By: Tanya Griffin, Director of Enrollment Services at SLU’s School for Professional Studies

When I graduated with my Bachelor of Science in Political Science, one of my favorite professors said something I will never forget.  He pulled me aside on my graduation day and said, “Congratulations.  Your education is something that can never be taken away from you.”  I didn’t realize the depth of his statement until I reflected on it later.

“Something that can never be taken away from you.”  Think about that for a moment.  Not only do I have the physical symbols of my completed degree – a diploma, a cap and gown, a copy of my transcripts.  More importantly, I have the knowledge I learned throughout those four years.  I learned theories and application.  I learned social skills and critical thinking.  I learned how to work as a team and how to manage my time.

As my students progress through their education at SPS, I know that they are learning more than they could ever realize.  They are receiving a quality Saint Louis University education in the classroom.  They are learning about themselves as individuals, as leaders, as members of a team and as employees. The skills and knowledge gained at SLU will be with them for the rest of their lives – often in ways they can’t identify.

If you are thinking about taking that next step to pursue your educational goals, just remember that your education can never be taken away from you.  You will carry it with you always and it will change you in a positive way.

By: Matthew J. Grawitch, Ph.D.

A lot is made these days of the importance of creating a flexible work environment so that employees can develop a better work-life interface. Flextime, telecommuting, compressed work weeks, and other innovations in work schedules are supposed to assist employees in managing their demands across different life domains – without having to sacrifice productivity.

Unfortunately, a recent article in the Academy of Management Journal suggests that manager assumptions about why employees utilize work flexibility practices can bias a manager’s perceptions of evaluations of those employees.

If managers believe employees utilize flexible work practices for productivity reasons, they are likely to make positive attributions about employees regarding their commitment to the organization. On the other hand, if managers believe employees utilize flexible work practices for personal reasons, they are likely to make significantly less positive attributions about employees regarding their commitment to the organization.

Therefore, two people in an organization can utilize the exact same flexible work benefit and be evaluated – even by the same manager – in a very different light, regardless of actual differences in productivity or work quality. This can have implications for employee career progression within an organization, because manager evaluations and recommendations often carry a fair amount of influence. If the manager believes an employee lacks commitment to the organization s/he may not provide the strong recommendation needed for promotion. Employees may be missing out on promotion opportunities, while organizations may fail to capitalize on the full potential of some employees.

To address this situation, employees need to ensure that they know where their manager stands with regard to flexible work practices. Just because an organization has a policy that permits the use of flexible work practices doesn’t mean that utilizing those practices comes without a cost to the employee. Here are some suggestions:

• Build rapport with your manager. Your manager is less likely to make negative assumptions about you if s/he has respect for you and your performance.
• Make sure you are not shortchanging the business. Working from home or flextime can lend themselves to abuse fairly easily – even if that abuse is unintended (e.g., too many people drop by knowing you are working from home, which disrupts your concentration and focus). You are accountable for managing your work flexibility appropriately.
• Ensure you show the business results for your productivity. All too often, employees assume that managers can “see” how much more productive they are when they have increased flexibility. Sometimes, though, it can be good to show managers the evidence to help them reach that conclusion. Don’t rely on your manager to look for it.

And there is something the organization can do as well. Work with managers to understand the benefits of the flexible work practices within the organization. Top-down decisions regarding flexible working are likely to be met with resistance at various levels of the managerial hierarchy. If you fail to get members of that hierarchy on the same page, the benefits of work flexibility for the organization will likely be reduced, and if there is too much resistance, work flexibility may show no benefits at all. Therefore, organizations need to remember to utilize proper change management techniques when trying to create a more flexible work environment.

Accountability is important to work flexibility. Employees need to be held accountable for their performance when they exercise flexibility. Managers need to be held accountable for their behaviors regarding flexible working for their employees. And senior leaders need to be held accountable for ensuring that flexible work practices are implemented in ways that are good for the organization and its employees.

By: Hadley Kombrink

In light of the recent tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, understanding security within one’s workplace has been on the minds of millions across the country. Every year, more than 572,000 Americans fall victim to Workplace Violence. Defined by the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) as any physical assault, threatening behavior, or verbal abuse occurring in the work setting, Workplace Violence is one of the leading causes of job-related deaths. For the past few years, SPS’s Criminal Justice and Security Management Program has hosted an annual event to bring together a panel of experts in their field to discuss prevalent topics faced by those in the security field and other related industries. This year’s panel of workplace violence and threat management experts will discuss the key elements of Boeing’s innovative Threat Management Program, the true impact of Workplace Violence, and how to prepare yourself and your company to handle it. This year’s panel members include two members of Boeing’s Enterprise Threat Management Team, Christina Holbrook and Dave Bixler, Bill Naughton, Boeing’s Senior Manager of Security and Fire Protection for the Midwest/East Region, and Major Donovan Kenton, Deputy Chief of Operations for the St. Charles Police Department.

The Criminal Justice and Security Management Program (CJSM) at SPS provides a unique Bachelor’s degree in that it devotes time to both the public and private sides of these two areas. No other degree offers this type of combination to its students. Within the program, students can choose one of three areas to specialize in: Criminal Justice, Security Management, or Security Management Technology. The latter combines both investigative security courses and computer science topics. By providing a variety of topics, students within the program are able to cater their course choices to benefiting their career goals. For example, I see a lot of students with retail backgrounds, but they are tired of being assistant managers or salespeople, and want a change. I like to see these people take courses such as CJST 335, which focuses on Risk Management and an instructor who worked with retail stores. Making a change from your current career to one within the Criminal Justice or Security field can be done if you are dedicated to the coursework and are open to making connections with the course instructors. Another excellent asset within the program is the instructors who are currently in the field. By reaching out to an instructor who has made a career in a specific area of the Criminal Justice or Security field, you may be able to begin making the connections you need to further your knowledge about your area of interest. One of the best places to network with many of these industry leaders is at our annual panel discussion event.

Each year the program chooses a topic that is not only relevant to the industry, but also can appeal to those in other fields. Workplace Violence was the most common topic mentioned by last year’s attendees as the topic they would like to see featured at the event. This event will take place on March 7^th, 2013 in the Wool Ballrooms of Busch Student Center. A small reception will be held at 5:30 p.m., and the event begins at 6:00, and will feature a presentation from our panelists, a directed Q & A session, and then attendees will have a chance to ask their own questions. If you have ever wondered how a hypothetical situation could be handled in your workplace, or you would like to learn how another company creates a threat management system, than this is a great event to attend. In addition, it is a great opportunity to learn more about how the two areas of Criminal Justice and Security Management can intertwine and work together to achieve goals.

To RSVP, please visit: alumni.slu.edu/spspanel13.

To learn more about the online Criminal Justice Bachelor’s program at SLU, visit busyadults.slu.edu.

By: Jenny Agnew

During the Fall 1, 2012 term, I had the opportunity to teach an English 150 class (“The Process of Composition”) in The Learning Studio as an Innovative Teaching Fellow.  The high-tech room—with its wall of screens, moveable furniture, and available tablets and iPads—is reason enough to want to teach in the space.  An added bonus includes collaborating with an instructional designer from the Reinert Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning; I was fortunate to work with Michaella (Kella) Thornton, the Assistant Director of Instructional Design.

English 150 is often one of the first courses a student takes at SPS.  Some students have been out of school for a while and may not have written a formal essay in many years.  With these considerations in mind along with the potential of The Learning Studio, it was decided that I would pilot a special section of the writing course as theme based, wherein everything we read and wrote about would be related to food.   I had taught a similar course several years earlier while working at another university and had experienced the benefits of such a curriculum.  Not just something we  all must eat every day to survive, food offers a lens through which to examine politics, gender, class, race, identity, heritage, health, sustainability, agriculture, literature, film, and culture, to name only a few related concepts and disciplines.

As we prepared for the course, Kella and I determined that we would ask the students to participate in a course blog and Twitter.  I had never blogged before and had my doubts about Twitter, but since I was going to ask the students to be involved in these activities, I concluded that I needed to know how they worked.  Several months prior to the course’s start, I therefore started posting to a blog about food-related topics in and around St. Louis (I wrote about food years ago for CitySearch and often focus on how food and literature intersect in my academic writing, so this was not a new topic to me).  I also opened a Twitter account and started tweeting.  Shortly after I began tweeting my blog posts, George Mahe, St. Louis Magazine’s Dining Editor, contacted me about writing for the magazine.  I quickly changed my mind about Twitter ‘s usefulness.

The connections I made through writing for the magazine proved invaluable for the course.  I invited three members of the local food community into the class as guest speakers.  All three guests—Reine Bayoc, chef-owner of Sweet Art ; Maude Bauschard, owner of Maude’s Market; and George Mahe—spoke not only about food but also about writing, particularly how important effective communication is regardless of one’s job or major.  Bayoc, for example, is currently writing a memoir, so her appearance during our food memoir unit made perfect sense.  At the time, students were working on their own remembered person/event paper in which the memory had to be connected to food in some way.  Thanks to The Learning Studio’s design, we recorded all of the guest speakers’ presentations.

Academic writing can sometimes seem arbitrary, particularly in entry-level courses.  Students often wonder what the larger purpose of an assignment is and approach the course as something “to get out of the way” before moving on to their major courses.  The practice of writing in and of itself provides a great means of improving one’s skills, and that’s the implicit understanding often made explicit to the students.   When writing is tied to a larger purpose, however, and the instructor and members from the outside community participate in writing on a regular basis and reinforce the need for deliberate practice, the students come to understand how important writing is well beyond the classroom; ideally, they also come to value how a basic composition course can help to launch their studies.

For an overview of the course, click on this link to see a presentation outline that Kella and I used when we presented at the Focus on Teaching & Technology Conference at UMSL last November.

Guest post by Terrence Kelly, Department Chair, Parks College of Engineering, Aviation & Technology
For the last three years, Saint Louis University has been listed as a military friendly school.  This is because SLU welcomes and embraces all military students as well as their dependents.

Currently we are looking for a few good men and women to enroll in our new online Aviation Management program through Parks College and School for Professional Studies here at Saint Louis University.  This degree provides education for the non-flying aviation professional.

Benefits for Military and Veterans

Active military, veterans, and eligible dependents who pursue this bachelor’s degree for online Aviation Management will receive a reduced tuition rate of $250 per credit hour. This is a great opportunity and a great way to expand your military background.

Why Are We Doing This?

We created this flexible program so busy military men and women everywhere can afford to earn a degree from our prestigious university in their spare time.

For more information please visit the website. Or apply now online.

Related links:

• Veteran Benefits
• SLU for Busy Adults

Posted by Jennifer Agnew

Monsters aren’t just for Halloween anymore . . . and haven’t been for a while.  Recent trends in literature—including Young Adult (YA)  literature—film, TV, and the fine arts reveal a renewed interest in vampires, zombies, ghosts, and serial killers.  All of these monsters and more fall under the larger category of “The Gothic.”  While many associate “Gothic” with “Goth,” a term that conjures up images of pale skin, black lipstick, and a melancholic mien, the word describes a literary style or genre dating back to late-eighteenth-century England.  Many believe Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, published in 1764, to be the first Gothic novel written in English.  With its haunted castle, family secrets, and murder, the novel set the stage for authors usually only read by English majors—Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, James Hogg—and those more universally recognized thanks to film adaptations and popular culture—Mary Shelley (Frankenstein), Bram Stoker (Dracula), and Robert Louis Stevenson (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde).

Like so many other literary genres, The Gothic quickly made its way across the Atlantic to the United States, with the publication of Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland in 1798.  Many critics believe that Edgar Allan Poe’s works turned the outer trappings of The Gothic (haunted houses, ghosts, and vampires) inside, within the tortured psyches of the mentally insane.  As The Gothic has evolved over the years, one thing remains the same: the monsters—whether external or internal—reflect our society’s fears and anxieties.  Consequently, the ends of centuries and unstable periods in history often see a resurgence in Gothic works.  Take, for example, the end of the 20^th Century and millennium; Gothic films like The Blair Witch Project provided a safe outlet for viewers to purge their anxieties about Y2K.  More recently, vampires and zombies have overtaken literature and film.  One scholar, Diane Winston, the University of Southern California’s  Knight Chair in Media and Religion, argues that our current fascination with monsters reveals larger epistemological concerns.  That is, the monster, whether it’s a zombie, vampire, or serial killer, evokes basic questions of humanity.  Moreover, Winston and other scholars believe all things Gothic are emblematic of moral dilemmas and allow us a creative and entertaining means of solving these dilemmas.  Scary movie as therapy?  Perhaps, for some—as long as you can get to sleep.

Photo Credit: Coastal Carolina Univesity http://ww2.coastal.edu/mbachman/Gothic.htm

Posted by Jack Cancila

In a recent post on the National Restaurant Association’s website, it was announced that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics determined that the restaurant industry had added 12,800 jobs in the month of October. This is on top of increases of 18,300 in September and 21,700 in August. This totals over 50,000 jobs created during this 3-month period. Simply put, the hospitality industry has been and continues to be one heck of a job creation machine, even during an extremely weak economy.

I have to admit that I have been surprised by how resilient the hospitality industry has been during the economic crisis. Restaurants have hung in there despite belt tightening by families, and hotel occupancy rates are up from the previous couple of years. St. Louis is no exception.

Locally, I attended the St. Louis Area Convention and Visitors’ Commission (Explore St. Louis) annual meeting. St. Louis City Mayor, Francis Slay, spoke at the event. At the time, Governor Jay Nixon’s special legislative session was winding down, and it was apparent that the proposed “China Hub” project, the key job creation project for the region, was tied up in politics and not going to be approved. During the CVC meeting, the mayor turned to the leaders of the local hospitality industry and acknowledged that their industry was going to be the primary job creator for the city and the region. The China Hub proposal was one of many opportunities for those in the hospitality industry.

Local hotels, helped by large events such as the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) Annual Meeting and Exposition and the World Series, have done much better in 2011 than expected. For example, in early October, a brand new Embassy Suites Hotel opened in downtown St. Louis, adding 100+ jobs. In September, Pinnacle Entertainment also recently announced an expansion of their newest casino, which will bring an additional 100 jobs to the area.

I fully understand that not all of these newly-created jobs are the most desirable or highly-paid positions. However, these positions are an excellent start for a career in hospitality. With over 100 jobs at both Pinnacle and Embassy Suites, there will be a number of jobs that offer a great career opportunity toward earning management position within this vibrant industry. The hospitality industry is surviving the recession and is still growing.

If you are interested in learning more about earning a certificate in Hospitality, consider the program offered at Saint Louis University’s School for Professional Studies.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaiban/4479214196/

Posted by Jack Cancila

The St. Louis Cardinals baseball team has made one of the most dramatic turnarounds in the history of baseball. Counted out as late as early September, they have managed to beat what many fans and sports aficionados considered the best team in baseball – the Philadelphia Phillies – followed by a surprising series win over their division nemesis – the Milwaukee Brewers. Incredibly, they are now in the World Series; a pleasant surprise for their fans and their hometown.

The real winner has been the City of St. Louis. It has received an unexpected economic boost from the playoffs and the World Series. The local hospitality industry has been the primary beneficiary of this boost. If you talk with downtown hoteliers and restaurants, they will tell how much of an economic impact the Cardinals have on their operations. St. Louis is a seasonal market with winter and fall being the two slower seasons. The Cardinals’ late season surprise has resulted in an unexpected windfall for not only the hotels and restaurants, but also the numerous ancillary services associated with hospitality. Taxi cabs, public transportation, memorabilia vendors, parking and even bars and restaurant outside the downtown area are benefitting as Cardinal fans flock to their establishments to cheer on their favorite team.

So I think we should all thank the Cardinals for their surprising success. It has benefited everyone in the region, so much so that the mayor recently stated that the city has received an unanticipated $2.0M shot in the arm. According to the mayor, planned furloughs by city employees are no longer necessary. Can you think of a better Christmas present? This is yet another example of just how important the hospitality industry is to our local and regional economy. Here’s to wishing success to the Cardinals. We cannot wait for spring training 2012 to begin.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mitchell3417/1924782642/

Posted by Matt Grawitch

I recently put together a proposal for a panel session that would bring a group of scholars and practitioners together to discuss issues related to the work-life interface. One of the experts on my proposed panel serves as an external consultant to organizations, and she mentioned that many people who work internally in organizations tend to have a very negative opinion of academics who conduct research in the area of the work-life interface. The argument is that many academics spend their time studying issues that have little to no practical value to organizations.

Of course, I would never put myself, or many other academics I work with, into that particular box. However, I know that there are an awful lot of academics who do fall into that stereotype of the “ivory tower” academic.

That got me thinking about my own philosophy and what I try to do as a professional. I was trained under the scientist-practitioner philosophy, which means that my work, whether it is consulting organizations or teaching students, is based in research, and, conversely, my research paradigm emphasizes the practical realities of organizational life.

None of this is to say that I lack an interest in understanding the inner workings of people – after all, I am a psychologist. I believe that basic research has led to many advances that have practical implications, but I also recognize that a lot of “applied” research has become so narrowly focused, and sometimes needlessly sophisticated, that it has the potential to render itself irrelevant to practitioners.

I know I’m not the only scientist-practitioner out there. I was trained to be a scientist-practitioner, so my teachers and mentors were scientist-practitioners themselves. I even work with several individuals that fit into that category, and I have a host of contacts whom I would identify as true scientist-practitioners as well. We do exist!

However, if applied psychology refuses to constantly pay attention to the “gap” between science and practice, then it runs the risk of rendering itself irrelevant to many people who deal with the day-to-day realities in organizations. And, if practitioners who deal with those day-to-day realities refuse to pay attention to solid research, then they run the risk of creating substantially less effective programs that are guided more by heuristics than sound science.

So, we have today the same struggle that has confronted applied psychology since its inception. We must constantly scrutinize the divide between scientific research and practical realities. Practitioners need to learn from researchers and utilize sound scientific processes when designing new initiatives and programs. Researchers, for their part, need to devote more resources toward the study of issues that concern practitioners and do a better job of communicating results in a way that is meaningful to people working in organizations. It sounds like a tall order, but if scientist-practitioners become more common in academia and in organizations, they can begin to diminish the gap and strengthen the relationship between science and practice.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/umairmohsin/2067636565/