Recognizing and raising professionalism behaviors within the culture of business undergraduates: Working paper series--10-10

Professionalism, as represented in behavioral qualities that are in wide variation across students, is a timely and relevant issue for business schools for both pedagogical progress and for graduates' employability. Framed in structuration theory (Giddens, 1984), this paper describes a novel program designed to foster recognition of professional characteristics and incentivize more professional behavior, to progressively shift awareness and norms within the student body culture among undergraduates in an accredited college of business in the Western United States. In concert with traditional curriculum, this simple program offers the reward of formal recognition for students who consistently demonstrate more professional behavior in coursework and extra-curricular activities. Students' recognition of professionalism is expected to be valuable to them and to the college, and formal recognition for those that distinguish themselves is expected to be notable on their resumes and valuable in seeking employment. As presently designed, the program capitalizes on uncommon strengths of the college, but wider applicability of the concept is explored and discussed

Developing professionalism in a college of business: The implementation of a professionalism recognition program: Working paper series--11-06

This paper explores the importance of developing professionalism attributes among business students and the implementation of a program designed to incentivize professionalism behaviors during undergraduate study at a college of business. The "Professionalism Recognition Program" (PRP) was established as a co-curricular activity to promote, evaluate, recognize and reward professionalism behaviors of students. We also describe the key aspects of the program's development and implementation, noting the key resources and constituencies involved as well as considerations for the adoption of similar programs elsewhere. It is hoped that the lessons learned during our implementation and communicated in this manuscript will help others to successfully develop and implement their own programs to improve the professionalism behaviors of students

The collapse of sensemaking at Yarnell Hill : the effects of endogenous ecological chaos on enactment

Purpose – Since Weick’s (1993) seminal Mann Gulch paper articulated a collapse of sensemaking, scholars have repeatedly investigated sensemaking downstream of enactment. Motivated by another wildland firefighting tragedy, the tragic loss of 19 firefighters in Arizona in 2013, this study aims to look at enactment itself and reveals that the endogenous creation and re-creation of the wildland fire caused a fatal feedback loop of “trigger traps” leading to perpetual enactment that short-circuited sensemaking. Wildland fires can have unpredictable consequences, which triggers in individual sensemakers a fatal and continuous return to the beginning of the sensemaking process. Design/methodology/approach – This paper’s approach is a case study based on a textual analysis of sources investigating the 2013 Yarnell Hill fire. The authors also carefully compared the Yarnell Hill and Mann Gulch disasters in search of breakdowns in sensemaking that could help us understand why we continue to lose firefighters in the line of duty. Findings – The simultaneously volatile and complex environment at Yarnell illustrates sensemaking antecedents to the study of enactment. The findings suggest ways that organizations – those fighting wildfire or those fighting a global pandemic – can avoid getting trapped in the early stages of enactment and can retain resilience in their sensemaking. Originality/value – This paper introduces the concept of “trigger traps” to help explain the fatal feedback loop of repeated environmental triggers in the early stages of sensemaking in volatile environments.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Qualities of professionalism sought by employers: Exploring, validating, and incentivizing them in business undergraduates: Working paper Series--12-08

What do employers of business-school graduates seek in job candidates? The basic technical knowledge that an accredited degree indicates, and some amount of appropriate work experience, are prerequisites for interviews. But job candidates are then distinguished by various "soft" qualities that can't easily be bulleted on resumes or readily validated by employers. This paper begins with an exploration of framework for these qualities, considered here aspects of professionalism, which is developed from a series of surveys to refine and categorize relevant descriptors. We report the confirmatory findings from a focus group of partners, HR managers, and recruiters from accounting firms - a field which is particularly sensitive to professionalism since new associates have extensive client contact. Then, one business school's novel approach for raising the level of professionalism in undergraduate business students is introduced. The paper includes discussion of the importance and limitations of this topic, and concludes with possible directions for further research

NASA/DOE/DOD nuclear propulsion technology planning: Summary of FY 1991 interagency panel results

Interagency (NASA/DOE/DOD) technical panels worked in 1991 to evaluate critical nuclear propulsion issues, compare nuclear propulsion concepts for a manned Mars mission on a consistent basis, and to continue planning a technology development project for the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI). Panels were formed to address mission analysis, nuclear facilities, safety policy, nuclear fuels and materials, nuclear electric propulsion technology, and nuclear thermal propulsion technology. A summary of the results and recommendations of the panels is presented

An X-Ray Spectroscopic Study of the SMC X-1/Sk 160 System

We have investigated the composition and distribution of the wind of Sk 160, the supergiant companion of the X-ray star SMC X-1, by comparing an X-ray spectrum of the source, obtained with the ASCA observatory, during an eclipse with the computed spectra of reprocessed radiation from circumstellar matter with various density distributions. We show that the metal abundance in the wind of Sk 160 is no greater than a few tenths of solar, as has been determined for other objects in the Magellanic Clouds. We also show that the observed X-ray spectrum is not consistent with the density distributions of circumstellar matter of the spherically symmetric form derived for line-driven winds, nor with the density distribution derived from a hydrodynamic simulation of the X-ray perturbed and line-driven wind by Blondin & Woo (1995).Comment: 35 pages including 16 figures, uses AASTeX v5.0.2, accepted to Ap

Composition of the L5 Mars Trojans: Neighbors, not Siblings

Mars is the only terrestrial planet known to have Tro jan (co-orbiting) asteroids, with a confirmed population of at least 4 objects. The origin of these objects is not known; while several have orbits that are stable on solar-system timescales, work by Rivkin et al. (2003) showed they have compositions that suggest separate origins from one another. We have obtained infrared (0.8-2.5 micron) spectroscopy of the two largest L5 Mars Tro jans, and confirm and extend the results of Rivkin et al. (2003). We suggest that the differentiated angrite meteorites are good spectral analogs for 5261 Eureka, the largest Mars Trojan. Meteorite analogs for 101429 1998 VF31 are more varied and include primitive achondrites and mesosiderites.Comment: 14 manuscript pages, 1 table, 6 figures. To be published in Icarus. See companion paper 0709.1921 by Trilling et a