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Look to simple marketing technology and practices as examples. While most marketers are using online client management tools to capture more clients, for education professionals they have other great benefits. Online client management solutions can be a tremendous help for faculty with hundreds of students. Also, with the ability to track communication history, past activity and private notes, tracking student interactions can be very helpful to document past interactions in order to be as prepared as possible for the next meeting.
For counselors it can be even more helpful to review notes from previous interactions when prepping for an upcoming meeting with a student. This functionality is also critical when a new quarter rolls around and the need to reference past course load preferences for a particular student arises. Many of these client management platforms also come with mobile capabilities for the on-the-go teacher. New student requests and scheduling changes will immediately pop on the teacher’s phone. These tools can also be utilized for collecting information from new students in order to record all the important information for new enrollees.
Evolution Labs announced that Webster University has selected its S360 engagement products to change the way prospective and admitted students and their parents experience the college admission and pre-matriculation process.
S360 enables colleges to immerse prospective, admitted and current students in highly engaging web and mobile-based experiences designed to foster a meaningful affinity between student and school and to impact learning outcomes and student success. Webster will launch the S360 Recruit and Recruit: Parents module this month as well as the Yield and Yield: Parents modules in December.
S360 provides prospective, admitted and current students with highly individualized content tailored to the criteria and interests they find most relevant to their own college search—from academics and faculty to campus location, size and personality of the school. As prospects and admits learn more about Webster through expert-written topics, engaging videos and surveys, they can also interact and “shadow” current students, view “real-life” social media feeds and share their interest in Webster by connecting program features with their preferred social networks—all on a single platform.
S360 also utilizes a proprietary algorithm designed to determine propensity of prospects and admits on a multi-faceted spectrum that considers academic, financial and lifestyle fit. Engagement insights are delivered back to the school in real time, arming them to make better communication and enrollment decisions.
Posted on November 26, 2015 at 5:00 am.
For colleges everywhere, offering a zero textbook cost degree program became easier as Northern Virginia Community College’s Extended Learning Institute (ELI) and open courseware provider Lumen Learning announced a collaboration to publish 24 online college courses for two complete degree programs.
All courses were developed for zero student cost using open educational resources (OER) (i.e., no textbooks, just public access internet).
NOVA says it is the first community college to fully share its OER degree pathways and courses. Building on this pioneering work, other members of the education community can map courses to their own degree requirements, adapt them to fit their own learning outcomes, and offer complete OER-based degree programs of their own.
The courses now available through NOVA and Lumen Learning were originally developed by ELI, which has offered zero textbook cost certificates and degree programs since 2013. Now available as open, “zELI” courses (z for zero textbook cost from ELI), they fulfill all requirements for NOVA’s Certificate in General Studies, as well as associate degrees in General Studies and Social Sciences. The courses are being published with open, Creative Commons licenses, allowing anyone to freely use, revise, remix and repurpose the materials.
The Mayor of Dunstable presented a cheque for £1000 to the Renal Unit at the Luton and Dunstable University Hospital.
Councillor Liz Jones raised the money through fundraising events throughout the year and chose the Renal Unit as one her charities to support because she has seen the impact renal failure has on a patient and their family.
She said: “It has been a privilege to raise money for the unit and I look forward to seeing what they do with it.
The Matron of the Renal Unit, Joel Delfan, said: “It is amazing that the Mayor of Dunstable, councillor Jones, has chosen to support our Renal Unit, the money raised will help to buy equipment that will make the patients experience better.
“This donation and donations like this make a big difference to the patients and are a huge boost for our staff, who are dedicated to delivering the best possible care.
Now that the Russian Duma has approved the Day of the Baptism of Rus’ as a public holiday, leaders of Russia’s Islamic and Buddhist communities say they want their faiths to be recognized in the same way, yet another example of the way in which Moscow’s efforts to use Orthodoxy to unite the country in fact is dividing them.
Wednesday, the Federation Council gave its approval to the bill, earlier passed by the Duma to make the Day of the Baptism of Rus’ a public holiday to be marked in Russia each year on July 28th. That date thus becomes the ninth such holiday in the post-Soviet Russian calendar, but its appearance has sparked demands from other religions for still more.
After the Federation Council voted, Amir Gallyamov, the senator from the Amur oblast, proposed creating another holiday for the Day of the Adoption of Islam, and Buddhists, especially in Kalmykia, suggested that they should have a similar public holiday for their faith. If that happens, these would be the 10th and 11th such holidays.
Gallyamov justified his call by pointing out that Islam had been adopted on the territory of the Russian Federation “66 years” earlier than Orthodoxy was and that it thus deserves a holiday. Federation Council Speaker Sergey Mironov agreed, saying that it would only be fair to take such a step.
Today, the “Svobodnaya pressa” portal published a survey of the reactions of various religious leaders to all these ideas, reactions that suggest the adoption of a Christian holiday in a country with many religions and whose Constitution defines it as a secular state is fraught with dangers (svpressa.ru/society/article/25705/).
Moreover, Dzhemal argued, “the baptism of Rus,” unlike the acceptance of Islam by the leaders of the Bulgar State, whose territories were subsequently incorporated into Russia, “took place on territories which now belong to another state,” that is to Kyiv in the Republic of Ukraine.
Asked about the two other so-called “traditional” religions of Russia – Judaism and Buddhism – Dzhemal said that “it is possible to derive the [Jewish] tradition from the Khazar kaganate,” but that state was “an enemy of Rus and Rus defeated it.” In fact, he continued, Jews “arrived in Russia” much later.
Given that religious history, he concluded, the Russian state could be completely neutral if it did not celebrate as a public holiday any religious event. But if it celebrates the holiday of one, as Moscow clearly intends, then Dzhemal concluded, it must mark the holidays of all the other major ones.
Konstantin Bendas, a representative of the Protestant Pentacostals, told “Svobodnaya pressa” that he did not see any need for a “Protestant” public holiday in Russia, and Kapiton Alekseyev, an Old Believer pastor in Moscow oblast, said that he did not even want to talk about the possibility of such a linking of the state and any religion.
Meanwhile, Drikung Kag’yu, a representative of the Buddhist Center, said that “justice requires” creating a public holiday for Russian Buddhists now that one has been created for Russian Orthodox Christians. He said that the best date for that would be May 27th, the birthday of Buddha. That date, he pointed out, is already marked in Kalmykia and Buryatia.
← Intelligence: No More Co-Ordination Czar?
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman has won re-election over Democratic former Gov. Ted Strickland in a race Democrats once considered a good opportunity to pick up a Senate seat.
Portman ran a savvy and well-funded campaign that kept Strickland on the defensive and kept Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at a distance leading up to Tuesday's election.
For many people working inside the campaign, the victory wasn't a surprise.
"We just sprinted to the finish line. We didn't look at the polls, and we trusted in the hard work of Sen. Portman," Gerard Basalla, an intern with the Portman campaign, said.
Since early September, Portman had built a 10 point polling lead according to Real Clear Politics, and had expanded that lead to 18 points among likely voters the day before the election.
Portman's campaign branded Strickland "Retread Ted" and highlighted Ohio's economic struggles, which saw 350,000 jobs lost during Strickland's governorship. Strickland blamed the Great Recession and said he had started the state's recovery.
Strickland has blamed his trailing in the polls on the over $31 million spent on negative advertising against him by super PACs and outside groups, with most of the donors of the super PACs being anonymous.
Strickland did have a chance early on in the race; polls back in April showed the race virtually tied, with some polls showing a small lead for Strickland.
Portman also had a large funding advantage over Strickland both in fundraising and outside super PAC money contributed to the senate race. Portman raised close to $25 million (compared to a little over $10 million by Strickland) according to the non-partisan research group Center for Responsive Politics.
But Blair Carter, an intern with the Portman campaign, doesn't see the super PAC as Portman's primary engine: "It is plausible, but the real reason why we won was because of the fact that we reached out to millions of voters in Ohio."
Portman didn't campaign with Trump and withdrew his endorsement of him when a 2005 tape of Trump making lewd comments about kissing and groping women surfaced weeks ago.
Portman served in the administrations of Republican former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. (April 9, 2013) -- When the U.S. European Command (EUCOM) was having an issue with its satellite communications network radios, it approached the Communications-Electronics Research and Development Center (CERDEC) for assistance.
Kim Le, a CERDEC Cryptographic Modernization (CryptoMod) engineer who supports Product Director Communications Security (PD COMSEC), doesn't normally work with satellites or radios. This didn't stop a determined Le from marshaling a team of experts, products and facilities from the Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) Center of Excellence to develop a solution.
"EUCOM came to CERDEC because they wanted an official confirmation that their radios were not working and I told them that it sounded like they should work," Le said.
With Le in the lead, Army engineers developed and tested a CryptoMod solution for EUCOM's unique critical satellite communications network, the Companion Ultra High Frequency (UHF) TACSAT System (CUTS). CUTS is a UHF Demand Assigned Multiple Access satellite network comprised of UHF Manpack satellite communication (SATCOM) terminals and associated automated data processing equipment.
Matt Lazzaro, the branch chief for CERDEC's CryptoMod Lab, and Le first thought that EUCOM's radios would need to be replaced, which would have cost an estimated $1.98 million in radio purchases alone.
The AN/PSC-5D radios EUCOM uses were embedded with a legacy cryptographic algorithm that needed to be replaced with modern crypto technology. Instead of replacing these older radios, Le and Lazzaro took a different path. They determined they could replace the crypto component of the AN/PSC-5D with the modernized KIV-7M.
KIV-7Ms are Type 1 link encryptors that operate using bit-by-bit encryption and provide transmission and communications security capable of protecting top secret and below information. The KIV-7M is a universal encryptor that will replace 16 devices the Army had been using. This will lead to decreased sustainment costs for the Army in the future because the logistical footprint will be much smaller. The KIV-7Ms are existing equipment in the Army inventory that Tobyhanna Army Depot had available.
"We strive to be stewards of the taxpayers' money," said Dennis Teefy, product director for PD COMSEC's Cryptographic Systems. "We are committed to modernizing the Army's cryptographic systems as quickly and efficiently as possible."
Le designed a custom interface to adapt the KIV-7M to the existing radio infrastructure. The team also ascertained the cable configuration and then sent the schematic to Tobyhanna Army Depot where the cable was made and sent to EUCOM.
Le started to prepare a team to travel to EUCOM; however, she and Lazzaro realized they could troubleshoot from Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., at the C4ISR Center of Excellence facilities. The EUCOM architecture was emulated at the CryptoMod Lab. A set of AN/PSC-5D radios and an antenna were borrowed from Product Manager Network Systems, part of Project Manager Tactical Radios.
When it was time to test the radio and encryption via satellite connection, Le's team members transported a 90-pound AV-2011 antenna and the AN/PSC-5D radio up to the roof on CERDEC's building. The radio needed to be set up on the roof so its antenna could be pointed at the UHF satellite system to establish communication with it.
"We didn't just test in the labs, we went live over the satellite constellation," Le said. "It was very easy to make it work in the lab. Using the satellite system makes it exponentially more complicated because you have to deal with changing weather conditions."
Her team also helped EUCOM achieve system certification for Defense Information Systems Agency approval and helped submit a test package for Emergency Action Message certification.
"We were challenged to solve one problem for EUCOM -- how do we hook up the radios to the KIV," Le explained. "After we were successful making the radio-KIV connection, EUCOM asked for additional assistance in other areas. New requirements started to come."
What makes the project's success that much sweeter is that Lazzaro and Le are not familiar with radio equipment. "I had never really worked with a radio before," Le explained. "Our main focus is crypto, not equipment."
Lazzaro finds it gratifying that the team was able to accomplish all of this without having to send anyone out of the country or purchase new radios.
"The PD COMSEC solution set took only 75 days, enabling EUCOM to field a materiel solution and migrate to a modern encryption technology while meeting Department of Defense Chief Information Officer National Leadership Command Capabilities office timelines," said Eric J. Kimery, Nuclear Command, Control and Cyber Systems SATCOM Planner for EUCOM. "PD COMSEC's support was essential to EUCOM's successful crypto modernization implementation."
April 16, 2014 Tiger Woods hasn't won a major in six years, and at 38, says commentator Frank Deford, he's past even a golfer's prime years. Still, no one can touch the reigning king of golf.
April 9, 2014 A baseball odd couple ends their careers this year: Commissioner Bud Selig and Yankees' shortstop Derek Jeter.
April 2, 2014 The sports commentator renders his verdict on the recent National Labor Relations Board ruling that Northwestern University's football players are employees and have the right to unionize.
March 26, 2014 In light of legendary coach Phil Jackson's recent move to the New York Knicks as the organization's president, commentator Frank Deford looks at how the office has evolved (or hasn't).
March 19, 2014 As March Madness gets underway, commentator Frank Deford wonders if Americans just have too many teams to root for.
March 12, 2014 Outside of sport, the word "hustle" has a negative connotation: A hustle is a scam; a hustler a flimflam man. But in the world of sports, says commentator Frank Deford, you can never hustle too much.
March 5, 2014 It's not just his long career that sets apart tennis coach Nick Bollettieri, just accepted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It's how he transformed the way we raise our athletic children.
February 26, 2014 Commentator Frank Deford has a modest proposal to make baseball more interesting: cut an inch and a half off each side of home plate. It'd lead to a better game to both play and watch, he says.
February 19, 2014 Commentator Frank Deford says the NFL is home to bullies, wife beaters, racists and, yes, some homophobes. But to suggest that one young gay man in the locker room would be too much for that bunch to stomach, he says, is "ludicrous."
February 12, 2014 It's not easy to qualify what makes a sport a sport. Commentator Frank Deford says his broadest, most inclusive definition is anything that involves competing in a physical activity.
February 5, 2014 Vladimir Putin's Olympics remind commentator Frank Deford of prescription medicine ads — the kind with the short list of benefits and long disclaimer.
PLYMOUTH Dessert and concert offered by orchestra The Marshall County Church Orchestra will present a concert with dessert at Christos Banquet Center at 7 p.m. Nov. 15. Concert-goers will experience a dessert buffet followed by a concert featuring music of Anton Dvorak as well as a Christmas program with narration and secular Christmas favorites. Tickets are $10 and are available from orchestra members or by calling (574) 936-7357. No tickets will be available at the door. CULVER Lutheran Church offers 'Trunk or Treat' night Trinity Lutheran Church will offer "Trunk-or-Treating" for children on Wednesday. Church members will provide games and treats for children who stop by the church on Halloween night. "This is a way for our members to support one of the major activities for the children of the community," said K.C. Dehning, pastor at Trinity. "We will have mini-games for the children to play plus lots of candy for anyone who stops by as they are trick-or-treating along Academy Road." Trinity Lutheran Church is at 330 Academy Road. BREMEN Gruett is promoted to state police sergeant Mike Gruett has been promoted to sergeant and will serve as a squad leader at the Indiana State Police Bremen Post. Gruett is a 22-year veteran of the Indiana State Police Department. After graduating from the Indiana State Police Recruit Academy in 1985, he was assigned to the Bremen Post, where he has worked as a trooper and a detective. During this time Gruett has also served on the Tactical Intervention Platoon, Emergency Response Team, and worked as a field training officer. He received a Bronze Star from the department in 1995 for his part in the rescue of a woman involved in a car crash in Kosciusko County. With his new assignment as a squad leader, Gruett will supervise eight troopers assigned to road patrol in Marshall County.
By restoring the luster of the work ethic and providing a path to real jobs, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani often says, his workfare program has played the central part in the dramatic reduction of New York City's welfare rolls. The numbers he cites are stark and indisputable: the rolls have dropped more than 30 percent in the last three years, to 797,000 from 1.16 million.
But an examination of workfare shows that the program's role in that decline often has little to do with offering a route into the job market. In many ways, workfare has become welfare's back door, allowing the city to trim thousands of people from the rolls each month for violating its work rules.
In the first eight months of 1997, about 16 percent of workfare participants -- or an average of 6,100 out of 36,000 people each month -- were cut from the rolls for infractions that ranged from showing up late to refusing a work assignment.
Precisely how much of the overall drop in the rolls can be attributed to such sanctions is not known. The city does not track the fluid movement of individuals through the system -- on and off the rolls and often back on again, sometimes more than once in the space of a single year.
To the Mayor and his aides, sanctions are used sensibly and appropriately. Even so, the process is meant to be tough: a big stick is needed, they say, to teach the discipline of work, of getting up in the morning, every morning, and showing up at a job on time.
But advocates for the poor argue that the city has overzealously enforced often technical rules without sufficient regard to the lives and dignity of the truly needy -- but with considerable attention to the political benefits of trimmer welfare rolls. The sanctions process, they say, has created a sizeable churning of the rolls, in which thousands of people are dropped each month, only to return later.
The advocates point out that when recipients get state hearings on their sanctions, they win two-thirds of the time. This means that while most remain off the rolls, about a quarter of the nearly 6,100 sanctioned each month -- about 1,400 -- were reinstated after filing appeals. And many more reapplied at the end of their punishment periods -- generally three months but as many as six -- though the number who actually returned to the rolls is not known.
The aggressive use of sanctions is hardly limited to New York's workfare program, which Mr. Giuliani vastly expanded three years ago. Whether they use workfare or, more commonly, programs that stress job training and placement in private industry, welfare officials across the country have stepped up their use of sanctions as pressure to move people off the rolls has increased.
Of course, the reasons for the drop in New York's welfare rolls go beyond sanctions.
Some who leave welfare do get real jobs, but available evidence indicates that they make up a small fraction. A recent state survey found that fewer than a third make more than $100 on the books in the first three months after leaving the rolls. The survey did not distinguish between full- and part-time jobs, nor did it take into account people who were working off the books, were self-employed or moved away.
At the same time, workfare -- or, more precisely, the prospect of having to participate in workfare -- has driven many people off welfare without finding jobs. To these people, it is more appealing to rely on off-the-books jobs, to move in with friends or relatives or to otherwise turn to others to get by, say city officials and advocates for the poor.
Not only has welfare become easier to lose, it has become harder to get. Since the city adopted a tough new screening process, the rejection rate for those applying for aid has doubled, to 54 percent in 1997 from 27 percent in 1994.
The Mayor says the new screening procedures have helped weed out thousands of welfare cheats who would give false addresses or hide other sources of income. But some advocates say that, for many people, the new admissions rules and the sanctions have turned public assistance from a full-time program into a part-time one -- with part of the year spent on the rolls and part spent trying to get on or waiting out a penalty.
Enrique Segarra Sr. was told he would lose his benefits about a year ago because he was half an hour late on the first day of his workfare assignment. He said he thought he had allowed enough time for his three-fare trip -- from bus to subway to another bus.
But when he arrived at the Bronx Sanitation Department garage at 7:30 A.M., the supervisor wouldn't listen to his explanations and sent him home with instructions not to return. Two weeks later, he was notified that the process to cut off his welfare benefits had begun because he had violated workfare rules by arriving late without a written excuse.
At a state appeals hearing, Mr. Segarra produced bus schedules proving he could not have gotten to the garage any earlier, and the city withdrew its plan to cut him off.
City officials argue that the penalties are a tool for teaching the importance of work and for rooting out those who are unwilling to work for their benefits.
That philosophy led the city to expand the use of sanctions as it expanded workfare in early 1995. City statistics for years prior to 1996 were not available, but since the vast majority of New York State residents on workfare live in New York City, a rough calculation can be done with statewide figures. Those figures, from the State Department of Social Services, show that the number of workfare sanctions doubled in the first fiscal year of the expansion, 1995, to 28,119, from 14,856 the previous fiscal year.
In the calendar year 1996, for which city figures are available, there were 82,538 sanctions issued in New York City alone. The number appears to have decreased slightly in 1997: in the first eight months of the year, 49,568 sanctions were issued; extrapolated for the whole year, that would work out to about 75,000.
To advocates for the poor, the number of participants who get their benefits restored on appeal suggests that the sanctions are often issued unfairly.
For single adults, sanctions range from three to six months without any benefits. After the penalty period, they must undergo the newly rigorous application process. But mothers are treated differently: They lose only their share of the welfare check, while their children's benefits continue. And they are given a chance to get a first-time sanction lifted by complying with the work requirement; subsequent sanctions result in an automatic three to six months without benefits.
The opportunity to cancel a first-time sanction by complying was intended to be more lenient than a fixed penalty. But the policy has actually left more than 20,000 welfare mothers in what city officials call ''sanction limbo.'' For while single adults can reapply after a penalty period, mothers must comply or face an open-ended penalty.
To advocates for the poor, this imposes an unequal burden on the mothers who have good reasons for avoiding workfare. To the Giuliani administration, though, many of these mothers are taking unfair advantage of the system, since they continue to receive benefits for their children. That's why the Mayor is pushing Gov. George E. Pataki to toughen the penalties by cutting off the children's checks as well.
The reasons for punishment vary, but city officials and welfare advocates agree that most sanctions are meted out to workers who never show up, show up late or call in sick without providing documentation. Some workfare participants have been cut off because their school schedules, or their children's, have interfered with workfare assignments or because they say they misunderstood the city's procedures or notices.
Workfare handbooks and assignment sheets plainly state that workers can lose their benefits if they do not call a supervisor before their reporting time if they will be late or absent. Workers are told that acceptable excuses for absences include holidays, illnesses, a family emergency, jury duty and employment interviews. They are also told not to bother to return to work without a written excuse.
The city contends that these work rules are fair, and that it enforces them evenhandedly.
But welfare recipients and advocates for the poor say that some people lose their benefits because supervisors enforce work rules so rigidly that they would be unusual in the private sector or elsewhere in the public sector.
Ian F. Feldman, a Legal Aid Society lawyer in the Bronx who has represented scores of workfare participants, said medical documentation was a common problem because welfare recipients seldom have regular doctors.
At the same time, the advocates say, others are cut off because the system cannot deal with the complicated realities of their lives.
Kathleen Parks, for example, lost her benefits when she stopped showing up at her workfare assignment as a clerk for the Parks Department in March 1996 because, she contended, an ex-boyfriend was stalking her at work.
Ms. Parks, who is 43, said in an interview that co-workers had tried to protect her from the ex-boyfriend, who screamed obscenities and hurled bottles at her when she left work. But with time sheets showing her absences, the city quickly closed her case.
She has not been reassigned to workfare since she was reinstated.

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