Professionals and public-good capabilities

Martha Nussbaum (2011) reminds us that, all over the world people are struggling for a life that is fully human - a life worthy of human dignity. Purely income-based and preference based evaluations, as Sen (1999) argues, do not adequately capture what it means for each person to have quality of life. There are other things that make life good for a person, including access to publicly provided professional services. The question then is what version of education inflects more towards the intrinsic and transformational possibilities of professional work and contributions to decent societies? This paper suggests that we need a normative approach to professional education and professionalism; it is not the case that any old version will do. We also need normative criteria to move beyond social critique and to overcome a merely defensive attitude and to give a positive definition to the potential achievements of the professions. Moreover universities are connected to society, most especially through the professionals they educate; it is reasonable in our contemporary world to educate professional graduates to be in a position to alleviate inequalities, and to have the knowledge, skills and values to be able to do so. To make this case, we draw on the human capabilities approach of Sen (1999, 2009) and Nussbaum (2000, 2011) to conceptualise professional education for the public good as an ally of the struggles of people living in poverty and experiencing inequalities, expanding the well-being of people to be and to do in ways they have reason to value – to be mobile, cared for, respected, and so on. In particular we are interested in which human capabilities and functionings are most needed for a professional practice and professionalism that can contribute to transformative social change and how professional development is enabled via pedagogical arrangement

Research Software Engineers: Career Entry Points and Training Gaps

As software has become more essential to research across disciplines, and as the recognition of this fact has grown, the importance of professionalizing the development and maintenance of this software has also increased. The community of software professionals who work on this software have come together under the title Research Software Engineer (RSE) over the last decade. This has led to the formalization of RSE roles and organized RSE groups in universities, national labs, and industry. This, in turn, has created the need to understand how RSEs come into this profession and into these groups, how to further promote this career path to potential members, as well as the need to understand what training gaps need to be filled for RSEs coming from different entry points. We have categorized three main classifications of entry paths into the RSE profession and identified key elements, both advantages and disadvantages, that should be acknowledged and addressed by the broader research community in order to attract and retain a talented and diverse pool of future RSEs.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Computing in Science & Engineering (CiSE): Special Issue on the Future of Research Software Engineers in the U

Grady Health Systems Linen Optimization

Grady Memorial Hospital, under Grady Health Systems (GHS), is the fifth largest public hospital systems in the United States of America. In the Southeast region, Grady Memorial Hospital is a premier level I trauma institution, that also provides other medical service specialties that accumulate a diverse, and knowledgeable set of medical professionals. Within this report, there are various recommendations that our team has presented based on different scenarios that could be present within the interaction of the linen management department and other departments at Grady Health Systems. These recommendations will aid in determining the best decision that can be made in improving the linen management process. The primarily approach our team focuses on is creating an improved, standardized linen process based on the current linen management process in place. This includes standardizing the usage of the alEx machines by medical professionals, and the communication held between medical professionals and the linen department. The final recommendation of the implementation of this approach will serve as an improvement in the efficiency of time, aiming to reduce the replenishment time by 10%, as well as serve as the best possible utilization of the process and medical machines, so that Grady Memorial Hospital will be receiving the best and optimal results in their linen process. Our implementation trial of the primary approach reduced the linen replenishment process by 2.54 minutes, or 13%, surpassing our goal of reducing the time by 10%

Creating Tomorrow, Fall 2009

Annual magazine for the College of Engineering at Utah State University.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/engineering_magazines/1001/thumbnail.jp

The Brains Behind Baltimore: How Higher Education Is Driving the Region's Economic Future

Quantifies the economic contributions of higher education to Baltimore's economy. Explores lessons to be drawn from Silicon Valley and other areas where higher education, business, and government collaborated to build strong research-based economies

Mustang Daily, February 20, 1998

Student newspaper of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA.https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/studentnewspaper/6257/thumbnail.jp