March » 2009 » Carol J. Carter

Staying Afloat in Today’s Crowded Talent Pool

CAROL’S SUMMARY:

In todayâ€™s crowded job market, laid off employees are competing with college graduates. While there are some inherent challenges, this is also great training for corporate America where formidable problems need to be solved all the time with the same perseverance, motivation and indomitable spirit the job search requires. If you are a recent graduate, or you are graduating this spring, here are some things to think about and act on:

1) If you have a job which you consider beneath your means, make the most out of it. The days where employees could have an attitude of entitlement are gone. Whatever job you do have, ask how you can contribute to your company, your boss and your own professional development. This may mean coming in early, leaving late, helping a co-worker to learn a skill, or taking on an extra assignment without pay from your manager.

2) If you are trying to get a foot in the door at a company, consider working there as a consultant or without pay for one month so that the company can see what you are capable of accomplishing. You need to shine and show your value relative to anyone else they may consider. Allowing them to see your work and relationships first-hand will show them that in spades.

3) Consider working a job, even if it is minimum wage, to bring in your rent and food money while you spend a few days a week working as an intern or getting your foot in the door as in suggestion #2 above. Create a strict budget, cut everything that isnâ€™t essential. The benefit of working for someone as a consultant or for free is that they will often be willing to give you a strong letter of recommendation even if they canâ€™t hire you. You need at least three strong references to speak to your abilities and contribution over time. Ideally those people are all work references, but you can have two work references and one professor if you are just graduating.

4) Surround yourself with pro-active people. This is a tough time, but the people who will be valued the most are the ones who are willing to work hard, even in a volunteer capacity, make appointments daily and keep their resolve strong. The same qualities that make you a success in the job hunt, are the same qualities which make you a success once you get that job.

ARTICLE
Wall Street Journal
By BOB DAMON
In February, President Obama signed into law the much debated and anticipated $787 billion economic stimulus bill, a plan designed with a primary focus on countering recent, unprecedented job losses. This legislation cannot come quickly enough for the 4.4 million Americans who’ve lost their jobs since Dec. 2007. The past two months were particularly brutal, with layoffs announced seemingly daily by such industry stalwarts as Microsoft, Starbucks, Pfizer, Caterpillar, Home Depot, Macy’s and Nissan. Even CEOs have felt the blow, with more than 60 terminated in 2008 and up to 150 expected to lose the top spot by the end of 2009. While the stimulus package is said to save or create three to four million jobs, this will depend on how efficiently the money is distributed over the next 12 to24 months.

To view entire article visit http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123689624615612311.html

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Report Shows Steep Gains by Students From Abroad

All children bring unique backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives to the classroom. ELL students’ diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds can offer many advantages for the entire classroom by bringing a different perspective about the world based on their customs and beliefs. One way schools can help boost English profiency among ELL students is to learn who they are and value their uniqueness. When the experiences and perspectives of ELL students can be seen as a resource and used for instruction, the whole class benefits. Here are questions to consider:

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Researchers Propose 6 Ways to Keep Community-College Students Beyond the First Few Weeks

CAROL’S SUMMARY:
Community colleges lose almost half of their freshmen before their first year is over. Administrators are carefully observing, for the first time ever, what maze of experience a typical incoming students goes through in their first three weeks on campus. Many students don’t have the coping skills to negotiate finding the right people, getting the right signatures or even finding the right classroom on time. So, what can community colleges do to streamline the process, make the steps more simple and provide more direction in that first month of school?

Additionally, how can we better equip most community college students with the wherewithal to persevere beyond the things which daunt them, intimidate
or stymie them? Certainly, many things in life are frustrating and perplexing and hard to figure out. Those who use their minds and abilities to work through road blocks, can make their way safely to the other side, ready for even more complex challenges next time. So, how do students need to be challenged more in high school to develop college and life coping skills?

ARTICLE

By STEVEN BUSHONG
March 18, 2009
Chronicle of Higher Ed

Thanks to online video sharing, academics’ lecture missteps, intentional and otherwise, are sometimes preserved for posterity.

Some students at community colleges never make it into the enrollment statistics. They drop out before the first count is taken, usually a few weeks into the semester.

A report to be released today by the Center for Community College Student Engagement seeks to help officials understand the student experience in those critical first three weeks, and how they might engage those at-risk students and prevent them from becoming dropouts.

The report, “Imagine Success: Engaging Entering Students,” is based on data from the Survey of Entering Student Engagement, or Sense, conducted this fall. Its findings come at a time when community colleges are being called on to help achieve a national goal set by President Obama: to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020.

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A Straight-Talk Survival Guide for Colleges

CAROL’S SUMMARY:
Universities and colleges are not exempt from the economic woes facing virtually every other industry across the country, yet in higher education the stakes are higher because our students will experience the blunt of the fallout in higher tuition rates and possibly a compromise in the quality of their education.Â Here are a few questions to consider:

1) How many public research universities can the nation afford?

2) WhatÂ could be the long-term consequences if ourÂ colleges fail to educate students so that they achieve upward mobility?

3) As colleges struggle to stay afloat, how can they harness the power of the students themselves to help solve some of these issues? After all, when students enter the real world of work, they will encounter similar challenges.

ARTICLE
Chronicle of Higher Education

Times are tough, very tough. The great majority of colleges are looking at 2009 and 2010 and beyond, in anticipation of the deepest budget cuts in more than a generation. But as bad as the financial situation may be, colleges can survive if they take swift and strong emergency action.

To read the entire article please visit http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=SjpTXfspzvT3nNFcmd6q5Ny6MvRKJmHr

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State Colleges Also Face Cuts in Ambitions

CAROL’S SUMMARY: Universities, many hard hit by the economy and their own endowments which have suffered record losses, are asking some hard questions about their mission, their future and the best way to deliver quality education with fewer resources than ever. It will take a lot creativity to develop ways that we can still give the majority of students access to what they need with few resources. Here are some ideas:

1) Analyze which courses, like student success, can be taught the summer before freshmen enter in an on-line, self-paced environment.

2) Recruit and train peer leaders to teach classes or assist teachers who have large class sizes in areas such as Student Success.

3) Recruit the retired to come and tutor your students for free. They have a wealth of experience which undergrads desperately need.

4) Work with faculty to hold students to higher levels of accountability. To succeed in our new global economy, students need high expectations and the personal governance to deliver their bestâ€”not just skate by. If our economy is going to turn around, students need to know that their ethic, drive and ambition will be the engine.

ARTICLE:
By TAMAR LEWIN
Published: March 16, 2009
TEMPE, Ariz. â€” When Michael Crow became president of Arizona State University seven years ago, he promised to make it â€œThe New American University,â€ with 100,000 students by 2020. It would break down the musty old boundaries between disciplines, encourage advanced research and entrepreneurship to drive the new economy, and draw in students from underserved sectors of the state.

To view entire article visit http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/us/17university.html?emc=eta1

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Where Education and Assimilation Collide

Nearly two-thirds of English learners are second or third generation Americans born in the United States. Those numbers have seen a huge spike in the last twelve years. These students, called English Language Learners, make up the fastest growing group of students in the country. In the last few years, these students have been thousands strong in rural towns and suburban districts which are all equipped to deal with their needsâ€”states like Arkansas, Georgia and North Carolina.

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Is It Time to Retrain B-Schools?

CAROL’S SUMMARY: With the current financial downfall, some blame the way business schools are taught. Schools like the University of Phoenix have become a popular alternative in the last decade because their classes are taught by business professionals, not professors studying business.Â Certainly, if traditional business schools emphasized more leadership, initiative and project-based learning more students would be â€œdoingâ€ business than studying about how to do business. Some of the case-based and project-based learning should involve consequences of poor actions as the ones we are living out right now in this depressed economy.Â If students could have a sense of the fallout of their actions, they would likely behave differently.

Questions to consider:
1. Do you agree?
2. What fundamental aspects are business schools neglecting?
3. How can business schools team up with more people from the world of business?
4. What experiences do business studentsâ€”or any student who wants to enter businessâ€”need to be a responsible, measured leader?

ARTICLE:

By KELLEY HOLLAND
Published: March 14, 2009

JOHN Thain has one. So do Richard Fuld, Stanley Oâ€™Neal and Vikram Pandit. For that matter, so does John Paulson, the hedge fund kingpin.

Yes, all five have fat bank accounts, even now, and all have made their share of headlines. But these current and former giants of finance also are all card-carrying M.B.A.â€™s.

The masterâ€™s of business administration, a gateway credential throughout corporate America, is especially coveted on Wall Street; in recent years, top business schools have routinely sent more than 40 percent of their graduates into the world of finance.

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Now, Get to Work

CAROL’S SUMMARY: Flexibility is key to surviving the competitive job market our distressed economy has created. Internships and volunteer work can give you the experienced edge employers are looking for, or skills may need to be practiced in other positions until your dream job opens up. Keeping busy networking with people who can help you or introduce you to someone key, taking an extra class or working for free under the tutelage of someone who has valuable business expertise can make all the difference.

Questions to consider:
1. If this economy is limiting your job prospects, what other positions or fields utilize the same skills? Are there any jobs or study opportunities overseas you might want to pursue?
2. Have you considered an internship or volunteer work? If you already have some of those experiences under your belt, which new volunteer job or responsibility would benefit you even more?
3. What, specifically, do you need to grow in (skills, knowledge, experience) to get the job you really want?
4. If you were recently laid off, is there some information you can take away from your former boss about how you can improve in your next position?
5. Who are the key people who can write you letters of reference which you can provide at any time?

ARTICLE:

By ANNA PRIOR
March 15, 2009

Here’s the bad news: If you are graduating from college this spring, you are facing one of the toughest job markets in years.

Employers expect to hire 22% fewer graduates than they did last spring, according to a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

“Almost every level of the job market right now is shrinking,” says Edwin Koc, director of strategic and foundation research for NACE. “You are going to have to compete for the job — as opposed to the last five years, when employers competed over you.”

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Helping Students Find a Sense of Purpose

Motivated by the increased coverage of student misbehavior, the school-reform movement is working to bring back moral education to the intellectual learning students do today. Bringing moral, or character education, back will help students see the purpose to their studies. Even lack of purpose has a deep impact on the character education of youths, showing just how important these are.

Questions to consider:

1. Do you know the importance of what is taught in each of your classes?
2. Does this or would this help you become more invested in your education?
3. What are the pros of character educationâ€”academic, emotional and social intelligence? What are the best ways to promote these issues in and out of class?
4. What are the potential costs short term and long term to avoiding the character education piece of learning?

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A Q&A With William Damon

By SUSANNAH TULLY
March 13, 2009

William Damon, a professor of education at Stanford University, has long advocated “character education” as a key component of school reform. The author of several books on the subject, his latest is The Path to Purpose: Helping Our Children Find Their Calling in Life (Free Press, 2008). The Chronicle Review asked him to discuss the role of schools in moral development and how they can encourage students to define their goals and aspirations.

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Boys and Girls Together, Taught Separately in Public School

As the youngest of five with four older brothers who taught me a lot about the real world and how to live in it, I was skeptical about single-sex education. However, after looking at the data and comparing it to programs that struggle, I suspend my initial judgment. Additionally, brain research shows that boys and girls learn differently. If principals think they can get further instructing boys in specific ways that involve challenging, bodily-kinesthetic and experiential methods, while girls are taught more specifically to how they learn, I am all for it with a few caveats:

1) Both boys and girls need to learn the qualities traditionally associated with each gender. For example, boys need to learn to slow down, ask questions, and be considerate. Girls need to learn to assert themselves, speak up for the ideas and opinions and have the strength to say â€œNoâ€ when needed.

2) Teachers will need to teach to gender strengths while developing gender weaknesses so that being in same sex
classes doesnâ€™t prove to be a long term liability.

3) Outside of school, students need many extra-curricular and social opportunities with the opposite sex. Otherwise, each gender will feel â€œdeprivedâ€ and that can cause other obvious problems.

4) Parents need to support the school in these initiatives and be involved in both same sex learning goals and activities where both sexes get to learn, grow and contribute outside of class.

With as many struggling students as our nation has now in K-12, we owe ourselves looking at the same problem in different ways, conducting longitudinal studies through middle school, high school and college.

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Michael Napolitano speaks to his fifth-grade class in the Morrisania section of the Bronx like a basketball coach. â€œYou â€” let me see you trying!â€ he insisted the other day during a math lesson. â€œCome on, faster!â€

Across the hall, Larita Hudsonâ€™s scolding is more like a therapistâ€™s. â€œThis is so sloppy, honey,â€ she prodded as she reviewed problems in a workbook. â€œRemember what I spoke to you about? About being the bright shining star that you are?â€

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