Infographic Friday

Social media and student recruitment by Ellucian

Our hidden gem?

Some of these aren't as hidden as Tennessee's. Jekyll Island? The Outer Banks? I think they're pretty well known and out in the open. And I never would have guessed what they listed for our state. From Go Banking Rates.

Discover the Best Hidden Gem Destinations in Every State

Tennessee: Incline Railway
Cost: Tickets from $7 to $15 

After you take a Tennessee vacation, your friends might expect stories of country music and BBQ. Instead, regale them with stories of the Incline Railway, which takes you and family up a 72.7-percent grade on Lookout Mountain. It’s like driving up an insanely pretty wall. Before hopping on the car in St. Elmo, remember to bring some cash to spend at the microbrewery and collection of cafes and small-batch boutiques.

How am I doing?

Is there any upside to performance reviews? Poor review don't lead to improvement and good reviews just get ignored. From Fast Company.

The complicated and troubled history of the annual performance review

As the decades passed, with more middle management having more direct reports at larger companies, the investment in individual performance reviews started to get out of hand. For example, by 2015 a report from the Harvard Business Review revealed that at Deloitte it took 1.8 million hours across the firm. And at CEB, managers reported 210 hours for appraisals (that translates to 5 weeks per year). Adobe scrapped the practice after calculating that 2,000 managers were in for some 80,000 hours when dealing with performance reviews. Talk about a counterproductive way to spend the workday.

But it wasn’t just the hours that put the performance review on deathwatch. As Capelli and Tavis noted, research proved that workers “would rather be told they were ‘average’ than given a 3 on a 5-point scale.” 

Researchers at Kansas State University, Eastern Kentucky University, and Texas A&M also looked at how negative feedback during annual performance reviews affected employees and (shocker) it didn’t help them improve. But surprisingly, even positive feedback got misconstrued and failed to motivate. 

As for the future of the performance review, the bad news is that it’s not totally going away. But as Capelli and Tavis point out, there is a better way. “Ideally, conversations between managers and employees occur when projects finish, milestones are reached, challenges pop up, and so forth–allowing people to solve problems in current performance while also developing skills for the future,” they write. “At most companies, managers take the lead in setting near-term goals, and employees drive career conversations throughout the year.” Sounds like a much more productive and empowering way for everyone to spend their time.

Giving Tuesday

From Visually.

Cyber Monday

Infographic Friday

Black Friday

How to Shop on Black Friday and Cyber Monday Infographic - Valpak Online Coupons

Thanksgiving break

Courtesy of: Bedding Stock

Thanksgiving break

by ereplacementparts.

From Visually.

Thanksgiving break

You will find more infographics at Statista

Pumping up the humanities

I suspect humanities enrollments will eventually turn around. But their pathway to college teaching jobs will remain treacherous. From The Atlantic.

As Humanities Majors Decline, Colleges Try to Hype Up Their Programs

To avoid further slippage in humanities majors, elite colleges and universities have resorted to an all-out campaign to convince students that such degrees aren’t just tickets to jobs as bartenders and Starbucks baristas. Colleges are starting early with that push. Stanford University writes letters and sends brochures to top-notch high-school students with an interest in the humanities to encourage them to apply, says Debra Satz, the dean of Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences. Prospective students can also take humanities classes at Stanford while still in high school. 

What’s puzzling to the college officials I spoke to is that they say students’ interest in humanities majors remains high during the college-search process, according to what students indicate on their applications. Then something happens between when students apply and when they actually declare a major, usually in their sophomore year. Perhaps students’ intentions on their applications weren’t serious, but if they were, Satz says it’s critical that humanities courses in the freshman year capture their attention. At Stanford, she said introductory courses in the humanities are focused on “big ideas,” such as justice, ethics, and the environment, to appeal to students trying to choose their major. 

“We have to make the offerings really good, really enriching,” Satz says. “Part of our challenge is when students see so many of their peers going into computer science.”

To help guide the course selection of incoming students, Grinnell sent a booklet to all freshmen this past summer that outlined the importance of a broad liberal-arts education.  

The college also added a session on the topic to orientation in advance of students meeting their academic advisers. Both initiatives, Kington said, were intended to encourage students to select courses across a range of academic disciplines, given that Grinnell lacks a traditional core curriculum with mandated requirements.  

Macalester’s tactic has been to try to inject some humanities into stem classes and some practical career training into the humanities. Last year, Rosenberg, the school’s president, brought the faculty together at a retreat to discuss the shifting balance of majors. One outcome was that faculty members were encouraged to pair together courses across academic disciplines so that, for example, a new class in social media might be a blend of computer science and philosophy. Professors in the humanities were also encouraged to give their students more career guidance than in the past, when many humanities students simply went to graduate school or law school after college.  

“The typical English major is designed to get students to go to graduate school,” Rosenberg says. “We need to rethink the curriculum so that it’s more focused on what employers will immediately find attractive.”

This pretty much says it all

Man, I hate the Myers-Briggs in general. Fun fact: its inventor had no training in psychology or sociology and was a mystery writer. Not that there's anything wrong with that...From Lifehacker.

It's Time to Stop Using Myers-Briggs at Work

For anything beyond a conversation starter, personality tests are the wrong tool for the job. Even CPP, which sells Myers-Briggs-related services to companies, warns that “The MBTI questionnaire should never be used in recruitment or selection because it does not measure a person’s skills or abilities ̶ just their underlying personality preferences.” 

If the right person for the job happens to be an ENFJ when you’re looking for an INTP, it’s usually perfectly legal to reject or fire them on the basis of that test. But it’s a boneheaded a move, just like if you fired them because they’re a Virgo and you somehow decided you’re looking for a Leo. 

And because the test is so variable, and predicts next to nothing about future performance, it can feel like a waste of time and resources. If you want to get your employees talking about how they like to communicate and solve problems, why not skip the test? In its place you can have a good, old fashioned, bullshit-free conversation.

Infographic Friday

Embedded from Digital Marketing Philippines

Today is the Great American Smoke Out

From Visually.

Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette

West Virginia and Kentucky lead the list, with Ohio a surprising fourth. Not surprisingly, Arkansas is third. Tennessee is seventh. From 24/7 Wall Street.

States With the Most Smokers

7. Tennessee
> Adults who smoke every day: 16.0%
> Lung cancer deaths per 100,000 people: 54.3 (5th highest)
> Cigarette excise tax: $0.62 (10th lowest)
> Adults reporting poor health: 6.7% (8th highest)

What's the most popular last name in Tennessee?

According to Ancestry.com, it's Smith, Johnson, and Jones. 

Thinning the herd

Words escape me. From CNN.

More than 250 people around the world have died taking selfies since 2011

Snapping the perfect selfie can be fun. But if it involves flying a plane or holding a loaded handgun or standing on slippery rocks near the top of a waterfall, you may want to think twice. 

Some 259 people worldwide have died while taking selfies, according to a study published in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care. Researchers from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, a group of public medical colleges in New Delhi, scoured news reports on selfie deaths that occurred from October 2011 to November 2017.

They found that the most selfie deaths occurred in India, followed by Russia, the US and Pakistan. Most of the victims were men (about 72%) and under the age of 30.
India accounted for more than half the total -- 159 reported selfie deaths since 2011. Researchers attributed the high number to the country's enormous population of people under 30, which is the world's largest. 

Although women generally take more selfies than men, researchers found that men were more likely to take risks -- like standing at the edge of a cliff -- to capture a dramatic shot. "It justifies the higher number of deaths and incidents for men," the study said.

From Visually.

Infographic Friday

Infographic created by folks at Weekdone, the better team management tools company.

We're holding a conference

In one of Tennessee's tourist traps. Emphasis on tourist. The ACHE South Conference is April 1-4 in Gatlinburg. No fooling. Anyway, I've been to quite a few of these and it should reinforce how important tourism is to Tennessee. From Bestlifeonline.com.

30 American Tourist Traps That Locals Totally Hate

5 Nathan Bedford Forrest Statue; Nashville, Tennessee 

This statue, unveiled in 1998, features Confederate general Nathan Bedford in a cartoonish sneer atop a gold-colored horse. While thousands of visitors every year feel the need to stop and take pictures with the statue, locals are ashamed that such an overt sign of racism exists in their city, since the statue was created by Jack Kershaw, a co-founder of the League of the South, a white nationalist and white supremacist organization, and former lawyer to Martin Luther King Jr.’s killer. While many calls have been made to have the statue removed, it still stands as a bizarre reminder of the country’s controversial past. 

19 Beale Street; Memphis, Tennessee 

Otherwise known as the “official home of the blues,” Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, housing many musical points of interest, restaurants, and other predictable tourist traps, is cleverly avoided by most locals—if they can help it. Each year, more than 11 million people crowd the streets, giving little room for the locals to enjoy their own culture. 

27 Gatlinburg, Tennessee 

Gatlinburg, a town full of scenic mountain passes and entertainment for the entire family, is such an effortless vacation experience that most living within a reasonable radius of the town have at least visited once. In fact, it’s estimated that around 12 million people visit Sevier County, housing both Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, every year. Currently, there are over four thousand people living in the city—residents who have to constantly contend with inflated prices and tourist traffic.

Promises, promises...

I'm glad this is getting students to return to colleges to finish their degrees. But I'm not sure how to reconcile the $500 flat rate with an estimated cost of attendance of $5,893. A lot of fees in there? If I weren't so busy with budget stuff, I'd dig deeper into it. Western Carolina, after all, is just over the mountains in North Carolina. Well, a little more than just over....

Why Many College Dropouts Are Returning to School in North Carolina: A new plan to lower tuition has lead to a 60 percent jump in the number of students who have re-enrolled at one university.

This fall, the state launched a program called NC Promise that sets tuition at a flat rate—$500 a semester for in-state students, and $2,500 a semester for out-of-state students—at three public universities in geographically disparate parts of North Carolina. To fund the program, the state legislature has set aside $51 million. And its goal is self-evident: Make college affordable enough to boost the number of students who enroll, while ensuring that they aren’t saddled with debt that could affect whether or not they graduate. And, for all intents and purposes, it’s working. The three institutions—UNC Pembroke, Western Carolina University, and Elizabeth City State University—have seen immediate enrollment jumps of 14, 6, and 19 percents, respectively. 

But perhaps more interesting than the enrollment jumps themselves is how the promise program has affected so-called “readmits”—students who dropout of college and then re-enroll. Pembroke, in particular, has seen a 60 percent increase in its readmit population so far this fall. “We certainly anticipated an increase,” David Ward, the provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at Pembroke, told me, “but I'm not going to say that we foresaw the size of increase that we did.” Overall, the institution had an 838-student increase—including readmits, transfers, and new enrollees—from the last school year. 

To put the NC Promise program into perspective, the estimated cost of attendance for a commuter student at UNC Pembroke last year was was $8,495. But this year, the cost dropped to $5,893, an amount that, for low-income students, can be covered in full by Pell Grants. Of course, students still have to to pay for basics like housing and food on their own. But, Ward told me, the re-enrollment rates are encouraging, and signal that lowering tuition is having its intended effect. “The reality is that many of our students are one car breaking down, one [broken] transmission away from not being able to complete a semester,” he said. “Lowering the cost directly to the student is a great incentive.”

Tennessee is still

In the bottom ten when it comes another health measure; this time it's heart disease. West Virginia, of course, is the worst at number one, along with the usual suspects: Alabama, Kentucky, and Mississippi. Hawaii is number 50. Pass the biscuits and gravy, please. From 24/7 Wall Street.

States With the Most Heart Disease

5. Tennessee
> Prevalence of major cardiovascular disease: 9.8%
> Adults who report healthy weight: 28.8% (8th lowest)
> Adults who report fair or poor health: 20.5% (9th highest)
> Median household income: $51,340 (10th lowest)

Raising kids

While attending college. Is it any wonder these students struggle? From Inside Higher Education.

'Time Poverty' of Students Who Are Parents

College students with preschool-age children take longer to complete their degrees and are less likely to stay in college than their childless peers, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Higher Education. 

The study explored the relationship between degree completion and parental status and determined that “time poverty” -- the lack of available time that student parents can spend studying and completing course work -- was a primary factor in degree completion. Students with preschool-age children had only about 10 hours per day to dedicate to schoolwork, sleeping, eating and leisure activities, compared to the 21 hours that childless students had. The study's abstract is available here. 

Claire Wladis, a mathematics professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College at the City University of New York, conducted the research alongside Katherine Conway, a business professor and CUNY colleague, and Alyse Hachey, an education professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. 

"I think a lot of the motivation for the theory and the idea that this was important for students came from serving as advisers for community college students and seeing that they just didn’t have enough time … for work, for academics," Wladis said. 

The group used transcript and survey data from 15,385 students at two- and four-year colleges at CUNY and controlled for whether the student had a live-in partner. Two-thirds of the student parents surveyed said that childcare services did not provide them with enough time to complete their academic work, and three-fourths of those students were on financial aid. 

"I think an interesting finding is that student parents actually do much better in college than you’d expect if you control for how much time they’re spending," Wladis said. "Student parents precisely have a really strong incentive to go to college and to do well in college because it can pay off for their children." 

Congress increased federal investment in financial aid for student parents in 2016 by upping the funding for the Child Care Access Means Parents in School program (CCAMPIS), a federal aid program for student parents, from $15 million to $50 million annually. 

But meanwhile, the number of institutions that offer childcare is declining, according to a briefing paper by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Infographic Friday

[Source: U.S. Census Bureau]

Tennessee Promise

Seems to be increasing community college graduation rates. And that's a good thing. From The Tennessean.

Tennessee community colleges see highest graduation rate, enrollment increase

Highest three-year graduation rate 

The College System of Tennessee has also recorded the highest three-year graduation rate in the history of the system. The three-year graduation rate tracks first-time, full-time freshmen through the summer of their third year and counts who graduates.

The graduation rate for the 2015 to 2018 group was 23.7 percent, which is a 10.1 percentage point growth from the 2010 to 2013 rate. Deaton said that while an increased graduation rate is a success, there are still challenges. 

Deaton said the graduation rate tracks graduation of first-time, full-time freshman, and many of the students enrolled in community colleges do not fall into that category. He said there is also a gap in the graduation rate when broken down by race “that needs to be addressed.” 

With higher enrollment and graduation rates, the system has also seen an 82 percent increase in the number of awards given from 2009 to 2018. 

In 2009, there were 8,370 awards (associate’s degrees and certificates) given. In 2018, that had increased to 15,240 awards given. 

“This is the product of years and years of hard work,” Deaton said. 

Tennessee Promise, Reconnect participants higher this year 

According to preliminary enrollment numbers, the College System of Tennessee also has higher numbers of Tennessee Reconnect and Tennessee Promise participants this year. 

The number of Tennessee Reconnect students outnumber the number of Tennessee Promise students, with almost 14,700 Reconnect participants and over 14,500 Promise participants.

Participants in Tennessee Promise have also become more diverse, according to Amy Moreland, Director of Policy. The number of black, Hispanic and underrepresented minorities participating in Tennessee Promise in the system have all increased since 2015.