7/28/2010
The Liberty Vindicator
Lee College offers Entrepreneurship as a career change option
Retrain ~ Retool ~ Renew
Thinking of Entrepreneurship as a career change is becoming more common in our uncertain economy. Lee College and the Small Business Development Center (SBDA) have teamed up to help individuals follow the dream of business management or business ownership. SBDC is an organization funded by the Small Business Administration (SBA). Its host college is Lee College. Lee College is now offering a Business Management Degree and Entrepreneurship Certificate.
Tracie Hervey, of the Lee College Business Administration and Management Office says “This generation is not at all afraid to take risk, particularly on themselves. They have a lot of great ideas and are not afraid to showcase them for others. One also finds that in the absence of employer loyalty and lifetime employment, people are leveraging their ideas in hopes of taking control of their destiny.”
When asked about the best benefits of the Entrepreneurship program, Hervey says they are “… control and flexibility. In most instances the business owner is active in the prosaic, knows the customers and the community in which he or she serves. (Small Business) Owners can adjust more quickly than larger organizations, which should position them for advantage.”
The Lee College SBDC offers one-on-one consulting, information and assistance to foster economic growth in the community. Their advice is free, confidential and beneficial for anyone considering opening a business, or further developing an existing business. The SBDC office can also help with preparing necessary documentation for a conventional loan or an SBA guaranteed loan.
SBDC Director Steve McCorquodale said “The program is great for anyone in business that is looking for management assistance; it’s a great source to start with. We try to advise you and help direct and assist you in starting a business, or with any business needs you may have. Because of the state of the economy, many people have been laid off from their jobs. Some middle-aged people, who have been laid off more than once, decide to leave corporate America to go into business for themselves, to enjoy the independence of being self-employed.”
The SBDC office is located at 1496 San Jacinto Mall, in the JCPenney wing, Baytown, Texas 77521, serving all South Liberty County ISDs, as well as Anahuac, East Chambers, Goose Creek, Crosby and Huffman ISDs. Office hours are M-F, 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. For further information on the SBDC, visit: http://www.lee.edu/sbdc
Lee College registration for Fall 2010 is ongoing. Returning students can register online by logging on to myLCampus with the web ID and password. New students, must complete an admissions application, provide proof of residency, provide high school or college transcripts and see a counselor. Fall classes start Mon., Aug. 30. For more info., visit www.lee.edu/retrain or email: BeARebel@lee.edu or call 281-425-6260.
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2 JCJC Faculty Chosen For American Spirit Tour - WDAM - Channel 7 - Serving Hattiesburg, Laurel and the Pine Belt
ELLISVILLE, MS (JONES COUNTY JUNIOR COLLEGE) - A pair of Jones County Junior College instructors will have an impressive summer experience to share with their students this fall. Faculty members Finee Ruffin and Joe Larry Mauldin have been chosen to participate in the Bernelli American Spirit Tour. They are traveling to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania July 29 for an eight-day entrepreneurial enrichment program.
Ten members were selected nationwide from the NACCE ( National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship) and received scholarships to participate in the American Spirit Tour. Ruffin and Mauldin will meet entrepreneurs and study their businesses on-site. The participants will identify aspects of the American spirit, which inspires individuals to become entrepreneurs.
Ruffin, who teaches fashion merchandising, has been at JCJC for three years. Since that time, enrollment in the fashion merchandising program has more than doubled. According to Ruffin, sixty-seven percent of the current marketing and fashion merchandising students at JCJC aspire to open their own business.
"I firmly believe that entrepreneurship is the key to building a healthy economy, which in turn builds a healthy community. As a member of that community, it is my responsibility to provide as much help, education, encouragement and knowledge as possible to the next generation of entrepreneurs, " said Ruffin.
"The methods I learn on the Bernelli American Spirit Tour will enrich the lives of all of my current students as well as those to come," she added.
Mauldin, a business instructor, is an alumnus of JCJC and received both Bachelor and Masters degrees in Business from the University of Southern Mississippi. Being an American Spirit Tour participant will give him the opportunity to enrich his business curriculum in the classroom.
"Integrating entrepreneurial enrichment into our courses is important in meeting the objective of equipping students with skills to increase their chances of success when starting their own businesses," said Mauldin.
He believes real-world business experiences inspire student learning.
"As we discover more about best practices in developing entrepreneurship initiatives in the community college setting, we look forward to using the Bernelli experience to enhance our efforts to teach entrepreneurship at Jones," added Mauldin.
JCJC offers numerous options to business majors including the fashion merchandising and marketing program. JCJC is an accredited institution offering over 100 associate degree programs and certificate options. For more information, visit www.jcjc.edu.
©2010 WDAM. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
City Brights: Sarah Granger : It's hip to be netroots
It's hip to be netroots
This past weekend, many of the best and brightest progressive and new media minds met in Las Vegas to discuss the state of the nation on a variety of levels, from tough timely issues like immigration reform to tactics for using tools like Twitter in campaigns. Netroots Nation, surprisingly organized in a more traditional conference setting, provided some really smart sessions.
Formerly called the Yearly Kos Convention, Netroots Nation is run by a San Francisco based nonprofit organization, including an educational component that helps provide resources for progressive causes. Founded six years ago by volunteers in the Daily Kos community (headquartered in Berkeley, but a widely dispersed, remote group of collaborative activists and bloggers), Netroots Nation has grown to upwards of 2300 attendees this year - many of whom volunteered to make the event a success.
It's not just the social media geeks we see here in the Bay Area that attend, from the original online organizers at AlterNet to the uber-chic millennials. Bloggers and organizers from all walks of life found themselves in Las Vegas, meeting and tweeting for the cause. And as Politico noted, NN has become one of the annual destinations for candidates and elected officials seeking both media attention and support from the grassroots Democratic groups. Unions also came out in force: AFLCIO, AFT, and NEA to name a few. It's almost becoming - dare I say it - mainstream to attend.
As a more recent member of their advisory committee (disclaimer), I haven't played as large a role as a lot of others in the community, but over the past few years, I've observed enough to report that this is one of the more useful and well run conferences - on stage and backstage - for online organizers and bloggers that's out there. For anyone who considers him/herself a progressive, it's worth researching.
And for those on the conservative side, the smaller Right Online conference also took place in Las Vegas this week. Wearing my non-partisan hat, I would've liked to have attended to see what it was all about, but I was too busy hanging out with 2300 of my closest friends up the street.
Posted By: Sarah Granger (Email) | July 28 2010 at 12:18 PM
Listed Under: Government, New Media, Politics
msnbc.com business - Do you think Millennials are more disadvantaged than previous generations?
I couldn't answer that poll question for one.
I think "millennials", are in a huge bind ... a huge amount of college debt, in order to "better themselves" with college degree(s) so they are not be a burden to society and their families ... isn't that what we want in our society? We want our citizens to take care of themselves.
And their parents, now, who possibly/probably carry even more of that debt as well.
When we were in college, the nearby state college was less than $2000 per year tuition and fees ... on average over 4 years. We lived at home, and worked part time to pay for classes ... the room and board was mostly paid by mom and dad. No debt upon graduation.
But we made great salaries as a reward ... and many of us could afford to send our kids to private universities, but our kids had to take out at least $20K in loans to help pay their part.
My kids are fortunate. The right timing, and career choice is everything ... My youngest started her full-time dream job this month, and oldest getting good raises even now.
My husband lost the job that allowed all this, and is finally under-employed ... but it is clear that among those over 50, it is so hard to find jobs ... using every means available.
So today, my answer depends on which generation I dwell on ... in this family we are doing well, maybe a little more on the boring, cheap side, but things could be worse.
I just know that looking for a job is hard right now, for everyone who needs a job or wants a new job.
No matter who you are, things could probably be even worse, if you honestly think about it and make the beat of it. Or not.
Finance and Commerce » Bereft of technologies, millennials vie to become lawyers
Posted: 4:31 pm Wed, July 28, 2010
By MARK A. COHENMark A. Cohen
I was reading (via MinnPost) an excellent Christian Science Monitor story - “Are iPads, smart phones and the mobile web rewiring the way we think?” - when I started to think of the potential implications for the 800 or so law students signed up to take the bar exam this week at St. Paul’s RiverCenter.
The gist of the article is that new technologies have both made us smarter (by exposing us to and teaching us to navigate a wealth of information) and simultaneously dumber (by reducing our capacity for deep thought through narrowing our attention spans).
The bar exam is, of course, something where it would be helpful to have the capacity for deep thought. OK, maybe you don’t need it for the multistate portion, but for the essay exams at least.
I called Margaret Corneille, executive director of the Board of Law Examiners, to see if there had been any changes in the technologies students can use since the antediluvian days when I took the exam. (As I recall, we just chiseled an A, B or C onto a stone tablet then.)
As it turns out, there’s only one major change - about 85 percent of test takers type out their answers on a computer rather than the old-fashioned furious scribbling into a blue book. However, no other computer assistance is available.
Thus, would-be lawyers from Generation Y have to leave behind their smart phones, iPads, iPods and other portable electronic devices. The Christian Science Monitor story tells the tale of one youngster who, stripped of his electronic gadgets for a week, wound up getting lost in his own neighborhood. Hopefully, that won’t happen to any of Minnesota’s bar exam takers. On the other hand, maybe somebody that clueless ought not to be a lawyer anyway.
Corneille told me that exam takers are only allowed in a pencil (on multistate day), a pen (on essay day) and “Kleenex.” The Kleenex, I suppose, serves the dual functions of letting you clear out your nose and giving you something to cry into if things don’t go your way.
But the current generation of lawyers need not worry. Despite their allegedly short attention spans, there is no evidence the bar-passage rate is going down. Minnesota’s pass rate - which hovers at about 90 percent - remains one the highest in the country.
So what does all this electronic gadgetry mean for meaningful thought and discourse in the long run? I’d tell you, but my cell is ringing right now and I have a couple of e-mails to finish …
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 at 4:31 pm and is filed under Commentary, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
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United States Center for Entrepreneurship Launches Entrepreneurship Academy at StartMyBusiness.com
Carl Treleaven’s content provides immediate, action-oriented guides that get the entrepreneur to focus on business funding at its primary core. The Angel Investors and Secrets to Capital class is great for anyone searching for business capital and can save Angel Investor Groups time and money by having better prepared entrepreneurs.
Tampa, FL (Vocus) July 28, 2010
The United States Center for Entrepreneurship has teamed up with renowned national industry experts to provide comprehensive online entrepreneurship education.
The StartMyBusiness.com website provides access to critical lessons for how to start a business.
USCFE’s Official Startup Checklist provides step-by-step detailed planning for aspiring entrepreneurs across numerous topics found in each module.
The Academy's Angel Investors and Secrets to Capital module, led by Carl Treleaven of New World Angels, helps prepare entrepreneurs to present to Angel Investment Groups and other funding sources.
Many times, prospective investment recipients are ill prepared for the presentation process leaving Angel Investors yearning for critical information. While some Angel groups coach the presenting entrepreneur prior to a presentation, others expect the entrepreneur to fully defend their business model without any guidance.
This module takes the applicant through a guidance process, detailing what is important to the Angel Investor, not what is important to the entrepreneur.
David H. Meadows, USCFE's Business Consultant says, "Carl Treleaven’s content provides immediate, action-oriented guides that get the entrepreneur to focus on business funding at its primary core. The Angel Investors and Secrets to Capital class is great for anyone searching for business capital and can save Angel Investor Groups time and money by having better prepared entrepreneurs.”
The economy has clearly had a negative impact on fund-raising for new businesses, which has led many businesses to search for funding solutions such as angel investors. Until the economy becomes stable again, business owners will be seeking cash wherever they can find it.
"I believe aspiring entrepreneurs seeking cash for their business can truly improve their fund-raising results by applying Carl’s angel investor lessons" says Meadows.
Learn more via the United States Center for Entrepreneurship website at StartMyBusiness.com or USCFE.com.
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Oil-Drill Moratorium Hits Small Businesses - TheStreet
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*Oil Data in Market Overview is Brent Crude Pricing
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TheStreet's enterprise databases running Oracle are professionally monitored and managed by Pythian Remote DBA.
Quotes delayed at least 20 minutes for all exchanges. Market Data provided by Interactive Data. Company fundamental data provided by Morningstar. Earnings and ratings provided by Zacks. Mutual fund data provided by Valueline. ETF data provided by Lipper. Terms & Conditions. Powered and implemented by Interactive Data Managed Solutions.
TheStreet Ratings updates stock ratings daily. However, if no rating change occurs, the data on this page does not update. The data does update after 90 days if no rating change occurs within that time period.
IDC calculates the Market Cap for the basic symbol to include common shares only. Year-to-date mutual fund returns are calculated on a monthly basis by Value Line and posted mid-month.
*Oil Data in Market Overview is Brent Crude Pricing
Advanced Entrepreneurship: Your Every Move, Your Culture - Stever Robbins - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review
Culture. It's subtle, it's everywhere, and it can make or break you. Zefer Corp was an internet consulting start-up whose CEO, Tony Tjan (also an HBR.org blogger), deliberately created a culture of youth, hipness, and hard work. Everything from the loftlike space with translucent-walled meeting areas to the young workforce went into the mix. High-caliber job candidates came to Zefer, despite better offers, because the culture itself was such a strong draw.
Culture determines who will work for you, who stays, and who quits. Once formed, culture is nearly impossible to change. People who work well within the culture quickly self-select. And those who don't fit leave.
In growing companies more than anywhere else, culture is tightly tied to the CEO.
The CEO Sets the Culture.
In a hierarchy, people look up for approval. When a frontline store clerk sneezes, people hand him a tissue. When a CEO sneezes, people rush to the water cooler. "What did that sneeze mean? Was she bored, and sneezing to cover it up?" Deliberately or not, the CEOs actions send constant signals that begin shaping everyone's behavior."Walking the talk" is critical for a CEO because people imitate the CEO. If they say one thing and do another, people will follow their actions, not their words. They need to be a living example of the culture they want to create. In a start-up, since everyone has regular contact with the CEO, everything she does signals what is and isn't OK.
Good CEOs Attend to Visible Culture
CEOs also influence culture with visual cues, for example, the design of the office. Take a home products company that started life in an extremely nice space. It became easy for employees to think they were already successful, and to rather cavalierly burn through their seed money. In contrast, LA-based Evolution Robotics's CEO stocked the warehouse office with desks made from doors atop filing cabinets. The space itself said "lean and mean," better than any lecture about cash flow.Dress codes also shape culture. Scott Cook, co-founder of Intuit (makers of Quicken) set a casual tone by wearing jeans and a windbreaker, while tech pioneer Charlie Bachman wore a suit every day at his company. Clothing choices visibly signal attitudes toward formality and conduct.
Other visible signs of culture include work-hour flexibility, telecommuting ability, and so on. In entrepreneurial companies, all policies comprising the visible culture are created with the CEO's involvement.
Great CEOs Attend to Invisible Culture
Much of culture is invisible, however, in the form of the processes the company uses to get things done. These aspects of culture can be shaped only with deliberate attention. Great CEOs shape the invisible culture.Decision making. Decision making is where a company's values come to life (or death, depending). When a company is forced to choose between two alternatives, that choice sends everyone a powerful signal about how to behave. It's easy to say, "we care about quality and we care about profit." But when forced to choose between shipping a low-quality product to make profit numbers and slipping a ship date until a product is ready for prime time, what actually happens will speak volumes about what this company values most. The CEO is almost always party to such difficult decisions, and can shape them to help shape the culture.
Who participates in decisions also sends a signal. If one function (marketing, finance, customer service) regularly gets their way, the others gradually take second place. If one person speaks just loudly enough to shut everyone else down, you get a culture that values heat over light.
When a company regularly preaches one set of values, and the CEO condones decisions that trumpet a different set of values, you'll create a cynical culture. One high-tech CEO preached quality but knowingly released defective products and simply budgeted for the subsequent recall. Employees circulated articles extolling the company's commitment to customers, with handwritten margin comments tallying up the lies.
Compensation. People do what you pay them for, which makes money, titles, and responsibility powerful shapers of culture. A CEO who promotes friends and family member sends a clear message: if you're a high performer, great. But family comes first, regardless. Young companies are just forming compensation systems. Thoughtful design is important. Tying customer service bonuses to number of calls per hour can cause reps to shortchange customers just to make call quotas. A culture will develop that's time oriented, rather than customer oriented.
One way compensation warps a culture is by rewarding outcomes over process. For several years in the early 2000s, mortgage lenders's compensation was tied to outcomes — mortgages written — rather than process (quality underwriting). Oops. Compensation has huge cultural implications, and the CEO has final say on compensation.
Mistake Management. The final piece of invisible culture is how mistakes are handled. If mistakes are punished, you'll build a risk-averse, sycophantic culture that plays it safe rather than thinking outside the box. If mistakes are treated as learning and supported by the reward systems, you'll grow a culture that is willing and eager to experiment and innovate.
Stever Robbins is a serial entrepreneur, top-10 iTunes business podcaster ("The Get-it-Done Guy"), and CEO of Stever Robbins, Inc., an entrepreneurial consulting and coaching firm. He teaches at Babson College on building social capital. His first book, The Get-it-Done Guy's 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More, is coming out this September.
5 Examples of How Schools Are Using Social Media to Enhance Learning | Likeable Content Daily
By Jenna Lebel
Social Media is about listening, joining a conversation, and entering a dialogue. It is no wonder that classrooms are relying on social media to enhance students’ learning experiences. From live streaming Twitter feeds to a digital classroom portal, educators and students alike are finding a benefit in the integration of new media into the classroom. Here are 5 examples of how social media is becoming the newest teachers’ aide. Do you think social media has a place in the classroom? Can you think of other great examples? Share in the comments section below.
Stanford University
Stanford University uses its fan page on Facebook as the ultimate resource for students. Students have access to faculty and student projects and can get inspiration for their own projects there. But that’s not what makes this case unique. Stanford leverages Facebook to host faculty office hours. Students (fans) post questions to the wall for a specific faculty member and that faculty member answers the questions during his/her assigned “office hours” via video or the wall. Stanford’s online office hours do not replace in person office hours at the university, but they do make it easier for students to find answers to questions quickly, without leaving their dorm room.
Purdue University
Purdue University uses the Hotseat application which integrates Facebook, Twitter and text messaging to help students communicate during class. Students simply use social networks or SMS to comment and ask questions on the class material as the class proceeds. The messages are projected onto a screen, allowing everyone in the class including the professor to see the messages. So far, the new media component in Purdue’s classrooms has been well received by students and faculty. Professor Sugato Chakravarty sees social media as a valuable tool for enhancing learning. He explains, “The students are engaged in the discussions and, for the most part, they are asking relevant questions.”
University Laboratory High School, Illinois
High School teacher Steve Rayburn wanted his students to read Dante’s Divine Comedy and get excited about it. His non-traditional assignment was called “Twitter in Hell.” Students were required to read the Dante classic and write 140-character tweets describing each level in hell as if they were Dante writing to his beloved Beatrice. Rayburn claimed that his kids instantly took to the project.
Marquette University
Through Skype, Spanish students at Marquette University participate in a virtual language exchange. Each student is assigned an English-learning counterpart from South America and engages in frequent webcam chats with their digital pen-pal. Professor Janet Banhidi claims that by using Skype each student gets an authentic experience and has access to their own personal tutor.
University of Texas at Dallas
History professor Monica Rankin has employed the “Twitter Experiment” to her classroom lectures for over a year now. She sets up Twitter accounts for her 300+ students and uses Twitter to encourage participation among them and organize and transmit topics, discussions and questions. In her syllabus, she assigns a hashtag to each class discussion topic making it easier for students to search and index those topics. During each class, the live feed of all tweets using the designated hashtag are projected on a large screen for all to see.
Inner Child Inspirational quote of the day. | Soul Hangout
Have a soulful and playful day./night my beautiful friend on both sides of the sun.