Monthly Archives: August 2010

Public Hearing for Section 4 of I-69 This Week

I-69 is likely to be a hot topic this week as several highway related meetings are scheduled to take place.

A public hearing is set for 5:00-9:00 p.m. on Thursday, August 26th at the Eastern Green Middle School gymnasium. At this hearing, INDOT will present the preferred alternative route for Section 4, the stretch of highway that connects CRANE to SR 37 in Southern Monroe County. Public comment will be accepted on the Section 4 Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) during the meeting and may be submitted to INDOT through September 28th.

The Technical Advisory Committee of the Bloomington/Monroe County Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) met this morning with I-69 related business on the agenda. INDOT is asking the local MPO to amend its Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) to include preliminary engineering, right of way, and construction phases for I-69 due to the 1 ¾ miles of Section 4 highway that falls within the MPO’s planning jurisdiction. The Technical Advisory Committee, tasked with reviewing the requested amendment and making recommendation to the Policy Committee of the MPO, voted unanimously in favor of the amendment. The Citizen’s Advisory Committee meets this evening at 6:30 to discuss and vote on the amendment. The Policy Committee will make its decision on September 10th.

Getting Back in the Job Market

The following is a guest blog from Tim Tucker, a Chamber member and franchise owner of Express Employment Professionals. All of the views and opinions expressed in this post are solely Tim Tucker’s and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of The Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. To submit a guest blog e-mail DeJohn Rose for more information.

There’s no time like the present to lay the groundwork, start networking, and update your résumé to get back in the job market.

Research indicates that hiring trends are on the upswing. A national hiring trends survey of employers conducted by Express Employment Professionals shows commercial and clerical positions will likely see continued hiring increases for the third quarter. Express surveyed 10,181 current and former clients across the company’s more than 550 locations in the United States and Canada. Thirty-four percent of respondents plan to hire full-time light industrial positions in the third quarter, while 28% plan to hire for administrative positions. The survey also reveals that 13% of respondents plan to hire for engineering positions and 11% plan to hire for information technology positions.

According to CareerBuilder and USA Today’s latest nationwide survey of employers, 41% of hiring managers plan to hire between July and December. One in five managers plan to hire full-time employees in the third quarter. The survey showed that employers are primarily focused on recruiting for customer service, sales, and information technology positions. Continue reading →

Glaciers and Guidance Counselors

I recently had occasion to vacation in Glacier National Park.  Did you know that according to recent predictions, the glaciers in the park will be completely melted by 2020?  Rangers (darkly) joked with us that they’ll need a new name for the park.

But did you also know that a similar change is happening to guidance departments in public schools?  A new report just released by the College Board Advocacy and Policy Center includes a startling look at what guidance counselors actually do – and don’t do – in today’s schools.  As it turns out, their traditional role has melted away just as surely and inexorably as have those pearly caps on our American Alps.  So much so, in fact, the title “guidance counselor” may no longer be appropriate.

Bigger Mountains = Smaller Glaciers

Let’s start with the core issue: Guidance counselors are completely overloaded.  According to the report, the national average ratio of counselors to students is 467 to 1.  This is actually down from a ratio of 506 to 1 in 1997.

Things are worse in Indiana, which ranks 44th with a ratio of 543 to 1.  The recommended ratio is 250 to 1, but only four states (Louisiana, New Hampshire, Vermont and Wyoming) actually meet this guideline.    But impossible caseload ratios only tell part of the story.

From Icebergs to Sno Cones Continue reading →

The Combine: Bringing Great Minds to Bloomington

When I opened up my Twitter feed one day and had a message from @TheCombineorg suggesting that I blog about them, I wasn’t sure how to react. I had no idea what The Combine was. So I tweeted them back, and asked for some details. They sent back their website, and as soon as I got through the front page I was impressed.  According to their website, “The Combine is a display of talent, entrepreneurship and innovation. It’s an event about tech, specifically the people, ideas and environments that drive technology.” Impressive right?

As I dug deeper I saw a talented roster of speakers and entertainment for the event, September 9-12. Some people, such as Sloane Berrent, I had never heard of, while others, such as Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter, I recognized from one of my favorite movies, Wet Hot American Summer. Continue reading →

Imagine That! Five Ways to Put Imagination to Work for You

Last week I felt stuck, like I didn’t know what to do next.   Not because I didn’t have work to do – my ‘to do’ list was a whiteboard without any white visible.  It just felt like everything was equally urgent.  It felt like trying to decide what to eat for lunch, but everything in the fridge is in identical shiny cans marked “to eat”.

Then my mind did a short circuit and tried a different approach.  Instead of telling myself what I need to do, I imagined how I would explain to someone else what needs to be done.  This slightly different way of looking at things broke up the logjam, and by Friday I was back on track.

The problem was that I was standing too close to my work, and couldn’t see how the tasks immediately in front of me fit into the larger picture.  Sometimes we just need to look at the situation from a different perspective.  Imagination is powerful tool for doing this, one with unlimited applications.  Here are a few mental gymnastics to challenge your current mindset.

1.  If you were hit by a bus…

This is the one that worked for me.  Imagine you are suddenly taking a different job and have to leave instructions for your successor.  What would be at the top of the list for him or her to do their first week on the job?  Those should probably be your priorities right now.

This line of reasoning is also applicable to ‘succession planning.’  What things depend on you and you alone, and no one else could do them?  Hopefully that last one is a short list.  How about your key employees?  If you lost one, how long would it take to get the next person up to speed?  Is there information that would be forever lost?  Healthy organizations have written procedures in place to offset this risk – does yours? Continue reading →

10 Reasons to Use Evidence-Based Programs

Many youth service providers feel they need to invent their own unique program.  Not so.  Plenty of proven, off-the-shelf models and programs are out there just waiting for the right application.  Odds are, some of them are designed to produce the exact outcomes you are looking for.

Here are 10 reasons to check them out and find one that works for your clientele.

  1. They Work. ‘Evidence-Based’ means it’s based on research.  In addition, there has usually been some kind of quasi-experimentation involving pre- and post-testing and comparisons with control groups.
  2. They’re Fundable. Over the past ten years, funding agencies, especially federal funders, have increasingly called for evidence based programs.  Sometimes they even provide a shopping list of programs that they are willing to fund.
  3. Just Add Water. There’s no need to spend time developing procedures, creating forms, and designing programs.  All these have already been developed, probably by someone who knows more about what works than you do.
  4. Instructions. The manual is already written, usually in step-by-step format. Continue reading →