Deadly Litter

When will we wake up to the fact that littering is one of the most destructive things people do to the environment? Plastic wrappers and bottle caps are deadly! Every fishing line cut and left in the water, every cigarette package wrapper thrown into a gutter, every plastic shopping bag blowing around an alley, every pint of dumped oil, ends up somewhere...usually in a surface water system. This recently-shot series of heartbreaking photos by Chris Jordan shows how deadly these seemingly insignificant pieces of litter really are, and how far they travel.

Working, More or Less

Have your work hours, and corresponding paychecks, been cut back since the recession began? Have you or someone in your household added a part-time job to make ends meet? If so, data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta show that you have a lot of company.



If the official unemployment rate (9.8%) included those working part-time for economic reasons as well as workers who have looked for work within the last 12 months, it would be 17%.

This trend is strikingly different from past recessions, and highlights the current problem of underemployment. Can you find a job if you try hard enough? Probably yes, but it's likely to be less than full-time and less than you're qualified for.

University Pres Fires Assistant for Going to Restroom

Reginald Green was driving his boss, a university president, from Philadelphia to Washington DC. He needed to use a restroom once during the trip. But the boss said no! Huh? Who does that?

According to an article in Business Management Daily,

Green warned the president that he would 'have an accident in the car' if he wasn’t allowed to stop. The president ignored his plea. Regardless, Green drove to a rest stop and used the facilities. When Green returned to the car, the president mumbled something under his breath and refused to talk to Green the rest of the drive. The next day, Green was fired.

I guess arrogant jerks do that.

Green sued the university and won, but only because he had disclosed during his pre-employment physical that he has irritable bowel syndrome. The court ruled it was a disability covered by the Americans With Disabilities Act, and since he was hired with knowledge of his condition the university was required to accomodate his need for restroom breaks.

My question is, why don't ALL employees have the right to use the restroom when they need it?

Who Really Teaches College Classes?

One of the things some students and their parents look for when consulting US News Best College rankings is the fulltime faculty ratio. "A higher proportion of faculty who are full time scores better in the ranking model than a lower proportion," presumably because it indicates courses are taught by professors who make teaching their fulltime job, as opposed to part-timers hired off the street or something like that.

But a report by Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Ed calls into question the percent of fulltime faculty used by US News in its Best College rankings. Nebraska's numbers were among those that seem questionable. Say it ain't so!

Nebraska has plenty of company, including Georgia Tech, North Carolina State, Penn State, U of Iowa, U of Missouri-Columbia and Cornell.

The issue of inaccuracies in the rankings was first raised this month by the American Federation of Teachers, (AFT)....Focusing on the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, the AFT asked how it could be listed as having a faculty that is 100 percent full time when data submitted to the U.S. Department of Education show it has 401 part-time faculty members (compared to 1,539 full-timers).

U.S. News divides the part-time total in three, in theory because a part-time adjunct wouldn't be teaching as much as a full-time professor. Ignoring for a minute the reality than many a part-time adjunct teaches more sections than a tenured professor at a research university, applying the formula at Nebraska would not yield a 100 percent figure.

Inside Higher Ed asked Nebraska how it could claim a 100 percent full-time faculty, and the answer was that it left out all of its adjuncts, believing that was what U.S. News wanted.

The issue I think most students would consider relevant is that "the U.S. News figures...exclude instruction by graduate students -- meaning that just about every research university in the rankings would have a lower percentage if the actual section instructors were all counted." In reality, research universities use grad students to teach nearly 1/5 of their classes.

This number only counts for 5% of the faculty resources category, which is 20% of the score, so this is not a big factor (1% if my math is good). Still, it seems some clarification is in order. If being taught by fulltime faculty is important to you, US News's report won't help you figure out where to apply.

Forbes ranked West Point best college in the US

"To our way of thinking, a good college is one that meets student needs." So says Forbes.com, which released its "best college" ratings on August 5.

Do you agree with their criteria?
1. quality of the education
2. experience of the students
3. how much students achieve

Other systems, such as US News College Rankings, give heavy weight to external research funding and alumni donations. The assumption is that more money = a better school. Forbes, perhaps ironically given its business orientation, gives most of its weight to student satisfaction and success. When it does evaluate financial criteria, the focus is on the money that students spend, borrow, and ultimately earn rather than the institution's balance sheet. Their student-centered approach measures the criteria as follows.

25%: student ratings: 4 million student evaluations of courses and instructors on RateMyProfessors.com
25%: post-graduate success: equally based on enrollment-adjusted entries in Who's Who in America, and by the average salaries of graduates reported by Payscale.com
20%: average student debt after four years
17%: four-year college graduation rates
13%: number of students or faculty, adjusted for enrollment, who have won nationally competitive awards like Rhodes Scholarships or Nobel Prizes

Every school on the list is in about the top 15 percent in the country. Still, I'm disappointed that none of Nebraska's public colleges made the top 100 public colleges. University of Nebraska-Lincoln, at 463rd, is the only public college that made the list at all.

But Doane College and Nebraska Wesleyan University are in the top 100 overall, and Hastings College is 160th. I applaud them!

If you're interested, Forbes.com has a do-it-yourself ranking application that allows you to give your own weight to criteria and see how colleges stack up based on what's most important to you.

Printer Jam!

Jammed printers are a fact of life in our business, but this one created by a young worker with mailing labels was a doozy. It required a complete tear-down!

A Rant on Cost Cutting and Revenue Shortfalls

Like most other higher ed institutions, the University of Nebraska has to reduce its planned budget, even though tuition will increase by more than 4% this year. Some of the cost-cutting by other US colleges would probably make sense to Nebraskans, such as giving scholarships to students who do maintenance and landscaping over the summer. Public funding for higher education has dropped tremendously over the past thirty years, mainly because its historical share of state and federal funding has been co-opted by the rapidly growing costs of Medicaid and the loss of sales tax revenues due to internet sales. Tuition, as we all know, has risen dramatically and that trend shows no sign of changing.

How much of a problem is this, and what should be done about it?

In my opinion, the worst outcome of the drop in public funding is that it has forced higher ed institutions to act like businesses. We sell our rights, names, logos, stadium seats, and property to the highest bidder. We make money off of student purchases of everything from bank accounts to soft drinks, driving up their costs for things that aren't education-related. We sport corporate logos where college slogans used to be. My university has even agreed to let a corporation puts its name on one of our master's degrees. Research funding has always been policy and market-driven, and I would argue rightly so...but we now allow funders and donors unprecedented control over our programs and outputs, simply because we need the money.

As I see it, the state's interests used to come first, followed closely by the student's interests. Now, we chase dollars like a profit-driven company. It's a major change of focus, and an unfortunate one.

The states need more revenue, starting with sales tax on internet and catalog purchases that are equal to the sales taxes brick-and-mortar stores must collect and send to the state. Also, now that we have a service-based economy, services must be taxed the same way products always have been. Sure it would be painful to pay taxes on everything we purchase, but it's fair.

Entitlement programs are unbelievably costly and growing fast. Can we go back to calling these payments what they really are, that is, public assistance or welfare? This is the United States of America! Nobody should be "entitled" to free money. I think our society has its priorities upside-down. For example, we give away more college scholarships to rich students than middle class or poor ones. The highest agricultural subsidies go to huge agribusinesses, and social security payments are highest for the people who earned the most money throughout their lives. That's because we have taken on an entitlement mentality instead of a need-based public assistance mentality.

The two changes I suggest--sales tax for all purchases and need-based public assistance--might not balance the public books completely, but they would close most of the gap. They would also create a business and welfare climate that is more empowering and fair than the current one.

Federal Standards for K-12 Education--Good or Bad?

This USA Today article does a good job of summarizing the nationwide initiative to standardize the--well, standards--of elementary and secondary public education. In my opinion, the Common Core State Standards Initiative is long overdue. It undermines "local control" but I'm convinced that might be a good thing, even for Nebraska. Reduced administrative costs are an obvious plus; other upsides include easier transitions for students who move to other states, better education for low-income and historically under-performing institutions, and making public education more attractive to middle & upper-class parents (reducing their incentives to choose private schools and increasing crucial political support for public education).

Memorial Day Poem

The Bivouac of the Dead
By Theodore O'Hara, 1847

The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
The soldier's last tattoo'
No more on life's parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few;
On Fame's eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread;
But Glory guards with solemn round
The bivouac of the dead.

Are women steered to the "slow train?"

Watch and decide for yourself.

The related article states, "Although family responsibilities might dampen some women’s willingness to seek demanding positions at the top, the research data suggest that organizational practices sharply curb women’s opportunities for top positions."

You can download the entire report or listen to the podcast at http://www.ddiworld.com/thoughtleadership/holdingwomenback.asp

--Holding Women Back: Troubling Discoveries and Best Practices for Helping Female Leaders Succeed—A Special Report from DDI's Global Leadership Forecast 2008|2009 by Ann Howard, Ph.D., and Richard S. Wellins, Ph.D.

Hat tip: Great Leadership

Research on Generosity

I like this brief summary of several reputable studies, surveys and statistics related to charitable giving. The list of childhood experiences that predict future giving affirm my philosophy, which I learned from military leadership training. That is, the best way to influence others is to lead by example. The best way to learn something is observe, then practice doing it yourself (as the Army manual says, "Soldiers learn by doing.")

Statistics show that poorer Americans out-give richer ones in terms of percentage of their income. This has been true for many years, and I've seen lots of different hypotheses about why. I like this article because it links those statistics with my personal belief, which is that this phenomenon begins in childhood. For what it's worth, here's my take on it.

In general, rich children are used to having things done for them, see their parents less, and participate in competitive activities such as select sports teams and academic camps. Poor children do more things for others (mow Grandma's lawn, for example) to help the family save money, see their parents more, and participate in activities that don't cost much money, which tend to be less competitive and more service-oriented.

Surveys show that wealthy children know about and believe in the values of giving and sharing. In my opinion, they just don't have the opportunities to see and practice those values in action as much as poorer children do. Rich kids spend most of their time working on their own goals and being entertained with activities designed specifically for their peer group. I think this emphasis on personal development leads to high achievement...but low charitable giving.

Demand for Sustainable Agriculture Education Not Met--Yet

For a long time I've been puzzled that the University of Nebraska doesn't have a major in sustainable agriculture. NU sponsors lots of seminars and conferences on the topic, but hasn't yet made a commitment to an academic program. Given its land grant mission, it seems like there would be more leadership from our ag-based university.
But according to this article Inside Higher Ed (Green Revolution, April 23, 2009), very few colleges have formal programs even though demand is high for education in this area of study, while enrollment in traditional agriculture programs has been dropping for years.
Are faculty torn between the companies that fund their labs and the students who want to learn how to farm without toxic chemicals? I have seen agribusiness companies play hardball with researchers, so it's certainly possible. The article title is ironic, since the original "green revolution" of the 1960's and 70's was about increasing yields through application of fertilizers and pesticides. I wonder, if American land grant universities don't get on board, who will train the next generation of farmers? Maybe this place http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/education/ecologic/youngdesigners.htm.

About the photo: Buffalo fly trap, low-tech way to rid cattle of insects. The trap brushes flies off cattle as they walk through. Courtesy CSIRO Australia. Photo Dr Robert Sutherst. From Australia Innovates:an on-line guide to innovation in Australia's industries

Beautiful Photos from Space

Boston.com published 24 gorgeous images of Saturn, taken by the Cassini spacecraft and compiled by NASA. The photo captions are brief and informative. Enjoy!

Is College Tuition Too High?

I'm disturbed by this. We've heard about the rising costs of college for years, but I didn't realize how much it's outpaced everything else. No wonder our students are starting their adult lives with huge debts that take them many years to pay off! According to an article in Salon.com,

"In the past several decades, the cost of higher education has climbed at an astounding pace -- faster than the Consumer Price Index, faster even than the cost of medical care. Over the past 30 years, the average annual cost of college tuition, fees, and room and board has increased nearly 100 percent, from $7,857 in 1977-78 to $15,665 in 2007-08 (in constant 2006-07 dollars). Median household income, on the other hand, has risen a mere 18 percent over that same period, from about $42,500 to just over $50,000. College costs, in other words, have gone up at more than five times the rate of income."

Another aspect of this situation that doesn't seem right is the distribution of financial aid grants, with more of the money going to higher-income students than to lower-income students.

"Engines of Inequality," a 2006 report by the Education Trust, a national education advocacy and policy organization, found that state flagship universities and a group of major research universities spent $257 million in 2003 on financial aid for students from families earning more than $100,000 a year. Those same universities spent only $171 million on aid to students from families who made less than $20,000 a year. Similarly, between 1995 and 2003, according to the report, grant aid from the same public universities to students from families making $80,000 or more increased 533 percent, while grant aid to families making less than $40,000 increased only 120 percent....Indeed, the highest achieving students from high-income families -- those who earned top grades, completed the full battery of college prep courses, and took AP courses as well -- are nearly four times more likely than low-income students with exactly the same level of academic accomplishment to end up in a highly selective university," the report concluded.

I'm sure these trends are due to economic principles like the law of supply and demand, not some conspiracy by elites to keep the rest of us down. There's a much greater demand for college degrees than there used to be, so naturally the price becomes higher. And taking better care of high-income families at the front end probably pays off in greater alumni support in the long run. But these statistics reportedly apply to state universities and major research institutions, which have a mission to serve public interests. Doesn't seem right to me.

--Gated communities of learning:Rising tuition and sinking bank accounts are turning the nation's colleges into bastions of inequality. By Andy Kroll (originally appeared on TomDispatch)

It was April 1, but it was no joke. The Los Angeles Times ran a story in Top News, about an "administrative error" at the University of California San Diego, that disappointed many families and embarrassed the university.

"All 28,000 applicants who have been rejected by the University of California, San Diego received an email congratulating them on their acceptance, only to receive another notification admitting there was a mistake....UCSD admissions director Mae Brown called the snafu an administrative error....'We accessed the wrong database,' Brown said."

Believe it or not, it gets worse.

"Morgan Currier, a senior at the Cleveland High School....checked her page on the UCSD applications portal and learned her status hadn't changed, so she called the admissions office to get the straight story. "We got the answering machine with a message left over from Christmas, saying 'Happy Holidays,' " said Currier...." --U of California San Diego Admissions Gaffe Dashes Students' Hopes, by Gale Holland and Seema Mehta, Los Angeles Times, April 1, 2009

Yikes!

According to the article, similar mistakes have been made in the last five years by Cornell University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

I don't know about you, but after reading this I'm making sure my office voice mail recording is current and double-checking the recipients of my emails!

Defending Our Own Honor

Instructors from the TAKE Foundation are coming to Lincoln next week to train females in self defense. They do great work. One of the best things my husband ever did for me was insist that I take a self defense class. Recent attacks on women at their workplaces in Lincoln are a grim reminder that we aren't teaching girls what to do. But we can...and should. Watch the video and get motivated!

Stimulating Science

"After years of flat federal funding that dimmed morale and stalled basic research, the federal stimulus package has created a frenzy for "lab-ready" science, with a $21.5 billion investment in research and development.

'I think you're noticing a spring in people's steps, in the recognition that a real contribution can be made by researchers across the country,' said Kevin Casey, associate vice president in the office of government, community, and public affairs at Harvard University.

'Research funding has been down a lot in the last eight to 10 years,' said Peg AtKisson, director of proposal development at Tufts University. 'It's just been very rough, and it's like the winter we just had, and the stimulus package is spring.'"

Scientists excited by prospect of stimulus spending - The Boston Globe

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Turning Education into Professional Success

I'm not a fan of commercials at the movies, but I'm inspired by stories like this. UNL graduate and Nebraska native Michael Montgomery (right) is just 26 but has a solid portfolio of professional work on his resume. Now the film ad he co-wrote and produced has won the 2009 Coca Cola Refreshing Filmmaker Award. He worked with Jerome Sable (left), whom he met in graduate school at USC. The film is called "Meanwhile" and features some world-class dancers. Watch it!

Office Pets

Our office is fish friendly! Shown are my pet, Pepe; home of the executive assistant's recently deceased pet Neil Patrick Harris (RIP); Alpha, the director's pet; the project assistant's unnamed plastic pair; and Wanda, pet of the business manager. Our office pets add a welcome bit of color and movement to the workplace!

Leadership That Makes a Difference

I'm proud of the RA who planned this training for the women in her dorm. The instructor showed them how to fight off an attacker. What a difference from the so-called "self defense" class I had in junior high school, where the girls were taught to submit to an attacker and give him anything he wanted, so he hopefully wouldn't kill us.

"About 30 girls from Cather Residence Hall spent their evening on Feb. 22 participating in a self-defense training course....instructor Ben Coleman led the class, and said the students were open-minded, interested, honest and ready to learn. The students said Coleman was easy to listen to, and a lot of laughs. Jackie Adams, a senior biology/pre-med major and a resident assistant in Cather, was in charge of the event, and took a seminar with Coleman during RA training in August."

This quote gave me goosebumps: “What I picked up on was like, Don’t be afraid to be forceful.” You go, girl!

--Cather Resident Learn Self Defense Tactics, Daily Nebraskan

Soft Skills and Chemistry

In this 5-minute interview, Joan Burge talks about the importance of "soft skills" and "chemistry" in the success of administrative professionals. If the headline link goes out of date, look for the Office Dynamics 2.24.09 video on http://www.wxmi.com/pages/video/
Good stuff!

Popularity

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is the third most popular university in the country, according to US News & World Report's method of ranking popularity by the rate of accepted students who enroll known in the admissions world as "yield." Whether this is the right way to measure popularity may be debatable. But the fact that UNL's yield is higher than Stanford's says something about the combination of quality and value offered by Nebraska's flagship research institution. Go Big Red!

Crime and Quality of Life

I'm proud of these statistics showing that Lincoln, Nebraska has steadily lowered its crime rate for the past 17 years. The rate dropped from 71.4 per 1000 in 1991 to 40.1 per 1000, down to 1970's levels. That's not to say we don't have serious problems. We certainly have victims, whose pain should never be minimized. Of course there are criminals who revel in malice and violence, or suffer from inadequate mental health care and unresolved social problems. But the residents of Lincoln can expect a high overall quality of life (known in Nebraska as "The Good Life"). Enforcement officers can't do it alone and I think everyone, including the thousands of students who come from other places for college, deserve a pat on the back for rejecting crime and making Lincoln a great place to live. For a visitor's view of Nebraska, visit Carey Smith's inspirational blog, Going the Distance!: Nebraska...The Good Life (Posted November 4, 2007).

Online Gallery Provides Close-ups of Masterpieces

The Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid Spain uses technology borrowed from Google Earth to provide fantastic, zoom-able views of 2000 artworks. Browse the Prado's web site to find out what's in the collection, then set your monitor to its highest resolution and search the online gallery by artist or title to view amazing masterpieces by Goya, El Greco, Leoni, Bayeu, and many others. The descriptions are brief yet informative. But the exciting thing about the online gallery is the photography, which is stunning and allows you to see incredible detail when you use the zoom feature!

The Important Difference Between Nonprofits and Businesses

I've been reading Jim Collins's monograph, "Good to Great and the Social Sectors," which is about the differences between business and nonprofit organizations. I work for a university, and people often say it should be run more like a business. University administrators, who hear it more than I ever will, have taken that sentiment to heart in many ways.

But management expert Collins explains in this little book why that's the wrong approach. For example, he points out "...most non-business leaders simply do not have the concentrated decision power of a business CEO." He talks about two types of leadership: executive and legislative. While executive leaders have the power to make unilateral decisions, in legislative leadership nobody--not even the chief executive--has enough structural power to make decisions on his or her own. That's one reason why we can't run a university like a business. According to Collins, because of this relative lack of power, "Legislative leadership relies more upon persuasion, political currency, and shared interests to create the conditions for the right decisions to happen."

Another idea he explores is the role of money as an indicator of success: "In business, money is both an input (a resource for achieving greatness) and an output (a measure of greatness). In the social sectors, money is only an input, and not a measure of greatness." This is not as obvious as it seems. Educational institutions are pressured to justify their activities economically. We're forced to measure research productivity, technology transfer, public and private support, services, popularity, even educational projects, in dollars. In Nebraska, I've seen this pressure grow in the last 15 years.

Of course, outcomes and indicators other than money are identified in our strategic planning, and even celebrated from time to time. Collins proposes selecting alternative indicators of success that I find very intriguing. His section on "rethinking the economic engine without a profit motive" has great advice for re-phrasing the question "How much money do we make?" This is a short, smart read that may interest anyone who is part of a nonprofit organization.