The Community Research Collaborative Blog

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

By: Janice Urbanik

As I write this, it is “back to school time” again – and who among you don’t LOL when Staples airs its back to school commercials to the tune of “Most Wonderful Time of the Year”?  It makes me laugh every time I see them. So, what does this mean for this blog?  Well, it means it’s a new school year-a chance to start fresh and learn all kinds of new things, and a chance to once again ignite in girls (and women alike) a passion for learning about STEM.  And because of two design projects that are being done under the guidance of Design Impact, it is also a time for me to eagerly look at projects and initiatives with new eyes to gain new insights.  So, IMHO, this is indeed the most wonderful time of the year!

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Schools Out for Summer! Schools Out for EVER!

By: Janice Urbanik

I am writing this as schools are letting out for the summer and am fondly singing Alice Cooper’s song in my head. On the last day of school, the sky was bluer, the sun was sunnier, and the air smelled fresher than just the day before.  My friends and I had 3 months of endless possibilities ahead of us and wow, were we ready!  We didn’t have to figure out which train got to the station first or write another dumb paragraph or read another stupid book for 3 whole months!  No more teachers’ dirty looks! We didn’t realize it at the time, but we were perched at the top of the “summer slide”…

Can the summer slide be flipped to build grit?

If you do an internet search for “summer slide”, you will see a lot of statistics and a lot of references to the drop in reading skills that kids tend to experience during the summer, and ways to combat it.  You will see some references to a drop in math skills too.  It is a very easy concept to grasp because most of us have experienced “if you don’t use it you lose it” when learning a new skill.

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“It’s a mother’s job to worry about her kids”

By: Janice Urbanik

In the last 24 hours I’ve had 2 reminders that it is indeed a mother’s job to worry about her kids.  One happened while I was trimming dead limbs from a tree and a mama robin chirped very loudly because I was too close to her nest.  The other happened when a friend told me that she had just dropped her son off at the airport for a trip to Florida after wrapping up finals week. While it would be hackneyed for me to say these are both examples of birdies leaving the nest (groans are appropriate now…), it is not trite to think about the impact that children have on women who work.

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March Madness

By: Janice Urbanik

Well it’s spring- time for the snow and ice to finally give way to warm breezes, buds on trees, bulbs poking their heads through the mulch and then there is…BASKETBALL!  Schools and workplaces will be overrun with bracket picks, slow motion replays of dunks, and David and Goliath stories of small schools beating top-seeded teams to blow everyone’s brackets.  March Madness is such a phenomena that Warren Buffet and Quicken Loans are offering a $1 billion prize to anyone with the perfect bracket. (I’m betting that Nate Silver is excluded from the offer.)   So how is this relevant to what I typically write about in this blog?  Well – it’s aspirational I guess – to get us to think about what could happen if we could get as passionate about helping students select a good career and adults find a good job as we do when cheering for “our” teams to win.

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Raising the Floor?

By: Janice Urbanik

So, we’ve all heard of barn raising, and certainly hell raising, but maybe not “floor” raising. Well, in this month’s blog, that is exactly what we are going to talk about.  Quick question – what portion of our regional manufacturing workforce do you think is made up of women?  5%? 20%? 50%?  Keep reading to learn the answer and to learn about a new initiative to get more women into manufacturing careers.  Hint… it’s called “Raise the Floor”…

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The Education-Social Security Link

By: Julie Heath

 The news about the labor market continues to be a mixed bag. The headlines have told us for quite some time that young workers are struggling to find full-time—or any—employment; that although long-term unemployment is dropping slightly, it remains a significant issue for many Americans; that while the unemployment rate has fallen slightly, large numbers of people have simply dropped out of the labor force. Of particular concern is the drop in the labor force participation rate. At 63.2 percent, it is the lowest it has been in 35 years. The exception to this trend is the labor market experience of older workers.

These increases in participation rates have important public policy implications. For example, one of the fixes for Social Security being discussed is to raise the age at which full retirement benefits can be collected.

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Could the New Common Core Standards Help the Middle Class?

By Julie Heath

Economists and policy makers are increasingly concerned about the hollowing out of the middle class—the computerization of jobs and entire occupations that once formed the backbone of a middle class lifestyle. Concern about computerization is not new. Many futurists have presented iconic images of robotic assembly lines for decades. In 1964, a group of scientists and economists—the Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution—warned President Johnson that computers would create massive unemployment, sooner rather than later. While the specter of mass unemployment did not materialize, technology has changed the labor market.

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Do Credentials Really Matter?

By: Janice Urbanik

One of the principles that Partners for a Competitive Workforce (PCW) career pathways partnership teams try to follow is encouraging the attainment of industry-relevant, nationally portable credentials in pathway training programs.  We want to ensure that participants are learning, and being certified in, skills that are important to employers and are transferable if they need to move away from our region.

But do these credentials really matter, meaning, do they help participants get a job?  Earn more money?  PCW’s project evaluator recently analyzed the employment history of over 3,800 pathway participants and found that the answer to these questions is YES! 

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Region’s Financial Knowledge and Capability Lacking

By: Julie Heath

The FINRA Investor Education Foundation recently released the results of their national 2012 survey on financial capability. The results are cause for concern, as the area’s citizens are still struggling with their financial lives in the aftermath of the recession. More than 25,500 adults participated in the survey, their financial capability measured along five dimensions—the extent to which they: spend more than their income; have unpaid medical bills; do not have a rainy day fund; only pay the minimum on their credit card balances; and can correctly answer five questions on basic financial literacy.

 

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Introducing Our Newest Blogger

We have added a new blogger to the CRC Blog line-up! Janice Urbanik from Partners for a Competitive Workforce will be blogging for us for the rest of the year.

    Click here to read Janice's first blog