Embed the image above on your site

<a href="http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/youth-vote-showdown" ><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/infographics/Youth-Vote-Showdown-800.png" alt="Youth Vote Showdown" width="500" border="0" /></a><br />Via: <a href="http://www.bestcollegesonline.com">Best Online Colleges</a>

• Is a college degree worth it? Recent graduate Katie Thompson says “yes” via the Gordon College News Service.

• David P. Angel, Clark University president, explains why “Even in Bad Times, Colleges Can Make Education Pay Off” in today’s Huffington Post.

• Sheridan Libraries’ Center for Educational Resources at Johns Hopkins University is offering a grants program for innovations in humanities pedagogy. Brian Shields of the JHU Gazette provides more information.

1. Google

   We’ve all heard the storiesof how awesome it is to work at Google, so it’s no surprise that every year the giant Internet company is inundated with thousands of applications from college students copping their best “don’t be evil” attitudes. The lucky ones who make the cut get the same perks as regular employees, meaning the gourmet meals, rock-climbing wall, spa treatments, and game room are all theirs to enjoy. They even get to sit in on meetings with Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Best of all, the internships are year-round and have flexible start and end times.

2. ESPN

   When there’s a book out that describes a job with the title, Those Guys Have All the Fun, you know there’s going to be mad competition among students trying to get their foot in the door. For 90 paid summer internship spots with “the worldwide leader in sports” in 2010, 10,000 people applied. That number went up to 13,000 in 2011, and will probably go up again this year. Students can edit video, work as a sideline reporter, produce content for the website, and much more. Helpful hint: try for one of the fall or spring internships. There’s much less competition.

3. Southwest Airlines

   Southwest has a fun, unique corporate culture that makes it one of the best companies in the countryto work for. Because interns are treated like employees and get to get in on the fun while earning experience, a Southwest “NoLimits” internship is highly coveted by college students. Interns are given their own special projects, from designing T-shirts for employees to creating animated safety programs for pilots. And of course, there are the perks: intern Happy Hour, casual dress code, company parties, and flying for free. Yes, free flights. The line starts over there.

   

4. Vogue

   The success of shows like Project Runway and Fashion Star have proven that interest in the world of fashion is as rampant as ever. And although print media have fallen on difficult times, for college women (and men) who want to break into the industry, Vogue is the place they all want to be. Just two years ago, a one-week gig at the iconic magazine was auctioned for $23,000, giving whole new meaning to the phrase “paid internship.” Hopefully that kingly sum bought that intern the privilege of eating in the cafeteria, instead of the closet.
   

5. Pixar

   How many interns get to see their name in the credits of a movie after their summer of work? For the 30 lucky winners of a 12-week internship at famed studio Pixar, it’s a serious possibility. Needless to say, thousands apply for a coveted spot working here alongside some of the best animators and special effects artists in the business. But there’s also plenty of time made for play. Past interns think back fondly on the free cereal bar, dodgeball matches, celebrity sightings, company parties, and movie screenings.

6. The White House

   Ambitious youngsters who dream of a career in “the loop” aim for the top with their internship applications. Current undergrads must compete with 6,000 other current, incoming, and recently graduated college students for a couple hundred spots as a White House intern. These jobs are unpaid, of course (have you seen the deficit?), but applicants come for the chance to serve their country while making connections for a possible career in Washington. At the end, interns are treated to a send-off from the leader of the free world himself.

7. FASB Postgraduate Technical Assistant Program

   An internship with one of the “Big Four” accounting firms is notoriously hard to come by. Imagine then how coveted an internship is that, upon completing it, makes all four companies slobber over you. The Financial Accounting Standards Board awards just six summer and six winter internship positions each year to postgraduate accountants. To even apply, a student has to be nominated by a professor and approved by the dean at their school. When their one-year, salaried stint working with the accounting standards-setting process ends, interns write their own ticket.

8. JP Morgan Chase

   JPMorgan Chase has weathered the banking crisis and remains one of the most stable financial firms in the world. For finance majors, an internship with the company remains a highly competitive and sought-after resume highlight. A summer internship is a common way to begin a full-time career at Chase, as the firm frequently hires former interns. It takes a solid GPA (3.5 or so), but it’s one of the highest-paying internships out there. A spot in research, asset management, investment banking, or elsewhere can fetch upwards of $12,000.

9. Marvel

   After 10+ years of excellent superhero movies, everyone is a comic book fan. For an internship with the company behind Spiderman, Iron Man, The Avengers, and Thor, you’ll need super résumé skills to separate you from the mountain of applications the company receives. The 30-odd positions are unpaid and are only awarded to students who can receive college credit for them, and some of your duties may involve making copies or similarly mind-numbing activities. But that doesn’t stop a legion of comics fans from holding their breath for a spot at the center of the action.

10. Huffington Post

    With its content aggregation bolstered by original content, The Huffington Post is arguably the face of the new journalism of the 21st century, and journalism majors have taken note. Each year since 2009, an internship at HuffPo has been sold at auction for $13,000, $9,000, $14,400, and $5,200, respectively. Interns can take advantage of the company nap rooms, then get back to work sharpening their craft on the forefront of Internet reporting and content production. The company created the Joe Jr. Awards to recognize the best college journalism with a paid internship for students who “live, breathe and sleep journalism.”

Although Thor with his hammer, Captain America with his shield, and Black Widow’s bracelets are swell, none can match the natural strength, intelligence, and prowess of the world’s true mega-heroes: Teachers!

Heroes not Zeroes
Tim Clifford recently posted a piece in The New York Times positing the argument that teachers are neither zeroes nor heroes (18 April, 2012). He makes several agreeable statements in an open letter to education reformers. Clifford writes:

• The myth of the bad teacher is just that — a myth. I’ve taught for more than two decades and I can truthfully assert that I have only seen a handful of teachers who were so awful that they needed to be bounced from the classroom.

• Of that handful, many were weeded out in the tenure process, and others were either forced out or exited voluntarily because they couldn’t cut it.

• Speaking of tenure, let me remind you that administrators have as many as five years to decide whether teachers deserve tenure. Before that, teachers can be fired for any reason, or no reason at all.

• And as for the oft-repeated meme, perpetuated in ed reform hit pieces like the movie “Waiting for Superman,” that once granted tenure, teachers stick their feet up on their desks and read the sports section for the next 20 years, I invite you all to spend even one period in a classroom with your feet up. You will quickly learn why teaching cannot be performed while sitting on one’s posterior.

• We don’t pull swords from stones, but we do pull thoughtful answers from reluctant learners.

• And while the villains we face rarely wear black masks, we do square off against thinly disguised poverty, hunger, discrimination, abuse, bullying and neglect on a regular basis. (18 April, 2012)

Like Clifford, I have also been an educator for more than two decades. As a faculty member, faculty assembly president, and administrator, I have seen many teacher-heroes and very few teacher-zeroes.

Remarkable People
In The Avengers trailer, Nick Fury refers to his team as “a group of remarkable people.” This is a simple definition of what a true hero is: someone with outstanding characteristics and/or abilities that represent the ideal human being in a given culture. Who could match the cleverness of Odysseus for the early Greeks, the courage of Rosa Parks for Americans, or the invincibility Randy Pausch ?

One of the most respected scholars to define a hero was Joseph Campbell whose book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (2008), explicated the hero in terms of a common journey called “The Monomyth.” Basically, what this means is that a hero is someone who passes through the stages and challenges of life successfully. This is a journey that teachers both pass through successfully themselves and one that they, as heroes, guide their own students through.

Chess Edwards offers a concise take on Campbell’s Monomyth that most educators will readily identify with their students and where there is further evidence that faculty are heroes:

Edwards basically says that although we would like to journey through life with ease from beginning to end, that’s not a realistic expectation. There will be obstacles and challenges—some of them extreme enough to nearly cause us to give up. However, the hero is someone who successfully passes through all of this and shares the resulting skills, experience, and other treasures with his/her community. This is what teachers do. This is what teachers share with their students.

Hero-makers
For many students, it is the hero-teacher who models and guides them along this heroic path in life. Let me break this down according to the main parts of the Monomyth:

• Home or life as we know it: Everything is comfortable; everything is familiar. We may have a hope, as Edwards says, that everything will move forward for us in a linear manner from point A to point B. However, life doesn’t typically work that way.

• Call to action: Teachers may start with ideal expectations but discover that teaching is not as easy or initially rewarding as expected. They may find students in their classes who have lost their jobs and are retraining for a new career. Both groups may have been forced to cross a threshold into an unfamiliar, unknown world that is a bit intimidating or even frightening.

• Pit of despair: For those who do continue, there may even be a point that these teachers and students feel they can’t do it, that they can’t go on and teach a class or take a class. They may feel that teaching isn’t for them or that higher education is not possible for them. Yet, they move forward where others fear to tread.

• Gifts: This is the point where teachers become not only heroes, but makers of heroes. Somehow, many who choose to become educators find the courage, the strength, and other heroic characteristics to not only push themselves through this ordeal, but also to guide their students through it as well. Faculty model and help their students find the gifts that Edwards speaks of. Just as the Avengers become stronger as part of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate), the teacher leads students into new knowledge, skills, and alliances for academic, professional and personal growth. Teachers display and inspire in their students faith, confidence, compassion, and other heroic virtues.

• Return: Just as Edwards and Campbell emphasize, heroes must take the gifts that have been won back into their respective communities, every day, faculty are on the front lines of society, sharing the gifts that they themselves have won and inspiring a rippling effect as their students “pay it forward” in heroic service of their own.

Sure, summoning lighting is a cool power, but it won’t help anyone find gainful employment or improve their lives. Therefore, both for who they are and what they achieve, teachers are the true heroes who inspire others to heroism.

Please join Michael on Google+ and Twitter

Image source:

Image(s): FreeDigitalPhotos.net

• One-third of young adults with Autism have no paid work experience or education seven years after completing high school. The Associated Press’s Lindsey Tanner reports.

• A Vernon Hills High School program seeks to address both the social skills and postsecondary education and employment concerns of students with autism, according to Amy Alderman of the Chicago Tribune.

• The Guardian’s Jessica Shepherd explains some of the difficulties with education reform meant to assist autistic and other special needs students in the United Kingdom. The piece contains some useful talking points for other nations as well.

1. Stress Tracker

   If you’re looking for ways to minimize your stress in college, identifying what exactly stresses you out is the first step. Keep track of your behaviors, moods, and stress levels with this app, and manage your stress with its guided relaxation feature.

2. Relax: Stress and Anxiety Relief

   Take a timeout with Relax. The app’s guided breathing exercises use peaceful music to help you relieve tension or combat insomnia. Use the quick start feature at the first sign of a panic attack, or use the skills you’ve learned in your yoga practice.

3. Cleveland Clinic Stress Meditation

   Cleveland Clinic’s Wellness Institute brings you this $.99 app to help you fight stress and improve your overall well-being. The app features eight meditation exercises, including “Letting Go Meditation” and “Self Confidence Meditation,” read to you in a narrator’s soothing voice.

4. Health through Breath – Pranayama

   The conscious breathing exercises of pranayama are useful for treating a number of health problems, including migraines and asthma. This app helps you use the techniques to handle stress in your daily life by counting time for you so you can concentrate and progress through the different breathing levels. It also has visual and audio cues.

5. Relax Melodies

   Allowing you to make a custom mix of 82 of your favorite sounds from its library, Relax Melodies makes counting sheep a thing of the past. Create a mix, set the timer for when to shut off the audio, and save creations for later playback. Don’t lose any more sleep over school.

6. SweetBeat

   Used in conjunction with a compatible heart rate monitor, SweetBeat measures your heart rate variability (HRV), which falls when you are stressed. College athletes can use this app for determining how hard to work out on any given day, and all students can use it to gain insight into what exactly is causing them stress.

7. Angry Birds

   You could go with Angry Birds Space, but frankly some of those levels make us nauseous. This free version is set in the much more chill environment of surf and sun. Pull that slingshot back, blow up those pigs, and feel the stress melt away.

8. Sleepmaker Waves Free

   Is school stress affecting your sleep? Take back your Z’s with this app that delivers the calming sound of real ocean waves rolling onto the beach. Don’t worry, these beaches have no kids or seagulls. There’s also a pro, paid version, but stick with the free one.

9. Stress Check by Azumio

   For Android users, Stress Check is another HRV measuring app, only it doesn’t require any additional hardware. Instead it uses the camera to measure your stress level and give you a score from 1-100, so you can gauge how stressed you are from anywhere, from class to the dorm.

10. Breeze

    The phrase “I really hate those wind chimes” has never been uttered in human history. With the power of technology, now you can de-stress wherever you are by running this app on your iPhone and picturing yourself enjoying a cool breeze on the back porch to this pleasant sound.

11. iShatter Stress Relief: For certain types of stress, the sound of breaking glass is the last thing you want to hear. But if you’ve got some bad-grade aggression built up you need to vent, this app lets you destroy light bulbs, TV, fine champagne glasses, and more.

12. Workout Trainer

    One of the best stress relievers is exercise. Take your workout digital with Workout Trainer, a free app that offers thousands of workouts with no equipment needed, including crossfit, tabata, and high intensity interval training.

13. My Daily Journal

    Getting your thoughts out of your head and down on paper can be a powerful stress relief tool. My Daily Journal is at the top of the list for iPhone journaling apps, with its automatic saving, easy export, and attractive interface.

14. Relax Completely

    This app from leading hypnotherapist Darren Marks will not turn you into a murdering zombie. What it will do is help you sleep, with calming audio and video clips to help you relax and overcome the stress that’s keeping you awake.

15. ColorNote

    A good deal of stress can be avoided with proper planning. This popular Android app makes it easy to write notes to yourself about important dates and assignments and share them via email or the cloud so that you’re never caught off guard by school work.

16. Naturespace

    Plug in your headphones and be transported to a scene of a Hawaiian sunrise, or into the middle of a mighty thunderstorm. Naturespace uses “spatially accurate,” 3-D outdoor sound that will make you swear you’re really there, far from school and whatever is stressing you.

17. Anti-Stress Quotes

    Let the wisdom of intellectuals and the wit of comedians ease your stress by reading one of their quotes a day through this free app. When you find one you like enough to share, use the app to post it to Twitter or Facebook.

18. iDestroy Free Wicked Sick Guns

    The iPhone version is called ” iDestroy – wicked sick stress relief with lots of guns,” so apparently stress management is this game’s intended purpose. Practice stress management by crushing bugs and blowing stuff up.

19. Funny Jokes

    Laughter may not be the best medicine for a chainsaw accident, but it’s just what the doctor ordered for stress. Funny Jokes has a library of thousands of “yo momma,” Chuck Norris, and blonde jokes to give you a chuckle and lighten your mood. Brighten a friend’s day by texting or posting a joke that tickles your funny bone.

20. Breathe2Relax

    When you don’t have time to get to your yoga mat, use this app to help you in diaphragmatic breathing. Breathe2Relax is recommended to soldiers by the Pentagon to help them handle stress. Hopefully nothing you encounter at school is as stressful as war, but this app can help you cope.

Embed the image above on your site

<a href="http://www.bestcollegesonline.com"><img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/infographics/Bilingualism-Across-The-US-800.png" alt="Bilingualism Across the U.S." width="500" border="0" /></a><br />Via: <a href="http://www.bestcollegesonline.com">BestCollegesOnline.com</a>

Over this same period, I have been the hiring manager or search committee chair at least sixty times. However, the downside to this is that I have also seen some worthy adjuncts miss out on a potential full-time offer for legitimate reasons that are not typically shared in the standard “how to find a job” resources. I have often thought: “If they only knew…”

Therefore, here they are: my top six secrets to help part-time faculty obtain a full-time teaching position.

Give Me What I Want
I mean it. Do not submit the generic cover letter and resume you’ve been sending to every other position you’ve applied for during the last decade, especially if you haven’t even bothered to change the job title to the one you are applying for currently. Take the time to really consider how you meet the potential employer’s needs. Include something to account for each of the qualifications listed in the job posting. Show me you can focus your thoughts clearly and express them concisely. Make me believe you are not only the one we need now, but that you can bring something else to the team in the future.

Keep the Fluff
I mean this, too. Avoid lapsing into the rookie mentality that the longer your application is, the better. I do not need to know every single class you have taught over the last three decades. I don’t need to learn how many cats and dogs you have or that you are also a “people person.” Stick to providing concrete information about your skills, qualifications, and talents.

Similarly, do not exaggerate your role in projects or on committees, especially if you are an internal candidate. Chances are good you did not single-handedly launch the online course offerings at a university nor are you a curriculum expert if you set up your own classes. This sort of fluff and hyperbole is actually distracting, and hiring committee members are not impressed by them.

Provide Documentation
As a way of documenting your skills and talents, offer professional examples. For instance, can you share a link to your instructional YouTube videos? A podcast you created? A paper evaluated using media rich feedback? Have you completed online instructor certification at any of your previous positions? Sharing these sorts of concrete evidence will do much to let potential employers know who you are and what you would bring to the position.

Offer Something New
The harsh reality is that when we apply for an open position, we often feel we are well qualified. Some internal candidates who have been with a school for a few years may even feel entitled to the full-time position and approach the interview as if the job is already theirs. However, full-time positions are highly competitive. For every open position I have chaired a hiring committee for, there were anywhere from three to six dozen good candidates. What will usually make you stand out from the crowd is to not only demonstrate that you meet and exceed the requirements of the position, but that you also bring something unique to the table. It may even be something the hiring committee hasn’t even thought about.

For example, when applying for positions in composition, after showing that I could meet and exceed the expectations of the position, I would add the unique quality that I also hold a master’s degree in Classics. Rather than just studying rhetorical theory within the standard graduate English courses, I have also examined the works of the original masters like Aristotle, the Father of Rhetoric, and Cicero in their original languages. This has provided me with a greater depth of understanding, and though some writing faculty consider the Classical Rhetorical Theory to be outdated, all understand its significance as the foundation of the theories that have followed historically, its time tested validity, and the uniqueness an in-depth knowledge of the evolution of rhetorical theory could offer a program. In other words, I offered something unique that perhaps the committee hadn’t thought about before.

Express Genuine Interest/Awareness
A common interview technique is to turn the tables toward the end of the conversation if the hiring committee asks you if you have any questions. One of the worst responses is, “No.” Express interest by coming to the interview with some questions. Pay attention to the sorts of questions the interviewers are asking, and ask related questions. For instance, do a lot of the questions seem to have to do with your technical fluency? Then ask a related question like: “Are there any other technical needs of the position or department that this position could assist with?” Even some general questions are fine and can show interest in the job. Ask the committee members something like: “What do you each think is the best part of working for this university?”

Although there is debate about this and it’s wise to wait until this end point in the interview, I like to hear a candidate ask about salary and benefits. Part of the reason is that I have gone all the way through a hiring process for part or full-time faculty only to have the candidate turn down the actual job offer because the salary or benefits are not what was expected. This causes additional delays in getting a position filled.

The other reason I like to hear a candidate ask is that realistically, we work to earn a living. We are taught to keep our personal lives out of the work place; however, we all know that a job must be a good fit both professionally and personally, otherwise a potential hire or even a faculty member who begins the job may quit.

The final reason I suggest asking questions at the end is because if the position as described is not a good fit for you, there may be a bit of wiggle room. In part, I started teaching online when I was offered a full-time teaching position at a university that was an 80-mile commute from my home. Professionally, it was a perfect fit; personally, as a single father of two, it was not. The salary offered was a bit lower than I had expected, too. I couldn’t afford the daily commute in time or cost. However, I asked if the position could be done partially online. Fortunately, the response was favorable, and I only had to make the commute two days per week during the time my kids were in school.

Get Us at Hello
It’s understandable that an interviewee will be nervous; however, often those doing the interview are too. Therefore, just as in any other social situation, it’s vital that you do your part. Extend your hand, be friendly, and help the interview feel more like a conversation than an interrogation. This is also important in that it helps the members of the hiring committee see how you will interact as part of the team and how you will handle yourself in stressful situations. During the interview, it’s helpful to make connections with others as you slowly discover who they are at the institution. Do be sincere and try make it seem like you are a part of the team during the time you have together. Use the shared goal of finding the right person to fill the needs of this position; make that person you.

The above tips are not all there is to obtaining a full-time teaching position if you are currently part-time; however, after being the chair of about sixty such hiring committees, these are the ones candidates tend to forget about or be unaware of. Those who do follow the above recommendations are the ones who have typically received the job offer.

Please join Michael on Google+ and Twitter

Image source: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1671

• Katherine Long of the Seattle Times warns parents to be cautious about investing in the state’s Guaranteed Education Tuition (GET) program. This information may also be helpful for others around the U.S. considering a pre-paid tuition plan.

• Barney Oldfield promised 67 kindergartners that if they graduated, he would give them each $1,000. They succeeded, and the Associated Press offers the inspirational story about how Oldfield’s foundation is making good on his promise nine years after his death.

• Where does the Oklahoma Education Lottery money go? Curtis Killman of Tulsa World shows readers.