The Call for Entries for a new international contest states: "When the left brain collaborates with the right brain, science merges with art to enhance communication and understanding of research results?illustrating concepts, depicting phenomena, drawing conclusions."
The National Science Foundation and the journal Science, which is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), have issued an invitation to the first Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. The contest is designed to recognize outstanding achievements by scientists and engineers in the use of visual media to promote understanding of research results.
The competition was created to reward new techniques and ways of communicating research findings. Eligible entries include photographs, illustrations, animations, interactive media, video sequences and computer graphics produced or commissioned by illustrators, scientists or engineers?either individually or in teams?that have been produced since January 2000.
Each illustrator, scientist, research group or institution may submit a maximum of three entries in any one category, but submissions from publishing companies, advertising agencies or public relation firms are not eligible.
For more information, visit www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/events/sevc.
The Hospitality Summer Institutes 2003 are sponsored by the Hospitality Business Alliance, a strategic initiative of the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation. The National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation and the American Hotel & Lodging Association are working in partnership to offer the program, which was begun three years ago to help raise the level of knowledge and skills of teachers in foodservice and lodging management.
The Summer Institutes are conducted by content experts in partnership with postsecondary institutions that are members of the Hospitality Business Alliance's College Consortium?a group of 24 leading postsecondary institutions with culinary and hotel and restaurant management programs.
The five-day institutes will be held in June at locations that range from California to New York. Included are basic, advanced and mastery sessions in restaurant management and culinary arts. Lodging management sessions include Intro to Hospitality; Rooms Division; and Leadership, Sales & Marketing, and Food & Beverage.
According to the Hospitality Business Alliance, this year's sessions include the integration of math drills and applications, as well as technology, and will provide technical and professional instruction combined with industry experiences.
The registration deadline is April 30, 2003.
For information and registration, visit http://learnovation.com/HBA/SummerInstitutes.htm.
This year's top engineering awards recognize what the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) describes as "two technological achievements that have affected millions of people's lives throughout the world." Those two technologies are the Global Positioning System (GPS) and artificial organs.
The awards presented by NAE for 2003 went to Ivan A. Getting, Bradford W. Parkinson and Willem J. Kolff.
Getting and Parkinson share the Charles Stark Draper Prize, a $500,000 annual award that honors engineers whose accomplishments have had a significant impact on society. They were recognized for their individual efforts toward the development of GPS.
Kolff received the Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ Prize, which is also $500,000, for his pioneering work on artificial organs.
For more information, visit www.nae.edu.
The Clifford H. "Ted" Rees, Jr. Scholarship Foundation was established in late 2002 as a recruitment initiative and is intended to assist students who are enrolled in heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration (HVACR) training programs. Two scholarships will be awarded for 2003, each in the amount of $2,000.
Students are eligible for the scholarship if they are currently attending, or are planning to attend an HVACR training program.
Completed applications and supporting materials?which include two letters of recommendation, submission of prior education, work history or military service, and a personal statement letter?are due by May 1, 2003.
Applications can be downloaded at www.reesscholarship.org, or by writing to the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute (ARI) at 4100 North Fairfax Drive, Suite 200, Arlington, VA 22203.
The Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education is partnering with the University of Tulsa on a new series of cyber security training courses to prepare information technology students and professionals. As a National Security Agency Center of Academic Excellence for Information Assurance Education, Tulsa University is one of the national centers designated to train educators to develop their cyber security expertise.
The new courses, which will begin this fall, will be offered at Central Technology Center, Drumright; Francis Tuttle Technology Center, Oklahoma City; and Tulsa Technology Center.
The courses include Principles of Information Assurance, Secure E-Commerce, Network Security, Enterprise Security Management and Cyber Forensics. These courses will eventually be integrated into existing information technology training programs throughout the state's system of 54 technology centers, and students who enroll in the courses may be eligible for college credit at several state colleges such as Tulsa Community College.
"We expect many of these students to join the Cyber Corps Program at the University of Tulsa and complete bachelor's, master's or doctoral degrees," says Dr. Sheryl Hale, coordinator of Adult and Career Development at the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education. "These courses will also be available to industry, government and military personnel responsible for securing our homeland."
Hale notes that there continues to be a huge demand for IT workers with information security skills.
Three of the Oklahoma career tech system's educators are completing a nine-month course at Tulsa University and are designing the courses. They are David Greer with the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education, Clinton Webb of Central Technology Center and Joe Elkins from Francis Tuttle Technology Center.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is committing more than $31 million to create a nationwide network of 168 alternative schools that it says will serve students failed by large comprehensive high schools.
Other partners in the effort include the Annie E. Casey Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Walter S. Johnson Foundation and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. In focusing on the issue of smaller schools, the foundation hopes to improve graduation rates, particularly for African American and Hispanic students.
"Nearly one-third of American students aren't graduating from high school. This represents nothing short of a massive failure of America's high schools," says Tom Vander Ark, executive director of education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "The good news is that we can reverse this trend. More students will succeed if communities provide a rich variety of education options, and effective alternative schools are one such option."
In a February 26 press release announcing the new effort, the foundation noted that, "Recent studies suggest that despite the well-meaning objectives of accountability initiatives like No Child Left Behind and state-based high stakes testing systems, these policies appear to have had the unintended consequence of pushing thousands of young people out of school and often into the juvenile justice system."
The foundation says that, building on a previous grant to replicate the Minnesota New Country School, these grants will support the efforts of nine intermediary organizations to "work with local communities to replicate high-quality alternative schools, expand and improve existing schools, convert programs that offer GEDs into high school diploma-granting schools, and initiate policy and technical assistance efforts."
The nine organizations are:
- The Big Picture Company, Providence, R.I.
- Black Alliance of Educational Options, Washington, D.C.
- The Commonwealth Corporation, Center for Youth Development and Education, Boston, Mass.
- Communities in Schools of Georgia, Atlanta, Ga.
- The National Association of Street Schools, Denver, Colo.
- The National League of Cities
- Portland Community College, Portland, Ore.
- The See Forever Foundation & Maya Angelou Public Charter School, Washington, D.C.
- YouthBuild USA, Cambridge, Mass.
For more information about the new effort or about the other work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, visit www.gatesfoundation.org.
On February 24, the U.S. Department of Education announced that a new Web site has been developed by the Interagency Committee on Disability Research (ICDR) to gather comments and recommendations on research needs for Americans with disabilities. According to a press release from the Education Department, "The ICDR Web site will serve as a catalyst for information sharing and be a source for recommendations to the president and Congress on policy and priorities related to disability and rehabilitation research."
The committee that produced the site was chaired by Steven James Tingus, director of the Education Department's National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, who says, "We want to make it easier for individuals with disabilities, their family members and other stakeholders to let us know what research issues we should consider."
In addition to a link on the home page that takes visitors to a comment form, other links cover topics such as President Bush's New Freedom Initiative, the ICDR statutory authority and mission, and links to other sites.
The new site can be found at http://www.icdr.us/.
The results of a new nationwide study show that parents who own their own home may be helping to boost their children's educational achievements and even reduce behavioral problems. These benefits may occur because the environments in homes are on average better than those in rental units with respect to safety, maintenance and the availability of educational materials.
The study was conducted by Donald Haurin, a professor of economics at Ohio State University, R. Jean Haurin, a retired research scientist at Ohio State, and Toby Parcel, a former Ohio State sociology professor who is now at Purdue University. They used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which was conducted by Ohio State for the U.S. Department of Labor.
The results showed that owning a home compared with renting leads to a 13 to 23 percent higher-quality home environment, as measured by responses of parents to survey questions and by observations of researchers who conducted the survey. The home environment encompassed both the physical and emotional setting.
"We were skeptical at first that homeownership would have any connection with the emotional environment, but it turned out that it did," says Donald Haurin. "Homeowners had on average a better emotional environment for their children than did renters."
The results of the Ohio State University study appeared in the journal, Real Estate Economics, which is published by the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association (www.areuea.org).
By 2010 there will be 39 million Americans between the ages of 16 and 24, and approximately one-quarter of them will be out of school, underemployed and have limited skills says the Benton Foundation. That's why it is launching the 21st Century Skills Initiative?a multi-year campaign by the foundation and its partners to identify, develop and promote successful community-based strategies to use media and communications tools to empower youth.
The foundation defines 21st century skills as "an array of cognitive, technical and communicative skills that all Americans need to possess to make our nation more secure economically and socially."
These include:
- Reading, writing and numeracy
- Building academic competency
- Using media and communications tools
- Problem solving and critical thinking
- Communications skills
- Basic occupational skills
The Benton Foundation does not give out grants but is hoping to collaborate with leaders representing underserved communities, business, the nonprofit sector, philanthropy and academia. It plans to get the initiative started by engaging communities in partner cities; identifying, developing and promoting initiatives that work; launching a community media project on 21st century skills; and publishing a national report.
For more information, visit www.benton.org.
Ted C. Kennedy, chairman and founder of BE&K, Inc., has been elected as the 2003 chairman of the Board of Trustees for the National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER). He succeeds David Bush, president of Adena Corporation. Kennedy has also served as president of Associated Builders and Contractors, Inc. (ABC) and was honored twice with the ABC Contractor of the Year award.
Henry Kelly, the president of Austin Industrial, will serve as vice-chairman for 2003.
NCCER's Board of Trustees consists of representatives of contributing firms or partnering associations of the NCCER, which is a nonprofit education foundation affiliated with the University of Florida. NCCER provides craft training, management education and safety resources for the construction industry.
BE&K, Inc. is a Birmingham, Alabama-based construction and engineering firm. Both NCCER (www.nccer.org) and BE&K (www.bek.com) are members of the ACTE Business-Education Partnership.
For the 2004-2005 academic year, the Fulbright Scholar Program is offering lecturing/research awards in approximately 140 countries and in many fields?among them agriculture, computer science, education and engineering. Opportunities are available for college and university faculty, administrators and independent scholars.
Traditional Fulbright awards are available from two months to an academic year or longer, and a new short-term grants program called the Fulbright Senior Specialists Program offers two-to-six-week grants in a variety of disciplines and fields.
Although foreign language skills are needed in some countries, most Fulbright lecturing assignments are in English, and about 80 percent of the awards are for lecturing.
Application deadlines for 2004-2005 awards are:
- May 1, 2003 for Fulbright Distinguished Chair awards in Europe, Canada and Russia
- August 1, 2003 for Fulbright traditional lecturing and research grants worldwide
- Rolling deadline for Fulbright Senior Specialists Program
For more information, contact the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES) at 3007 Tilden Street, N.W., Suite 5L, Washington, D.C. 20008-3009; telephone 202-686-7877; e-mail apprequest@cies.iie.org; or visit www.cies.org.
The authors of a new book say that a number of trends are converging to create an unprecedented dilemma for employers, and because they have been lulled into complacency by the demands of economic, stock market and competitive issues, these employers will soon face a crisis for which most of them are unprepared.
Impending Crisis: Too Many Jobs, Too Few People was written by Roger E. Herman and Joyce Gioia, well-known futurists, and Tom Olivo, a consultant specializing in workforce metrics.
In an article in the January 29 issue of Career Tech Update, Gioia cites the "Fastest Growing Occupations, 2000-2010" from the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. The report notes that the majority of the rapidly growing occupation areas are within the field of career and technical education, including computer software engineers, desktop publishers and veterinary assistants.
Gioia told Career Tech Update editor Susan Emeagwali that career and technical education schools need to enter into partnerships with community colleges and corporations to ensure they are offering the courses that will give students the skills that are in demand.
"The vocational education field has a tremendous opportunity," Gioia said. "Public schools are simply not preparing students for the jobs that are available. Voc ed schools have an opportunity now to pick up the slack."
For more information about the book Impending Crisis: Too Many Jobs, Too Few People, visit www.hermangroup.com. Career Tech Update is now an e-mail publication that is available for free to ACTE members.
