Remedying School Segregation: How New Jersey's Morris School District Chose to Make Diversity Work

Beyond the districtwide numbers, the Morris district has achieved remarkable diversity at the school building level. Since the district has only one middle school and one high school, these are not where the diversity rubber meets the road. Rather, the test is the elementary school populations. There, the Morris district shines. Despite the fact that students live in relatively homogeneous, segregated neighborhoods, the elementary schools they attend defy that pattern. For example, to achieve perfect racial balance between black and white students at the elementary school level, only about 2.6 percent would have to change their school assignments.The Morris district still struggles with two aspects of diversity, however. First,—in common with virtually every diverse school district in the country—it is still attempting to bring meaningful diversity to every program and course within its school buildings, from higher-level Honors and Advanced Placement courses to special education classifications and rosters of disciplinary actions. Second, in common with some but hardly all diverse districts across the country, the Morris district is trying to cope with the explosive growth of Hispanic students, many of them in recent years economically disadvantaged students from Central American countries where they often failed to receive a solid educational foundation in their own language and culture. Understandably, these students tend not to score well on standardized tests, especially in their early years in MSD. This contributes substantially to the Morris district's record of relatively poor achievement levels in three substantially overlapping student categories—Hispanic, English Language Learners (ELL), and economically disadvantaged students—as compared to its relatively strong achievement levels for white and black students.As to both challenges, the Morris district is manifesting a remarkably can-do spirit and a palpable will to succeed.In all these respects, the study of the Morris district reported on here is designed ultimately to extract lessons for other school districts in New Jersey and the rest of the nation. This report begins by exploring briefly the historical, political, and legal context of educational integration in New Jersey, and how that led to the creation of the Morris School District. It then analyzes and discusses the successes—and the challenges—of MSD's integration efforts. Along the way, it contrasts the successes of MSD with two other districts in New Jersey—Plainfield and New Brunswick—that attempted integration by district merger, but failed. It concludes by making recommendations not only for improvements in MSD's approach, but for school districts across New Jersey and the country that are seeking to integrate their schools and classrooms

New Product Performance And The Deployment Of Manufacturing Engineering Resources

New product manufacturability is both a problem and an opportunity for manufacturing firms in an environment where, increasingly, competition is based on rapid production ramps and high manufacturing yields at competitive costs. In this environment, design and engineering techniques are no substitute for a deeper understanding of the management task involved in developing a manufacturable product.;Many functional groups, including manufacturing engineering (ME), interact during the new product development process. This study focused on the ME group, for whom a major objective is the development of manufacturable new products. A framework was constructed around the theme that manufacturability-related performance of new products was associated with the way in which ME staff were deployed during the new product development process. The context within which this development activity took place was defined by the manufacturing strategy of the firm. Twelve new product development projects were investigated in four divisions of one company.;The use and source of components and subassemblies, time pressures, and the approach to coordination of design and ME defined different development contexts. In certain contexts, manufacturability, the incidence of engineering change, and the length of the development interval reflected the deployment of ME resources during the development process. When to become involved in a project, when to withdraw, when and how much emphasis to place on manufacturability, and what staff to assign constituted a deployment strategy for the development of manufacturable new products.;This study contributes to research on new product success and failure, design-manufacturing integration in the new product development process, and manufacturing engineering management. The findings carry many implications for senior manufacturing managers and manufacturing engineering managers. Key among these is the development, maintenance and use of the intellectual assets in manufacturing engineering

Biotechnological applications of functional metagenomics in the food and pharmaceutical industries

peer-reviewedMicroorganisms are found throughout nature, thriving in a vast range of environmental conditions. The majority of them are unculturable or difficult to culture by traditional methods. Metagenomics enables the study of all microorganisms, regardless of whether they can be cultured or not, through the analysis of genomic data obtained directly from an environmental sample, providing knowledge of the species present, and allowing the extraction of information regarding the functionality of microbial communities in their natural habitat. Function-based screenings, following the cloning and expression of metagenomic DNA in a heterologous host, can be applied to the discovery of novel proteins of industrial interest encoded by the genes of previously inaccessible microorganisms. Functional metagenomics has considerable potential in the food and pharmaceutical industries, where it can, for instance, aid (i) the identification of enzymes with desirable technological properties, capable of catalyzing novel reactions or replacing existing chemically synthesized catalysts which may be difficult or expensive to produce, and able to work under a wide range of environmental conditions encountered in food and pharmaceutical processing cycles including extreme conditions of temperature, pH, osmolarity, etc; (ii) the discovery of novel bioactives including antimicrobials active against microorganisms of concern both in food and medical settings; (iii) the investigation of industrial and societal issues such as antibiotic resistance development. This review article summarizes the state-of-the-art functional metagenomic methods available and discusses the potential of functional metagenomic approaches to mine as yet unexplored environments to discover novel genes with biotechnological application in the food and pharmaceutical industries.Science Foundation Ireland(SFI)Grant Number 13/SIRG/215

A Practice Perspective on Knowledge, Learning and Innovation – Insights From an EU Network of Small Food Producers

Drawing on insider research with a three-year EU network created to support innovation in geographically marginalized traditional food companies, this paper makes three contributions to discussions of innovation in small and micro-firms. First, we shift focus away from conceiving of knowledge as a discrete entity, and of knowledge sharing, transfer and exchange as the passing of objects. Applying a practice perspective that conceptualizes innovation as situated in the everyday activities of organizing, learning and working, we extend open innovation ideas and identify three distinct sets of knowledge-creating practices that small and micro-firm actors in this network context engage in as they interact: seek-and-take, peer exploration and critical reflection. Second, we integrate these practices into a model that suggests how different kinds of knowledge boundary (entitative, epistemic, pragmatic and existential) are differently traversed by these practices, with more complex boundaries benefitting from a practice approach. Third, we refine a practical approach for policy interventions designed to stimulate small and micro-firm innovation. The relevance of our contribution lies in the significance of small firms within peripheral economies, and the particular challenges they face in accessing new knowledge for innovation

Exploiting the Reach to Explore the Richness in Inter-organizational Action Research

"Exploring and exploiting the richness and reach of large scale action research projects is a challenge. This challenge focuses inwards as it addresses critical issues of enacting, managing and coordinating the actions of the project and engaging in the reflective processes of learning-inaction and knowledge generation by multiple actors and groups engaged in the project. It simultaneously focuses outwards as it seeks to exploit both the processes of the action research itself and the dissemination of actionable knowledge to multiple audiences. This article describes and reflects upon the challenges of exploring and exploiting richness and reach arising in the CO-IMPROVE project, a European Union (EU) funded initiative involving action research in complex networks of academics and business. The objectives of CO-IMPROVE included the facilitation of collaborative improvement of operations practice and performance in the extended manufacturing enterprise through action research among both managers and academics." (author's abstract

Exploring and Exploiting the Dynamics of Networks in Complex Applied Research Projects: A Reflection on Learning in Action

Since 1984, the European Union (EU) has supported research and development activities covering almost all scientific disciplines through a series of multi-annual Framework Programmes. The current programme is Horizon 2020. Common across the key indicators of research project performance have been actions by companies, including introduce and test innovations new to the company or the market. Initiatives to achieve these objectives require researchers to generate transdisciplinary knowledge in partnership with practitioners as co-researchers. This paper reflects on the authors’ experience of engaging in five EU-funded complex applied research projects over 20 years. The paper locates the process of the five projects in network action learning and Mode 2 knowledge production. It offers a theoretical framework expressed in three hypotheses to guide those who design and implement projects, those who approve and provide funding, and those who exploit and build upon the resulting research