Bridging the Gap: Training Needs Assessment of the Immigrant Workforce in Onondaga County, NY

[Excerpt] This report addresses one small facet of the skills dilemma facing Onondaga County; that is, can the growing immigrant/refugee population in Syracuse satisfy local employers’ demand for labor? With support from a grant provided by the Economic Development Administration (U.S. Department of Commerce) University Center at Cornell University, members of the ILR School’s Extension faculty interviewed employers,immigrants and other English-as-a-secondlanguage (ESL) workforce newcomers, service providers, labor unions, and government planners during the winter of 2007 to assess the training needs of the county’s immigrant and ESL workforce. Our research was facilitated and aided by the Onondaga County Office of Economic Development

From academia to industry: are doctorate holders ready?

In policy debates related to innovation potential, the limited mobility from academia to industry is often explained by the supposed mismatch of skills needed in these different settings. We contribute to this debate by (1) examining the attitudes of Flemish doctoral candidates towards careers in industry; and (2) by analysing the extent to which doctoral candidates and employers in industry in Flanders differ in their views on the skills needed to perform well in this sector. We combined survey data with qualitative research. The Survey of Junior Researchers provides information on the doctoral candidates’ perspective on these matters, whereas the Research & Development Survey of Flemish companies reflects the employers’ views. Additional data obtained through interviews with both doctorate holders and employers provide a more in depth understanding of the transition from academia to industry. A mismatch between what doctoral candidates consider important skills for a job in industry, and what employers expect from researchers is observed. The importance of technical skills and more transferable competencies such as project management and business skills are underestimated by doctoral candidates. The findings raise questions on the awareness among doctoral candidates of the skills needed for a career outside academia. Addressing possible negative attitudes, and providing adequate training and career planning could improve their preparation for work in non-academic settings, confirming findings in other countries that institutional programmes have a role to play in bridging the gap between employers' expectations and those of doctoral candidates

What Are the Best Practices to Promote High-Ranking Female Employees Within Organizations?

Companies still have a long way to go to ensure gender diversity especially in leadership positions. Recent research indicated that although entry-level men and women are hired at an increasingly equal rate, women often times reach a mid-career “the glass ceiling”. Our research investigated the best practices and drew insights on how to tackle the gender diversity challenge

What Are Best Practices to Promote High Ranking Female Employees?

Companies still have a long way to go to ensure gender diversity especially in leadership positions. Recent research indicated that although entry-level men and women are hired at an increasingly equal rate, women often times reach a mid-career “the glass ceiling”. Our research investigated the best practices and drew insights on how to tackle the gender diversity challenge

Affirmative action as organization development at the Johnson Space Center

The role of affirmative actions is investigated as an interventionist Organization Development (OD) strategy for insuring equal opportunities at the NASA/Johnson Space Center. In doing so, an eclectic and holistic model is developed for the recruiting and hiring of minorities and females over the next five years. The strategy, approach, and assumptions for the model are quite different than those for JSC's five year plan. The study concludes that Organization development utilizing affirmative action is a valid means to bring about organizational change and renewal processes, and that an eclectic model of affirmative action is most suitable and rational in obtaining this end

Female Underrepresentation in Undergraduate Education: Case study in School of Engineering

It is an eminent and established reality that worldwide, women are underrepresented in science, engineering and technology (SET) subjects in university education. Concerns about underrepresentation of females in the SET fields in Kenya have been raised and expressed by the government and various organizations for a long time. Equal representation between men and women in SET, and particularly in engineering, is crucial, as it would help in better reflection of the needs and interests of both sexes and provide a superior and more diverse talent pool to the economy and workforce of the country. The goal of the current study is to merge an examination of gender disparity in enrolment and progression at the School of Engineering (SOE), Moi University (MU) with reviewing current interventions to attract more females to university programs in Kenya. This analysis is based on retrospective longitudinal data (2003-2014) for engineering programs-level admission & graduation and institutional-level admission alongside with retention, Engineering parity index and Proportionality index computation. Multivariate regression analysis was used to study association between graduation outcomes and institutional characteristics. The major findings of the study are: While MU total admission is steadily increasing, no explicit trend in total enrolment of SOE was established. Analogous, there is no predetermined pattern in female admission for both SOE (13.9% average) and MU (45.4% average), however they are both skewed in favor of male. The comparison of female admission trends at SOE with other schools of MU revealed that the persistent underrepresentation of females in engineering is perplexing, particularly when female representation in other programs of MU has enjoyed superior improvement over time. Total retention rate, SOE was found to be 0.9 (10% drop-outs). Engineering parity ration was found to be 1.68 %, meaning that for every 59 students admitted to MU there was only one student admitted to SOE. Engineering female parity index was found to be 0.0038, meaning that on average for 260 female students admitted to MU only 1(one) female student was admitted to SOE. The situation in SOE is more distinct as the admission ratio of F/M is 0.143, meaning that for every 7 male students admitted to SOE there was only one female student. These trends suggest that females’ participation in engineering professions is likely to be affected. This gender imbalance presents a missed opportunity and if we are serious about addressing the engineering skills shortage systematic intervention into the education system and graduate supply is required. In this regard, the study made numerous recommendations, the two main ones are: proposal to establish a national policy to attract more females to universities, in general, and to engineering programs in particular; and the second - is using a social media to reach youth, especially females, by establishing and running an “Engineering 101” website/blog/online-forum that is focused and features on engineering and gender. Key words: Females, Gender underrepresentation, Engineering education, Interventions

A Mixed Methods Analysis of the Intersections of Gender, Race, and Migration in the High-Tech Workforce

Despite public policy initiatives and private sector investment to recruit more women, women’s participation in high-tech work has decreased since 1990. I use interviews with tech workers and nationally representative quantitative workforce data from the American Community Survey to examine the consequences of race, gender, and immigration for tech workers’ experiences and wages. While previous research shows a decrease in the proportion of women in tech work, these conclusions are somewhat misleading as they do not consider the intersections of race and migration with gender. I find only modest change in the absolute numbers of women. Rather, as the field grew, male migrant workers have primarily filled the new positions. Using only a gendered lens obscures the complicated racial and global dynamics of the tech workforce. I empirically examine three aspects of tech worker’s experience. First, I look at differences in wages by gender, race, and immigration status using decomposition techniques. I find that, despite the investment in recruiting women, there is a considerable wage gap that reflects the intersecting race, gender, and immigration inequalities. Second, I explore the kinds of work that tech workers do, and find that by mid-career many white women had moved into management position that emphasize interpersonal skills over technical skills. I call these positions “translational” as they are expected to translate technical information to management and business directives to technical teams. Finally, I examine how tech workers imagine the ideal engineer works. I find that many workers envision someone who is always at their computer working very long hours and constantly engaged in technical pursuits, but the workers I interviewed valued work/life balance. Managers had more control over their schedules but they also worked nights and weekends. Software developers and others in strictly technical positions worked closer to an 8-hour day. Meanwhile, technical work such as software development is increasingly done by migrant contract workers who work with legal restrictions that push them to work like the ideal engineer described in the interviews

Gender and Information Technology: Implications of Definitions

This paper examines implications of definitions of information technology to women\u27s participation in the industry and in academe. It is exploratory only, based on a review of selected government and industry reports and data related to IT education and the profession. However, it argues that there is evidence to suggest that discourse related to information technology has the effect of excluding women and multi-disciplinary perspectives. On the one hand, there is considerable evidence that the IT industry and skills it demands are multi-disciplinary and that many people working in the industry, particularly women, come from a variety of disciplines. On the other hand, despite the evidence of the multidimensional nature of IT, the impact of convergence, the importance of matching IT solutions to user needs and so on, a very narrow definition of IT dominates the discourse. This definition equates IT and IT professionals with computer science and engineering, disciplines which are predominately male. The result, then of this narrow definition is to marginalize women and their contributions. This is a pattern that has been observed with the development of other disciplines such as medicine. Not only does the narrowing of the definition of Information Technology tend to exclude and devalue the contribution of women but it also results in marginalization of other disciplines that would bring more “neutral” or “critical” perspectives to bear on technology. Thus the exclusion of multiple disciplines and women may contribute to poor technology decision-making at the societal and organizational level