Google
quizzes
In a Jan. 3 CBS 5 story, John Sullivan, professor of
management, commented on a unique job quiz that Google uses to screen
applicants. "It used to be, 'Hey you must be good because you went
to Harvard. Well, they went back and looked at the performance of people
and they were surprised -- 'Oh my gosh, some of our best people didn't
go to Harvard, don't have good grades' -- and realized, 'We've been making
a big mistake,' " Sullivan said.
Clarity
is key for family businesses
Michael Meeks, assistant professor of management and
director of the Family Business Center, contributed advice to a Jan. 3
San Francisco Chronicle small business advice column on how family businesses
should be structured. Meeks suggested that families think
carefully about how they divide ownership among family members and document
any decisions. "It's amazing how, unless you write things down, five
years from now Joe and Jane will recount these initial meetings very differently,"
he said.
Schools
divided by class
"It's a silent [class] war that nobody wants to talk about,"
Shawn Ginwright, associate professor of Africana studies,
said in a Jan. 8 article in Diverse Issues in Higher Education. Ginwright
was referring to Oprah Winfrey's recent comments that inner city American
children value school less than African children. "Her comments represent
a very naïve, limited, static and restrictive understanding of the
real circumstances and challenges faced by the Black poor," he said.
"It's an endorsement of a system that has worked for the Black middle
class. But the fact is there are millions of Blacks in chocolate cities
that have not made it and the system continues to ban them and keep them
from making it."
Fragile
crabs?
Research on porcelain crabs by Jonathon Stillman, assistant
professor of biology, was featured in a Jan. 25 Contra Costa Times story
on how global warming is affecting some California animal species. Stillman
is testing porcelain crabs species in the Monterey area to see how they
react to warmer temperatures. "The intertidal species around here
are definitely potentially experiencing some temperatures that are close
to what their thermal limits are," Stillman said.
"If it gets just a little hotter on the hottest days, or if those
days start occurring more regularly or in longer stretches like we had
this summer -- and both of those things are predicted as a consequence
of global warming -- then these animals are really going to start feeling
it," he said.
The
value of play
The Jan. 26 edition of the Stockton Record featured a story on the value
of play groups for isolated rural families. "There are things that
[children] learn from each other that they cannot learn from adults,"
said Pamela Wolfberg, assistant professor of special
education at San Francisco State University and director of Project Mosaic,
which offers play groups for autistic children.
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