Satellite Radio Merger Approved

Here's the scoop: the official vote will be this Friday, but the last FCC commissioner has announced that she will vote in favor of the XM/Sirius merger. Will consumers lose out? What about our students? Headquarters will be out of New York (hello, NYC Trip?) but operations will be maintained here.

Matt Genebach's Public History Promo!

See what Matt did out of a three hour presentation by this year's batch of Public History graduate internships and practicums. Kudos to Kathy Franz, one of our CC favorite faculty!

Already Gone - Article in Chronicle of Higher Education about professor disenchanted with his students.....

Professor writes about mediocre students and his 'escape' through listening to music.

This is a bit dark...but interesting, nevertheless.

Harvard Economist pays students to go to school

I am watching the CNN series on Black in America. They profile this economist, Roland Fryer, extensively.

Millennials, Web 2.0, on your Summer Reading List

(As if any of us had time left to read this summer,) Politico contributors Andrew Rasiej and Micah L. Sifry have a few recommendations that through geared for political junkies, may be of interest to us in terms of our students and our technology. For instance, they write,

“Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics," makes a cogent case that we are on the cusp of a “civic generation” and that this demographic and cultural tide will favor progressive Democrats who offer a new way of solving society’s problems. One of those young activists, Michael Connery, makes the same case in his compelling call to arms, “Youth to Power: How Today’s Young Voters Are Building Tomorrow’s Progressive Majority."

They also push their own book, “Rebooting America: Ideas for Redesigning American Democracy for the Internet Age,” which has political minds speculating on how our founding fathers may have used a tool like the internet. Best of all, it's available as a free download!

And for any books that aren't free, I highly suggest the search engine, campusi.com!

Photo by André Mouraux

Advice on Advising!

20% is a small but significant number, and this group's perception that we are not personalizing appointments may be due to our own lack of self-promotion. We may want to remember to articulate that we want the appointment to meet their specific, personalized needs.

What we know from "After the Appointment":
* 80% had a positive experience
* 93.5% acted on our advice
* 30% used Optimal Resume to prepare before their appointment
* 20% felt they had a negative experience, mostly due to lack of personalization, redundant information or what they felt were uninformative appointments

Colleague Tips:
* "Wait a minute" on the resume - ask a few questions first to get a sense of the person
* Process
1. Why the student is here (confirm graduation date)
2. Review what the student has done so far (and because they may not really know the tools)
3. Move forward with recommendations
4. ACT (apologies, Minna, I forget what this stands for, but I remember it's basically praise before critiquing)
5. Next steps
6. Write up your notes (so another advisor can be personalized, knowing what you've done!
* Send them to online resources and tools for things that aren't personalized
* When exploring AUCW, really demonstrate the scope of the tool and how students can personalize it for themselves!

What we can also do to promote our personalized approach:
* Set up the appointment, "We have 30/45 minutes, what can I do for you today?"
* End the appointment, "Have I answered all your questions?" and "To move forward . . . " or "I'd like more time with you," if another session is prudent

BLOCKS to a personalized appointment:
* CUBICLES: students are shocked to find such an open environment where they can't be open themselves (and that's when the appointments turn rote)
* Our own automatic spiels
* Lack of knowledge on Federal government which leads to reliance on Travis and Chris H
* Hard to know it all

Other ideas:
* Drive students to OptimalResume BEFORE the appointment! (Web messages? Strengthen email reminder message in this regard?)
* Use laptops when we do drop in advising all over campus so we can demonstrate (not just reference) our site, AUCW, InCircle, etc.
* Remind students to update their profiles - they expect the system to do it for them, and it can't

OMT Presentation: Plate Priorities

Take a look at what OMT has going on. Kudos to the team for an outstanding job or organization and communicating to us what they need to do and when. Feedback and questions to them are welcomed, I'm sure. You should be able to view the slide show right here.

Photo by Just Nora

New Media: Updates on Facebook, XM/Sirius, and GOP

There are two articles today on changes with Facebook. The first in The Washington Post covers complaints on the new design as harder to navigate. The second is from the AP and discusses how the 41/2 year old social networking site will do more to promote applications it thinks are "great" while banning abusive applications.

The Washington Post is also reporting that a merger between XM and Sirius is closer, despite yesterday's report of the second "no" vote. Apparently Deborah Taylor Tate is leaning a little more towards approval. And now the stations have agreed to paying $19.7 million in fines. That should help.

There's also an a piece in Politico on the GOP loosing the new-media war.

Photo of Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg by Brian Solis, http://www.briansolis.com/, bub.blicio.us.

More Colleges Subsidizing Internships

Here's a summary from the Student Loan Blog of the article that even mentions that although AU doesn't pay students for their internships, they do offer room and board for Native American students. It's taken from The Chronicle's article of July 18.

2 to 2 on XM/Sirius Merger!

ABC reports that it's down to Republican FCC Commissioner, Deborah Taylor Tate, to make the deciding vote. Stay tuned! A "no" means a loss of terrific internships for all our students.

Image from Associated Press

What We Think About Our Own Jobs in Academe from Blog Monet

Chronicle of Higher Education's Survey on the best colleges and universities to work for; note the article on the "midlife crisis" of academic staff and faculty.

Regarding the photo: taken from flickr.com; source "OldOnliner"; the image may be reproduced but not modified or used commercially. For more details see flickr.com.

PS: Why am I the only one who chose a nom de plume?

Will students Twitter complaints about US?

Here's a great story from ABC News on using Twitter to resolve customer service complaints!

Hmm, first there was the novelty, then the activism, and now this. Will we "tweet" our students to remind them about their appointments?

XM Radio: 17% Increase but $38 million loss

This Washington Post article says that they'll try to refinance their debt as they wait for approval from the FCC for their merger with Sirius.

Career Builder's 8 Salary Talk Traps

Did you know that CNN.com has a regular feature from Career Builder? We can't link to them on our website, but I can link to their articles for us. This latest piece covers salary negotiation.

Americans' Debt - NYT article from KAS

Katherine is recommending this excellent read from The New York Times on how Americans are digging deeper and deeper into debt. It has implications not just for us as individuals, but for our students and their families, and the state our future students' families find themselves in as they try to come to AU.

Update on XM/Sirius Merger

This is a big one for our students. Here's an update from The Washington Post. There are two FCC members on the record in favor, and a third FCC member is pushing for price caps and more minority programming before he says yes for an XM/Sirius merger.


(Photo from The Washington Post, taken by Daniel Acker of Bloomberg News.)

Lunch and Strategic Planning!

Nancy brings to our attention the nest Strategic Planning session, July 28 from 12:30 - 2 in MGC 4-5. RSVP to strategicplan@american.edu.

For more information, visit the Strategic Planning website and submit your feedback by August 1! Unfortunately, holding Rae Ann's baby isn't part of the deal.

Miss Manners comments on internships!

I saw this on the news feed at the bottom of our blog! (Hey! It works!) It's nice to have some basic etiquette reflection for employers and interns!

Image from Featurebank.

The Future of International Development work

This internship posting came through the SIS listserv the other day. We can expect to see much more involvement by the military in work that has traditionally been undertaken by development agencies. This is especially true in post-conflict settings.
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The Civil-Military Initiative of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (Policy) of the Office of African Affairs seeks a part-time (paid) intern to do the following: conduct research; write briefing papers; assist with event planning; and perform database entry.

The Civil-Military Initiative (CMI), an OSD policy initiative, will help optimize comparative advantages among organizations that share increasingly interconnected security- and stability-related roles in Africa. Through seminars, workshops, and other events, CMI will facilitate relationships, networking opportunities, information sharing, problem-solving, de-confliction of efforts, and the development and dissemination of lessons learned in the civil-military interface. CMI participants may include elements from the Department of Defense, other interested USG executive agencies, and interested multinational, non-governmental, academic, and private sector organizations.

Candidates should be graduate students with experience in Africa (academic or field), security or development experience preferred.

Please send your resumes by August 5, 2008 to info@civ-mil.org.

Dirty Mike Rowe

I think we should have a link to Dirty Jobs on our Facebook page! But in the meantime, you can read an interview with Mike Rowe, a former singer with the Baltimore Opera, here.

I'm adding his blog to our blog, too, right up there with Daniel Pink!