A lot of students in the community college world, and a lot of smaller businesses, aren’t a part of a powerful and often-lucrative tool that larger universities and businesses have used to benefit each other over the years: internships.
A relatively new web startup called Internships.com says its mission is to “democratize the opportunity and access for all students preparing to stand out and be hired as interns by organizations, worldwide, with a vested interest in the workforce of tomorrow.”
My own entrance into entrepreneurial business was sort of an internship story to a point. I went to work (in the afternoons after school) for my dad at the age of twelve. I didn’t start with an office or a VP title either – I started in the stock room packing boxes. But even today, I still have relationships – nearly 20 year old ones – that I developed in that industry. If I ever wanted to work in that industry again, I could be on the phone with VPs and CEOs there pretty quickly.
That’s what internships can help you develop – real-world work experience and relationships – which will serve you for the rest of your career. I love the idea of community college students and small businesses getting into the mix. This is a great idea!
Here’s the press release (h/t to ace PR guy Josh Morgan for the tip) and make sure you check out Internships.com.
Internships.com Prepares Students for Today’s Workplace With Training and Opens Doors With Access to Employers
Los Angeles, March 1, 2010 – Internships.com of Los Angeles today opened the doors of opportunity to college students looking to get their foot in the door of the working world with an internship.
At Internships.com, college students can search tens of thousands of internship opportunities, or use the Internships.com engine to find the right opportunity to meet their goals. Most importantly, Internships.com has created and brought together tools to prepare students to get hired in an extremely challenging employment market and help students thrive at these internships.
“Internships.com is democratizing the internship process by exposing all students to the skills necessary to set themselves apart from the competition,” said Robin Richards, CEO of Internships.com. “Whether it is our Internships Predictor™, QuickBuild Resume™ tool or video library of interviewing tips, we will ensure they have set themselves apart. Our interactive tools are second to none for preparing students to find, access and demonstrate the winning combination of attitude and skills coveted by all employers.”
Internships are an integral piece of the career ladder and can serve as a powerful first rung in building success in the workplace. These first steps have often been blocked by lack of direct connections with employers, or lack of knowledge by students on how to best present themselves on paper or in an interview. Challenging economic times have also made some students think they have to choose between work and college. With the right internship, they can and should have both.
Internships.com is an impactful online resource for students looking to gain experience with an internship and for companies to connect with quality interns. Some of the roadblocks to expanding the use of internships have been lack of understanding from companies about how to find and qualify interns, how to run an internship program, and from students about how to find an internship when all of the traditional existing online services are focused on job-placement.
Internships.com provides a comprehensive set of tools and services for the three groups involved in internships: employers, students and higher education institutions. These tool sets are built into our marketplace and include tools for:
Employers
• Post internships
• Search for candidates
• Manage your listings
• Manage your interns and internship program
Interns
• Identify the type of internship that meets your goals with the
Internship Predictor
• Build your resume
• Learn how to be effective in an interview and how to dress for success
• Search for internships
Higher Education
• Post internship opportunities that are exclusive to your students
• Customize and send materials about your students to prospective employers
• Review and track the success of your student interns
Internships.com brings together these must-have tools with both employers and students. The opening up of internship opportunities to students from schools of all sizes and statures truly democratizes internships for all.
Internship listings are free for employers on Internships.com. Additional services and features for students and employers will be introduced later this year.
Follow Internships.com at Twitter.com/Internships or join us at Facebook.com/Internships.
(Mobile, feed and e-mail readers: embedded video above.)
As you may remember, before he was President, Ronald Reagan was an ambassador for General Electric, touring the country and making speeches at their plants, as well as the host of the company’s weekly television show on CBS.
Today, GE is remembering President Reagan’s leadership by sponsoring the Ronald Reagan Centennial Celebration. I love the quote from the ad: “Because long before he changed the world, or led a nation, or governed a state, he inspired our company.”
On days like these, I sure miss President Reagan.
A Little Thing Called EAP
Who knew such incredible and positive change could be encapsulated in the letters “E”, “A” and “P”?
EAP stands for “Early Assessment Program” and the effort at Sierra College is helmed by Vice President of Student Services Mandy Davies. It was originally created by the California State University system, in partnership with the federal Department of Education, with the goal of decreasing the number of students needing remedial (high school level) English and math when arriving at college.
Here’s how it works: EAP is administered to high school juniors in the spring of their 11th grade year, along with the California Standards Test. It adds 15 multiple-choice math and 15 multiple-choice English questions (plus an English essay) to assess if they are on track for college readiness eighteen months later.
In 2009, over 447,000 11th graders took the EAP English test, and only 16% were assessed as college-ready. Over 220,000 took the EAP math test, and only 5% tested in Algebra II assessed as college-ready.
There’s a breakdown here between our high schools and colleges. High schools are teaching to the exit exam, which requires a “C” grade on 8th grade material. Meanwhile, colleges are expecting students to arrive ready for college-level material, and have ended up adding layers of remedial classes instead to, in effect, “redo” high school work for the vast majority of our students.
Here’s the slide deck that Mandy shared with the Board:
(Feed, e-mail and mobile readers: embedded slide deck above.)
This issue is gaining a lot more scrutiny in these days of “resource constraint” and I’m excited to report that our area high school superintendents are stepping up in a big way and coordinating with Sierra College to establish better linkage between where their curriculum stops and where ours starts.
Most importantly, they’re working to implement EAP, which will be a great “early warning system” for students who don’t realize they’re not on track academically.
Kudos to Mandy and the rest of the team at Sierra College. This is an important issue and it’s exciting to see us make progress on it!
Many of you know that I endorsed Steve Poizner for Governor about 15 months ago. I’ve met him several times, and he struck me as sharp, effective and ready to tackle the major challenges that California has in front of it.
Since then, Meg Whitman entered the race. I’ve always been an admirer of what she did to grow eBay from a handful of employees to an $8 billion dollar business. I’ve had the chance to hear her speak in person. I think she’s great.
So it’s disappointing to me to see these two candidates attacking each other, but that’s politics for you, I guess. I still intend to vote for Steve Poizner in the primary, but I’ll be more than happy to support either of them in the general election.
(For those friends supporting Jerry Brown in this race, well…all I can say is, our state had a $4 billion surplus when he came into office and he left a $1 billion deficit. I can’t think of a single thing he’s done to merit a second chance at being Governor. Care to share what I missed?)
In any case, here’s a great op-ed piece that Whitman wrote about California’s failing welfare system.
During the Rose Garden signing ceremony in August 1996 of his landmark welfare reform law, President Bill Clinton told a welfare-to-work story that had inspired him to join with Congressional Republicans and pursue reforms to break the difficult cycle of dependency. The Washington Post reported Clinton describing how a decade earlier he had asked Lillie Hardin, a former welfare recipient in Arkansas, what the best thing was about being off welfare. Ms. Hardin replied, “When my boy goes to school and they say, what does your momma do for a living? He can give an answer.”
For too many Californians, the heartbreaking truth is that their son or daughter has been left with no good answer. That is because while other states have made progress in reforming welfare, California has been left behind.
The numbers tell a bleak story. In 1996, California had 21 percent of the nation’s welfare cases. Today, 32 percent of all welfare cases in the United States are in California, even though we only represent 12 percent of the total U.S. population. Consider this troubling comparison; California is nearly twice as big as New York State, but we have five times as many welfare cases.
Despite being a state famous for opportunity and promise, California lags much of the nation when it comes to moving people from welfare to work, according to the federal government. Only 22 percent of welfare recipients in California who are required to meet federal work minimums are working. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, our state is one of only nine that does not unconditionally enforce the federal government’s five-year lifetime limit on cash welfare assistance. These flaws in our welfare system, coupled with a monthly cash check that is almost 70 percent higher than the national average, work against the goal of helping more welfare recipients leave welfare for a life of greater independence and dignity.
California simply cannot afford this kind of failure any longer. The good news is we don’t have to. Michigan, which enacted sweeping welfare reform in the ’90s, is a good example. When adjusted for population, Michigan has half the incidence of welfare dependency as California, despite a higher unemployment rate than ours. A 2009 study by the Public Policy Institute of California found that if there were stricter sanctions on adults who fail to meet work requirements here in California, the state’s caseload would be substantially lower and its work participation rate would be significantly higher. Everybody would be better off.
She is dead right.
Laurel Rosenhall at the Sacramento Bee – a very sharp reporter who I’ve worked with on stories before – has a great piece on the efforts underway to fix the college transfer system in California.
The ongoing budget crisis makes the suggestion even more urgent, said Judy Heiman of the state Legislative Analyst’s Office.
“Now is the time to do something that makes it more efficient for students and for campuses,” Heiman said.
“This is a huge thing you could do that doesn’t cost a lot of money and would really make a difference for students.”
The idea is to get all three branches of higher education in California to agree on transfer requirements for each major. Under Shulock’s vision, a community college student could follow a single course of study in a given major and be prepared to transfer to any UC or CSU campus.
That would be a big change from the way things are now, where transfer agreements mostly are built between local institutions rather than entire statewide systems.
“The problems derive mainly from the structure of transfer,” Shulock said. “It is not student-centered.”
To illustrate, Shulock described the requirements a community college student faces if she wants to transfer to UC or CSU as a psychology major.
San Jose State requires the transfer student take biology or anatomy to be admitted. Sonoma State doesn’t require science but does require statistics. Sacramento State doesn’t require either.
If the same student also wanted to apply to a few UC campuses, she would face even more prerequisites: a course in research methods to apply to UC Davis, precalculus to apply to UC Santa Cruz, two natural science classes (including one with a lab) to apply to UC Merced.
To fulfill the varying prerequisites, students wind up staying in community college longer than two years, accruing excess credits and taking up seats that cost taxpayers and keep other students out of the classroom. The problem is especially relevant now, as budget cuts have caused UC, CSU and community colleges to slash course offerings and reduce the number of students they serve.
“We’re causing students to have to take extra units when there’s not enough funding for the units students need in the first place,” Heiman said. “It makes no sense.”
Navigating the college system effectively is too complicated and resource intensive. No successful business can treat their customers that way, and I’m excited to see our state’s education system making an effort to fix it.
Photo Credit: Sac Bee
The Union newspaper called and asked to profile me on the topics of Sierra College and adoption. I agreed to do so, and did a fairly extensive interview with their staff writer, as well as a photo shoot at our house with the kids.
One of the questions I often get when the media covers me is “what did they miss?” The better question is, “what did I miss?” 
If there was one piece I’d add to the story, it’s the fact that serving in elected office has been both a leadership and learning opportunity. Working together, our board has made a huge difference in the lives of thousands of students by protecting their access to college through fiscal sustainability.
But it’s also true that I neither had all the answers during that process, nor did I do everything right. Especially at the beginning of my term, there are things I could have handled better. Hindsight is always 20/20, and if we fail to learn from that, we can’t improve in the future.
I also made a rookie mistake and said the words “not closing the door” to higher office. I’m certainly closing the door in 2010 and am totally focused on dealing with the budget crisis at Sierra College. While I might consider other opportunities for public service five or ten years down the road, I’m enjoying making a difference where I’m at.
To me, the most important part of this story is about adoption. From my perspective, if just one family decides to make a difference in the life of a child because of this story, it will have been worth the time we invested into it a hundred times over.
When the bell rang to start Aaron Klein’s political career, he came out swinging.
Then 26, the business owner and conservative was elected to the Sierra Community College Board of Trustees in 2004, representing most of western Nevada County on the panel.
He wasn’t content to sit on his hands and observe the machinations of his elders. For Klein, there would be no back bench.
Klein immediately demanded the community college system start funneling more money into reserves. His actions led to the eventual resignation of former college president Kevin Ramirez.
He looks back on that time, and a relieved smile crosses his face.
“It was intense,” Klein said. “Things turned into World War III quickly, a hard-edged fight. I learned change is very hard to effect.”
Some bitter feelings remain, as opposition groups tried hard to unseat Klein during his re-election bid in 2008; they still call for his resignation. But, he said, the rifts are beginning to close.
“I’m proud of the fact some of the people I work very closely with now were on the opposite side from me in that argument,” Klein said.
…the couple took on another challenge shortly after: adoption. Klein’s younger sister was adopted from Romania, and the process seemed natural for their family.
“We made the decision in 2006, right after this intense period on the college board was coming to an end,” Klein said. They went ahead with plans to adopt a South Korean child, and in November of 2007 got the call to fly to Seoul to pick up a 7-month-old named Sang-Jin. Their son is now 3 and called Spencer Daniel.
“I’m the oldest of 6, and Cacey is the oldest of 8, so we joked that we had had kids for years,” Klein said. “But it was an incredible experience to become parents, to see those first steps.”
The family was ready for a second child right away, Klein said. Smack in the middle of his 2008 re-election campaign, the two decided to adopt from Ethiopia.
In July 2009, they were matched with a baby girl named Asnakech. Now 10 months old, they picked up the daughter they call Emma Nichole in Ethiopia on Christmas day.
“I couldn’t have thought of a better Christmas present,” Klein said.
You can read the entire article in The Union here.
Photo Credit: The Union
I “tweeted” it last night, but that was the news out of the Sierra College board meeting. The agriculture, auto tech and construction tech programs will remain this fall, at a cost of about half a million dollars which, depending on the state budget, will likely come out of reserves.
The college established a program vitality committee, which will have eight months to develop a workable plan for these three programs.
The Board committed several years ago to being a community college not about quantity of students, quantity of degrees, or quantity of programs, but to be a community college focused on quality, exemplifying excellence in education and ensuring student success. A quote that I like to steal from our President sums it up: “access without success is a cruel hoax.”
So for these three programs to survive long term, they have to figure out how to reshape, realign and refocus to thrive in the midst of the resource constraints we have. The program vitality committee is going to take a hard, honest look at that and there will be a variety of opportunities for members of the community to contribute as well.
So these programs are definitely not out of the woods yet, but at least we have a pathway to a logical decision at the end of eight months. I am optimistic that each program will find a way to thrive, even in the midst of California’s budget hurricane.
Here’s an excerpt of the coverage from the Auburn Journal:
The Sierra College board approved limited continuation of vocational automotive, agriculture and construction programs Tuesday but are due to revisit their status in November. …
Instead of ending the longtime vocational programs in the face of a potential $10.7 million funding shortfall next year, school officials are continuing stripped-down versions and embarking on a collaborative process to determine whether they should stay or go in the future. …
Rachel Rosenthal, vice president of instruction, outlined plans at Tuesday’s meeting that would see fulltime vocational faculty retained but classes drastically cut back. Agriculture, for instance, will have 40 percent fewer course offerings while dropping animal science and equine studies.
Excited to see this outcome, and hoping I get to cast a positive vote in eight months.
Software Patents Need to Go
The patent system in the United States was first adopted in 1790, and was designed to grant inventors a limited-time monopoly on the use of their inventions, in exchange for the public disclosure of those inventions to advance science and innovation.
But the patent system isn’t keeping up with the changing world, especially when it comes to new kinds of innovation. What worked well for protecting Thomas Edison’s ability to monetize his invention of the incandescent light bulb – giving him 20 years of revenue from the invention in exchange for opening up the details of his discovery to other inventors who could improve on the concept – isn’t working when it comes to software and business methods.
This is a common topic of discussion in the entrepreneurial community, and you’d think that software innovators might be in favor of software patents, right? No, quite the opposite.
Basic software concepts, like the best way to lay out a user interface, or a fundamental concept like tabs in a spreadsheet, are being patented, and the patent owners then sue software makers in an attempt to either (a) extract large sums of money, or (b) put them out of business.
The latest news is that Facebook has been granted a patent for the concept of “dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network.”
One commenter on venture capitalist Fred Wilson’s blog post said:
This is weird news. I run a small local social community and also use some kind of newsfeed system. Yet the earliest version of my newsfeed dates from 2003, way before facebook’s feed. If they wanted to, they could easily crush me with this patent as I dont have the judical knowledge and financial power to enter a legal battle with facebook. The could close me down, although everyone would know that it’s only because they have this patent, not because I copied the newsfeed from them.
What’s worse is, there are companies being founded for the sole purpose of buying up the rights to these patents, and filing piles of lawsuits against any new startups in the technology space that might possibly have a remote link to the patent. These brand new companies have no resources to fight back, so they often have to pay off the “patent troll” or just drop their idea and go out of business.
The pace of innovation and monetization in software far exceed the types of innovation that the patent system was designed to protect and nurture. The patent system can continue to be extremely valuable in these other areas, but It’s simply an outmoded and unnecessary structure for the arenas of software and business methods.
It hurts competition, hurts consumers, and hurts innovation far more than it helps.
Of course, we’ll continue to have copyright and trade secret protection. If I had invented Facebook, somebody couldn’t just copy my code and launch a clone the next day. They would have to outwork, out-innovate and out-execute me in the marketplace.
I think that’s the way it should be.
What do you think? Do patents belong in the software arena? How about hardware? Pharmaceuticals? What are the standards for deciding where they foster innovation and where they don’t? Use the comments below to share your thoughts.
Something is in the water over at the Auburn Journal. This is the second time in a row they’ve written something nice about me in their paper.
If this keeps up, the Sacramento Bee will be next and then I’ll really think the apocalypse is upon us.
Sierra College is planning a major move into solar power at its Rocklin and Grass Valley campuses.
With plans for ground-mounted solar cells in parking lots and others on buildings, a report from the college estimates savings of from $75,000 to $125,000 a year on what is now a $1.5 million electricity bill.
The college has put out a request for proposals to construct solar arrays at the two campuses at no cost to Sierra. The contract would also include a power-purchase agreement that could save the college money on electricity. …
Trustee Aaron Klein, a member of the college board’s facilities and planning subcommittee, said that with federal tax credits for businesses, the financial details have been looking better for the college.
Klein said that he and fellow subcommittee member Nancy Palmer returned from a community-college trustees conference enthusiastic about the possibilities of solar after seeing what several other districts were doing.
After a presentation by Kirk Uhler, a former Solar Power Inc. employee, and Jim Conkey, a former construction partner with Solar Power, it was decided to hire an independent consultant to develop a request for proposals, Klein said.
Proposals are due Wednesday. Palmer and Bill Martin, the other member of the subcommittee, have volunteered to do interviews on March 18th before a recommendation is made to the board on bids.
“My goal for the project is no upfront capital investments by the college and no higher costs for energy down the road,” Klein said. “We just need to get the best deal that protects the college.”
Let me know if any of this makes sense to you, either.
SC@Work: March 9, 2010 Board Meeting
Special Board Meeting Details:
- March 9, 2010 at 4:00PM
- Sierra College Rocklin Campus, Board Room, LRC-133
- Main agenda items begin at 4:00PM, public comment for items not on the agenda at 5:40PM
- Meeting Agenda
- Contracts (General / Capital Projects)
- Warrants
Our work continues to deal with the budget issues facing Sierra College. We’ll be hearing an update on the realities of trying to save the three career training programs recommended for closure out of the 24 we are currently working to maintain.
Use the comments below to answer the Question of the Month! (You can “log in” with your Facebook or Twitter account with a single click, or just fill in your name and e-mail address to leave a guest comment.)
Should Sierra College be focused on having as many educational programs as possible, or should it have a smaller number of programs but put our resources into achieving high levels of excellence and quality in each one?
