The physical training athletes constantly work at can only get them so far when the big moment comes. The body can always be trained and improved, and when the competitive sh*t is hitting the fan, an athlete’s body will have been so intensively trained that the muscles will tend to react according to the memories the muscles have stored up based on that training.

All of which should mean that if an athlete can see what’s happening during a competition and can let their minds go enough to allow their muscle-memoried bodies to do what they’ve been trained to do, everything should be golden. Too bad athletes are using their bodies so extensively that their amped-up minds have time to think and think until mentally the athlete is curled up in a corner, twitching and terrified, certain of failure at the critical moment.

In the old days, the coach gave the athlete a pep talk, a good whack on the back, and told the athlete to suck it up and take it like a man. These days, there are sports psychologists. When an athlete is physically flawless, but tends to mentally crumple when confronted with the pivotal moment of doom, a sports psychologist becomes part of his/her training team.

An article in the CS Monitor explains the ins and outs:

German biathlete Magdalena Neuner came into the Vancouver Olympics with six world championship titles in her pocket – but a history of wildly inconsistent shooting that has also left her with some poor results.

So when the young stand-out won her first of three medals so far at these Olympics – including two of Germany’s six gold medals – she had a simple answer for how she had become so much more consistent this year.
“I worked very hard, especially in the mental training,” she said, a concept she elaborated on later. “One has to understand that physical fitness alone isn’t sufficient. My mental training is very complex and it makes me believe in myself…. To control your mind is more difficult than to control your body.”

Posted by Alexa Harrington

If you’re in the neighborhood on March 4, 2010, and you’re pondering a Master’s in Sustainability Management, the Earth Institute, Columbia University has an invitation for you:

The Earth Institute, Columbia University invites you to join us for an information session on Thursday, March 4th at 6:30 p.m. to learn more about the brand new M.S. in Sustainability Management co-sponsored by Columbia University’s School of Continuing Education and the Earth Institute.

All organizations, whether they are multinational corporations or local nonprofits, face a growing number of environmental challenges from limiting carbon emissions to managing water resources. The M.S. in Sustainability Management is a highly specialized professional program that will formally train and educate sustainability practitioners for a broad range of fields. The program is designed to meet the growing demand for sustainability managers and will train leaders to bridge the gap between the principle of sustainable development and its practice. Students in the program will learn sophisticated environmental measurement tools and cutting-edge environmental science to fully understand the systematic and organizational role of sustainability in any organization. This program is ideal for practitioners and aspiring professionals working in organizational management, regulatory compliance, facilities operations, and environmental stewardship.

The program is offered on a full-time or part-time basis to accommodate the schedules of working professionals.

Date: Thursday, March 4th
Time: 6:30 p.m.
Location: Columbia University, Morningside Campus, Low Memorial Library, Faculty Room

To register for the information session, please go to:

https://register.applyyourself.com/?id=col-scems&pid=1953&eID=27667&rid=1

Master of Science in Sustainability Management
School of Continuing Education and The Earth Institute
Columbia University

http://ce.columbia.edu/Sustainability-Management

Further Reading:

Blogs From the Earth Institute
It’s Blog Action Day
It’s Not Easy Being Green
Green Toilets at ASU Polytechnic
Saving the Planet is a Solid Career Choice
Sustainability Degree Offered at Arizona State University

Posted by Alexa Harrington

The crazy surge in med school applicants has finally triggered several new medical schools to come into being. Apparently there was a dry spell during the 80s and the 90s. Now is the time for every new and terrified college grad to take a good look around, figure out which professionals manage to avoid being laid off (garbage collectors and doctors), and decide whether to get a job now (not the best plan, I heard even 7-Eleven isn’t hiring) or kill some time in medical school while the economy works itself out.

It seems there is an actual shortage of physicians in this country, as well as a shortage of medical school spots. Starting up a few more medical schools seems like a viable option. But let’s not go overboard. Printing more money doesn’t save anyone from an economic crisis (have we learned nothing from all this higher education?).

I’m all for more doctors, especially if it means more people to help who are worth a lot less money (we can’t pay all the doctors six figures…I hope). But my spidey senses are tingling about the less-than established medical schools letting everyone in and churning out Twinkie-shaped doctors. Oh, well. I’m sure America’s lawsuit fettish will finally pay off and the physicians educated at MD mills will soon be weeded out.

Wait! Here comes the optimism (better late than never). The new medical schools will be less fraught with tradition, status, and red tape and they will work hard to teach their med students well. These new and excellent doctors will go on to stellar residencies and splendiferous careers in medicine. Babies will smile and Baby Boomers will be cured of their age-related ills. The soundtrack will rock and the montage will be poetic.

Further Reading:

Expecting a Surge in U.S. Medical Schools
Three New Medical Schools Join AAMC Membership, USA
How to Fix The Doctor Shortage
The Commonwealth Medical College
Starting a New Medical School

Posted by Alexa Harrington

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School has a new video microsite up for anyone who might be researching MBA programs. If you go here, you can watch what recent graduates of the program have to say about how well UNC prepared them for the business world.

Further Reading:

UCLA Anderson MBAs Go Global
The Cheapest MBA Program for Computer Science Students…
UC Davis Working Professional MBA Program
UA’s Two New Dual-Degree Engineering and MBA Programs
Washington State University Announces New Online MBA Program
Consider a Well-Rounded MBA
MBA Programs
Business Schools

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source*)

Having a home base to call your own is good. And as in love as I am with travel, one of the best feelings ever is the moment you get home and walk back in the door. It’s strange and new and comfortably enveloping and familiar all at once.

As marvelous as coming home to the place that’s yours in the world, the most profound bit a trip abroad can offer is a better understanding of a whole new group of humans. I don’t care how educated someone is or isn’t, or how much political-correctness training they’ve had; leaving home base and finding yourself among people you don’t consider familiar or anywhere near your own will open your eyes a smidge and will wedge some new information and thought processes into your noggin.

It doesn’t have to hit the “It blew my mind!” level of experience intensity; subtle works too. The more we humans grok the fact that the planet is full of other humans who are basically just like us, the better things will be. Global knowledge and understanding is good.

Even if their reasons aren’t planet-saving or brotherly love, I’m still glad UCLA’s Anderson School of Management will have an international requirement for their MBA students. Starting with the Class of 2012, students will have three requirement-fulfilling options:

1) Take an international elective.

2) Spend a term abroad at one of more than 50 premier global partner business schools.

3) Complete an international Applied Management Research (AMR) project.

It’s possible the business types are hoping to use their powers for global economic rule, but they’re still going to gain insight into other earth-dwellers—in non- business-y ways—whether they want to or not.

Further Reading:

UCLA Anderson: Compare MBA Programs
Business Week: UCLA Anderson School of Management
The Cheapest MBA Program for Computer Science Students…
UC Davis Working Professional MBA Program
UA’s Two New Dual-Degree MBA and Engineering Programs
Washington State Univ. Announces New Online MBA Program
Saving the Planet is a Solid Career Choice
Consider a Well-Rounded MBA
AllBusinessSchools.com

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source)

Big dreams and no money. Such is the situation colleges, universities, and the students who attend them are struggling with. The schools want to teach students to think outside the box, to be able to look ahead and improve the future of humanity. The students want to learn how to think wider and deeper and bigger and more. The President wants the schools to kick some researching butt and find ways to get us out of this mess (pick one).

Too bad there’s a global economic crisis, and the recession our country is experiencing is sucking the life and the funding out of everyone’s Big Dreams balloons. Now the schools and the students are walking around carrying sad little limp and deflated aspirations, jettisoning the deeper-thinking, big-picture courses and degrees for the more utilitarian/practical ones.

I won’t bore you with numbers, but there are an astonishing number of folks doing pre-professional undergrad work, and a ridiculous number of business degree holders in this country. I think we’re good on the ‘future of money’ front; someone learn something that’s helpful in a different way. Think outside the box, people. Don’t give up on the idea that knowing how to think in non-linear directions is conducive to the survival of mankind.

Read this piece in the NY Times:

The world economic crisis and the election of Barack Obama will change the future of higher education. Even as universities, both public and private, face unanticipated financial constraints, the president has called on them to assist in solving problems from health care delivery to climate change to economic recovery.

American universities have long struggled to meet almost irreconcilable demands: to be practical as well as transcendent; to assist immediate national needs and to pursue knowledge for its own sake; to both add value and question values. And in the past decade and a half, such conflicting and unbounded expectations have yielded a wave of criticism on issues ranging from the cost of college to universities’ intellectual quality to their supposed decline into unthinking political correctness. More…

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source)

Enrollment at community colleges is increasing at a startling rate. The two main contributing factors being: (a) college students and their parents are pinched for funds and spending a few years at a community college is several thousand dollars cheaper than heading for a four-year school immediately after high school graduation; and (b) adults who have just lost their jobs due to the recession are using the forced downtime to work on improving their career education and/or training.

It blows mightily that just as everyone is flocking to community college campuses, the recession is sucking a lot of funding from public schools. The schools have neither the physical space nor the money to deal with every potential student who knocks on their doors.

Irony is a tricky word, and no one should go around just slapping the Ironic! label on every bummer situation they see. The fact that community colleges have an embarrassment of riches due to incoming students, while simultaneously losing a painful chunk of their funding so they can’t enroll all of those students isn’t technically ironic. But it does get the It Ubersucks! label.

Further Reading (It’s All Bad News):

Community Colleges See Demand Spike, Funding Slip
Community College Enrollment Increase 4.9%
College Funding Dilemma
Demand Has Increased at State’s Community Colleges
3 O.C. Colleges Cut Classes for 2,000 Students
Community Colleges May See Increase In Enrollment
Community College Enrollment Booms At University of Hawaii
Community Colleges See Spike In Fall Enrollment
COCC Closes Fall Admissions
New Data Confirm Increased Enrollments
The Community College Enrollment Boom
Community College Surge

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source)

…It costs $99 and it’s called the App Store. This post over at the FairSoftware Blog starts out funny, but ends up making sense. If you’re working toward a degree in Computer Science, you’ll be writing (one hopes) cool and useful programs. Unless your future plans for world domination necessitate a separate MBA degree, consider the quick and dirty (and extremely practical) business lesson that selling your iPhone app at the App Store will provide.

You’ll be out the $99 fee to become a registered iPhone developer. That’s less than a textbook would run you, and you’ll have the chance to make that cash back, assuming you learn your MBA lessons well and write a kick-ass iPhone app that people will want to buy.

According to FairSoftware, here’s what you’ll learn by doing:

Marketing: How do users hear about your app? How can you create some buzz to attract more people? You will learn that having an amazing technical product is nothing if you can’t communicate its value.

Customer support: You will be forced to look at your product with the eyes of your end user. Is the app really intuitive? How come every user seems to be making the same usability mistake? You will learn to respect your end user and project yourself to code for what they need, not what you think is neat.

Economics: By now you should be having fun. Some money is coming in. You’d want more. How can you manage that? Maybe it’s time to bring on board another student to help with support or graphics. How much will that cost you? Is that a good return on investment? You will learn to make your own business decisions.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source)

Aaaaahh…back from vacation. I apologize for the technical difficulties (it sucks when one’s fear that controlling less and relaxing more will surely lead to everything going to hell turns out to be a well-founded fear). But now I’m back and have alerted the technical people and we can move on.

Here’s an informative higher education tidbit I came across: Will Sitch gives anyone interested in a working professional MBA program a thorough break-down of UC Davis’s version. The classrooms are located off-site, thirty minutes east of San Francisco, and because the course schedule is designed for working professionals, it requires in-class time only every other weekend. Mr. Sitch is three quarters in, and seems pretty happy with what the program has to offer.

In the post, Mr. Sitch answers questions about the caliber of the program, professor quality, student quality, how well the schedule works for a working professional like himself, and why he chose UC Davis’s program over Santa Clara’s or UC Berkeley’s programs.

Being a huge fan of higher education and the college campuses that go along with it, I could still see his point regarding why he’s fine with missing out on campus life while earning his third degree:

“…the reality of the part-time MBA program is totally different from a full-time program. Believe me: you wouldn’t benefit at all from having class on campus (assuming the campus was closer). A part-time MBA is so much work! You’re not going to have ANY free time for any extra-curricular activity.

When I did my M.A.Sc. full-time at Carleton University in Ottawa, I really liked being on campus. I lived on campus. I knew all the Profs, chilled with all the other grad and post-doc students, ate at the cafeterias and worked out at the campus gym. I occasionally left campus, but not very much. It worked for me then, but I couldn’t imagine trying to attend a real campus while working.

Listen, when you go to class you’re going to be speeding because a morning meeting ran late. You’re going to get there, do the non-essential reading while you scarf down lunch/dinner, and as soon as class is over you’re going home. Maybe, if you’re one of the cool kids, you’ll get an adult beverage with friends before you speed home. There’s no time to hang out. There’s no time to talk to profs. There’s no time to hit the gym or go to the library or walk in the park.

The Profs at UC Davis WP-MBA come to the campus. They teach. They have an office hour. They go home. They’re all available through email (and some by cellphone), but you’re not going to need them much. Maybe it’ll be different in upper-year courses, but there’s so much instruction provided in course notes, books, textpaks, and course websites that you’ll have everything you need already.”

Further Reading:

UC Davis Bay Area Working Professional MBA Program
UC Davis Sacramento Working Professional MBA Program
UC Berkeley Evening and Weekend MBA Program
Santa Clara Univ. Working Professional MBA Program
Business School Resources
Distance Learning MBA Programs
Will’s Thoughts On His First, Second, and Third Terms in the UC Davis Program

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Ah, the economy. I’ve always assumed that most humans of legal money-earning age have three thought-topics on more or less constant rotation through their minds: food, sex, and money. Those are all directly related to survival, so it makes sense that we’d be hyper-focused on them. And yet, when the media and the government types yell “The economy is tanking!” in a crowded theatre (or country, as it were), everyone comes unglued. All wage-earning adults are suddenly on a mission to make themselves Super-Duper Employable. Were they not toiling to that end before?

There’s nothing wrong with a strong work ethic and a good solid employability mindset. I’m all for being a productive citizen. It’s just odd to watch everyone suddenly scramble around in panicked circles and then run off in an Extra Hireable direction. What was everyone doing before, lolling around eating bonbons and archiving earwax chunks?

Sometimes it’s just bad luck: anyone who was kicking ass in the real estate business a few years ago is having a tough time these days. A lot of adults who had been, until recently, firmly ensconced in their careers are finding themselves less than necessary. Instead of wallowing in self-pity and praying for a miracle, a lot of adults are using the forced downtime to their advantage and are heading back to school.

For anyone who’s concerned that they haven’t been productive enough to survive in the current and near-future economy, here’s some further reading and resources:

Career Schools List
Weighing a New Industry For a New Job Outlook
More Students Spring From Tough Times
The Way To Go When the Economy Slows…Trade Schools
Certificate Programs Can Lead To Good Jobs

Posted by Alexa Harrington

image: Emil Rothengatter