What are the Best Practices in Overall Intern Experience among Highly Desirable Internship Programs?

[Excerpt] Most companies hire college summer interns for one of two reasons: to build their talent pipeline of future full-time hires and “test drive” potential employees, or as a way to increase their short-term workforce in order to complete a project.1 Both are legitimate business practices and, while some companies choose to hire interns for one reason or the other, the best internship programs are the ones where those purposes intersect. If the goal is to convert interns into permanent employees, it is of critical importance to provide students an experience that exposes them to new and challenging work. In fact, the top three reasons that students listed for pursuing an internship were to gain real world experience, build their resume, and learn new skills. While it may seem simple to meet those criteria, companies that have exceptional internship programs dedicate considerable resources and planning to achieve their level of success. This paper will highlight a selection of practices that leading internship programs employ, divided into two categories – Structure and Perks

What are Companies Doing to Retain as Well as Develop People of Color and Women?

[Excerpt] Despite their best efforts, many corporations are unsuccessful in their attempts to create more inclusive environments that allow for progression and growth of women and minorities. More than 75% of CEOs include gender equality in their top ten business priorities, but gender outcomes across the largest companies are not changing. People of color represent 18% of directors and women of color represent only 4% of directors. Many leaders would theorize that this is a “pipeline” issue in that fewer qualified women and minorities are available in the workforce. However, the numbers just don’t support this hypothesis—the number of women and minorities in the workforce has been rising steadily since 1980; indeed, both groups have been in the workforce long enough to have been groomed for ascension to higher ranks. This research will identify key considerations for developing women and minorities as well as possible ways for building more inclusive mindsets

What are the Most Important Capabilities/Competencies for Managers Who Lead People?

With the advancement in technology and the rapid increase of globalization, there is now an increased need for managers to engage in better communication, coordination, improved performance, team monitoring, and interdependency and trust. Unfortunately, while an increasingly large number of companies are focusing on leadership development at the higher organizational levels, majority of the organizations admit that they are not very successful in providing leadership development at all levels within the organization. It is therefore important to develop sets of leadership skills that would be useful at multiple levels of the organization

The Devil is in the Shadow: Do Institutions Affect Income and Productivity or Only Official Income and Official Productivity

This paper assesses the relationship between institutions, output, and productivity, when official output is corrected for the size of the shadow economy. Our results confirm the usual positive impact of institutional quality on official output and total factor productivity, and its negative impact on the size of the underground economy. However, once output is corrected for the shadow economy, the relationship between institutions and output becomes weaker. The impact of institutions on total (“corrected”) factor productivity even becomes insignificant. Differences in corrected output must then be attributed to differences in factor endowments. These results survive several tests for robustness

The relevance of the Apology today

Convocation held at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, October 28, 1981

Computational studies of vascularized tumors

Cancer is a hard problem touching numerous branches of life science. One reason for the complexity of cancer is that tumors act across many different time and length scales ranging from the subcellular to the macroscopic level. Modern sciences still lack an integral understanding of cancer, however in recent years, increasing computational power enabled computational models to accompany and support conventional medical and biological methods bridging the scales from micro to macro. Here I report a multiscale computational model simulating the progression of solid tumors comprising the vasculature mimicked by artificial arterio-venous blood vessel networks. I present a numerical optimization procedure to determine radii of blood vessels in an artificial microcirculation based on physiological stimuli independently of Murray’s law. Comprising the blood vessels, the reported model enables the inspection of blood vessel remodeling dynamics (angiogenesis, vaso-dilation, vessel regression and collapse) during tumor growth. We successfully applied the method to simulated tumor blood vessel networks guided by optical mammography data. In subsequent model development, I included cellular details into the method enabling a computational study of the tumor microenvironment at cellular resolution. I found that small vascularized tumors at the angiogenic switch exhibit a large ecological niche diversity resulting in high evolutionary pressure favoring the colonal selecion hypothesis.Krebs ist ein schwieriges Thema und tritt in zahlreichen Gebieten auf. Ein Grund für die Komplexität des Tumorwachstums sind die unterschiedlichen Zeit- und Längenskalen. In der aktuellen Forschung fehlt immernoch ein ganzheitliches Verständnis von Krebs, obwohl die computergestützten Methoden in den vergangenen Jahren die konventionellen Methoden der Medizin und der Biologie erweitern und unterstützen. Damit wird die Kluft zwischen subzellulären und makroskopischen Prozessen bereits verringert. In der vorliegenden Arbeit dokumentiere ich ein computergestütztes Verfahren, welches das Tumorwachstum auf mehreren Skalen simuliert. Insbesondere wird das Blutgefäßsystem durch künstliche Gefäße nachgeahmt. Es wurde ein numerisches Optimierungsverfahren zur Bestimmung der Gefäßradien eines künstlichen Blutkreislaufes entwickelt, welches auf physiologischen Reizen basiert und unabhängig von Murray‘s Gesetz ist. Da das beschriebene Verfahren zur Simulation von Tumoren Blutgefäße beinhaltet, kann die Umbildung des Gefäßbaumes während des Tumorwachstums untersucht werden. Das Modell wurde erfolgreich mit krankhaften Gefäßsystemen verglichen. In der darauffolgenden Weiterentwicklung des Modells berücksichtigte ich zelluläre Feinheiten, die es mir erlaubten das Mikromilieu in zellulärer Auflösung zu untersuchen. Meine Resultate zeigen, dass bereits kleine Tumore eine hohe ökologische Vielfalt besitzen, was den Selektionsdruck erhöht und damit die Klon-Selektionstheorie begünstigt

A numerical method for the prediction of combustion instabilities

This thesis describes one of the first computational works to investigate the physical feedback mechanisms associated with self-excited, combustion-driven instabilities in gas turbines. For this purpose, a novel numerical method based on large eddy simulation is devised. The method (called BOFFIN) uses a fully compressible formulation to account for acoustic wave propagation and applies a transported probability density function approach for turbulence-chemistry interactions. The latter is solved by the Eulerian stochastic fields method and is complemented by two different 15-step / 19 species chemical reaction schemes. This approach is shown to be flame burning regime independent and therefore highly applicable in the context of partially premixed gas turbine combustion. Combustion instabilities are a phenomenon often encountered in the late design stages of modern gas turbine combustors. Under certain conditions, these types of instabilities can develop into sustained limit-cycle oscillations with potentially severe consequences on a combustor's operating behaviour. In order to study the various physical feedback mechanisms driving such limit-cycle oscillations, two different test cases are simulated in the present work. Firstly, the combined effects of thermo-acoustic and hydrodynamic instabilities are examined in the lab-scale PRECCINSTA model combustor. Secondly, the superposition of a longitudinal and azimuthally spinning instability mode is investigated in the industrial SGT-100 combustor. Amongst the different feedback mechanisms identified and studied in these cases are: mass flow rate and equivalence ratio oscillations, as well as hydrodynamic phenomena such as flame angle oscillations, periodic vortex shedding and a precessing vortex core. It is further demonstrated that in addition to reproducing longitudinal instability modes, the applied LES approach is capable of accounting for modes acting in the transverse direction. Overall, the findings of this research project strongly suggest that BOFFIN is a reliable and accurate method for the prediction of self-excited combustion instabilities in gas turbines.Open Acces

Digital Primary Sources for Teaching and Research

This session will introduce and explore key primary sources available through the Jerry Falwell Library. These primary sources are on digital platforms and span a wide range of history and subjects