October 9, 2009

Welcome to another (foggy) Friday! Hope it’s been a productive week for all of you.

I want to start with a great student story. Early last Friday morning I was walking into the Airport Café in Urbana for a breakfast meeting. I saw some high-school-age students walking out, and I asked them if they were students in our Aviation Occupations Programs. Sure enough they were, and they shared with me that they meet for breakfast every Friday morning before class. While we were eating breakfast, the waitress asked us if those students were ours. We claimed them (of course), and she went on to tell us they were the most polite students she had ever seen. She said even one of the other customers had made a point of telling the students how well-behaved they were. I think we could put just about any of our students in a similar situation and they’d make us just as proud! Be sure to tell them so when they do.

Wednesday evening I attended the Logan County Chamber of Commerce Annual Meeting. This is always a great event at which some of our local leaders are recognized. The theme was “Your Story is Our Story,” and local businesses and other organizations were invited to put a plaque about their businesses at the tables (we were well represented!) One of the neat things mentioned was that there are nine companies that have been in business in Logan County for over 100 years. Can you name any? This year, the Chamber Ambassador of the Year Award went to Carrie Reynolds with Alan Galvez Insurance, the Integrity in Business Award went to Alan Galvez Insurance, and the Richard J. Rupp Leadership Award went to Rick Gildow, President of Transportation Research Center. Communities are only as strong as their leaders, and we’re fortunate to have citizens of this caliber giving of their time and talents to Logan County!

Thursday morning I attended a “Community Conversation on Workforce” in Dublin which brought local businesses and education leaders together to talk about how to bridge the gap between the two groups in preparing our future workforce. One of the business representatives was from a software development company, and she talked about how much difficulty she had navigating the K-12 educational system to facilitate high school internships at her company. My ears perked up, of course, and I spoke to her afterward about how we in career-tech are well positioned to have our students participate in internships (and you can bet I got her contact information!) We also heard a really good speaker (Mark Milliron with Catalyze Learning International) who described several projects around the country which have helped companies to work with schools to prepare the young workforce for the road ahead. As he said (and we all know), in the United States we have an industrial age school system model on an agrarian calendar attempting to prepare students for an information age. That presents a lot of challenges! We work hard in career-tech to be sure our students are prepared for the rapidly changing workplace they’ll work in, and this presentation challenged me to make sure we do an even better job at that!

A big part of Dr. Milliron’s presentation dealt with educational technology. We’re one of the few schools brave enough to give students e-mail accounts to use while at school. While I know this gives our Technology Department a fair amount of grief as they try to police the “over-users” of e-mail, it also provides a wonderful opportunity for us as staff to interact with students. I hear from students now that I know I never would have without e-mail. Recently, I received an e-mail from a senior in Animal Management telling me she wants to do her senior project on attracting wildlife by enhancing their habitat. She is specifically interested in attracting birds, and she asked if there was an area on campus she could do her research. (And she thanked me for my time!) What a neat project. I was happy to connect her with our Facilities & Grounds Department so that she could identify areas on campus to do research, and I was also happy to provide her with a resource through Adult Education (a gentleman who has taught ornithology). I’m so glad she included me, and I wish her the best!

Standing in line for lunch one day this week, I saw a young lady use the hand sanitizer we have available at the beginning of the lunch line (and it prompted me to do the same). I asked her if she’d had her flu shot, and she said she wasn’t sure she wanted to. She asked me if I’d ever had one and if it hurt. I assured her if it hurt very much, I wouldn’t have gotten one! I know I sound like a broken record, but we all need to head Nurse Amy’s advice during this flu (and allergy and cold) season and get our flu shot, wash our hands frequently, keep our hands away from our faces, and get plenty of rest.

On that last note, hope you have a restful, enjoyable weekend!