building straight ahead. The Humanities building holds the College of Humanities, go figure!!!! We have our foreign language, english, journalism, women studies, speech communications, and creative writing. Anything to do with the humanities is located here. We have a wonderful journalism department who publishes our on-campus newspaper called the golden gate express. You can get a lot of hands on experience which will enable you to obtain a wonderful job with big name publications like the San Francisco chronicle or even sunset magazine. For the foreign languages, we do offer almost every language here, but foreign language is not a requirement for general education. On the top floor of the humanities building we have our Egyptian Sutro Collection where you can see real Egyptian artifacts as well as live mummies. (pause). Oh, I mean real mummies. (laugh). Also on the top floor, we have our poetry center where our students love to read their favorite poetry by famous poets. We have a poetry club that competes with other poetry clubs from other universities. We host spoken word and poetry slam events which are very interesting to go and watch. (pause). I'm not a poetry person myself, but I decided to shake things up a bit, so I went to a poetry slam event and absolutely loved it. I loved it soooo much that I went to a total of nine poetry slam events last semester. So if you hear about anything that is going on the poetry center, it's definitely worth your time to go and check it out. Last but not least, the humanities building is one of the newest buildings on campus, but actually has the absolute slowest elevators. Not sure why that is exactly. It takes about 10 minutes to get from the first floor to the top floor without stopping. Do take into mind that this is a five-story build. I tested it out one day because I had a lot of time on my hands, so take my word for it. If you have a class on the fifth floor, and you say to yourselfÉ oh my god, I'll never make it up that far, I'll dehydrate. Not to worry, we do have water fountains conveniently located next to each staircase; so do take as many water breaks as you need. Now I know that you're itching to hear about housing. So if you look over to your right, you will notice a large grey building called Centennial Village. This is our next stop. Centennial Village is where our Sophomores reside and if you were to continue down the pathway, you will notice Mary Park Hall and Mary Ward Hall where our Freshmen reside. If you look up towards the right, you will see The Towers and this is where our sophomores and some of our freshmen reside as well. The Towers and Centennial Village are apartment style living so you share bathrooms and kitchens with the people in your apartment while Mary Park Hall and Mary Ward Hall are community style living so you would share bathrooms with everyone on your floor and one kitchen throughout the building. Housing here is 1st come 1st serve, no matter where you are coming from. So, we do recommend that you apply for housing as soon as you apply to our university. We have also expanded our housing to other areas around our campus such as: University Park North, across the street from Stonestown Mall and University Park South along the little streets near the Humanities Building side of campus. These two areas are where our juniors and seniors reside. If you cannot find on-campus housing, but live too far to commute, the housing office can also assist you with finding off-campus housing near the area. We'd like to thank you for tuning into our audio campus tour. We would appreciate your feedback so we can improve the quality for future guests. Please visit our office in the Student Services building, room 106, Monday thru Friday 8 a.m. to noon or 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Thank you once again, and thank you for your interest in San Francisco State University.