National Coffee Association

For you coffee fans out there, here is a resource with lots of information about the National Coffee Association, that has the following mission statement: "We serve the public and our members by championing the well being of the coffee industry within the context of the global coffee community."

According to its website:
The National Coffee Association of USA was founded in 1911, one of the earliest trade associations formed in the United States and the first trade association for the U.S. coffee industry. Since that time, the NCA has helped American coffee companies through some of the most volatile periods in the nation's history, including two world wars, a depression, a cold war and numerous frosts, strikes and cartels, not to mention a wide range of consumer trends in the U.S. coffee market.

That success is based on the Association's ability to respond to external issues, wherever and whenever they arise. Whatever issue has impacted the coffee trade, the Association has represented the U.S. coffee industry before the legislative and executive branches of government, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Trade Representative's Office, U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Congressional committees. Equally prominent has been the profile of the NCA in the international arena, advancing the American coffee industry before international trading organizations and with more than 50 coffee producing nations as the national voice of the U.S. coffee industry.

This website could prove useful for students doing projects involving coffee.  The Members benefits could also be good for faculty doing research on coffee given the trend statistics in the coffee market that they capture.

You Keen on Green?!

GreenBiz.com™, Business Voice of the Green Economy, is the leading source for news, opinion, best practices, and other resources on the greening of mainstream business. Launched in 2000, its mission is to provide clear, concise, accurate, and balanced information, resources, and learning opportunities to help companies of all sizes and sectors integrate environmental responsibility into their operations in a manner that supports profitable business practices.  It is really an extensive site for those who have been and now finally getting on board the Green wagon, as it were.  Check out: http://www.greenbiz.com/

Greed Breeds Bad Managers

So, my oldest daughter tried another job in foodservice.  She was working for dining services for a local elder care provider (which was a nursing home in my day).  Anyway, the gentemen who hired her did a great interview to determine if she was first the kind of person who could cater to the elderly.  Her ability to wait tables was secondary.  She got proper training in her job as server and the boss had a good sytem in place for employees to be able to implement their training.  Scheduling was also fair and easy to discern in terms of the days and times each employee, like my daughter was to work.  There were also policies in place for changing shifts with other employees in the event life happens while busy making plans for work.  The boss even thought it would be better to give the servers chef coats to make them look more professional and connected to the kitchen.  So far so good, until that manager moved on to another job.

ENTER THE NEW ASSHOLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The director of the elder care facility obviously did not use any sophisticated techniques for hiring a replacement for the former manager.  The new boss turned out to be a total jack ass!  All the positive traits and characteristics noted above that made the former boss someone that was easy to work for were non-existent in the new boss.  From day one the new manager went in and started making changes in every way possible WITHOUT having a clue as to whether or not those systems were functional.  First on the list of changes was a new scheduling format that took a Ph.D. in logistics to interpret.  Next was his attitude toward the servers as servants and not people who were in the primary care business.  I could go on and on about the things this jackass did to make a decent job one that sucked but the point of the story is that yet another person gets turned off to foodservice due to someone who is a complete jerk.  As a result, the staff is now experiencing turnover from not only my daughter but other employees with tenure.

My daughter is now in a retail environment for a local independently owned eclectic bookstore in the beads and crafts area.  Being an artist herself this seems to be working out for her so far although only learning to run the register before getting out into a service position interacting with customers to help them make decisions.

...and here is what she has learned about the industry we know and "love."  Foodservice is a place where sexual harassment takes place (her first restaurant job) and the boss is an asshole (elder care).  Sadder still, there is plenty of research that makes it clear that this situation is the norm in independent and chain restaurants and yet as long as miserly owners/investors make their pretty penny they will not give two shits for the staff -- even as they smile through their fat faces that "people are our greatest asset."  If far too many in greedy bastards in foodservice really cared about turnover and the image of our industry they would be more ethical!  My daughter is never to return, just like the sons and daughters of others. 

Just had another story to share.  I have a friend that worked for a large convention center.  The owners expected a certain (inflated) profit out of the operation he managed each month.  If he were off by a mere 1% he was beaten up for not hitting his targets even though the profit being made was obsence by anyone's standards.  That was their one benchmark on his performance -- profit.  I doubt job satisfaction and low turnover were a factor in any way shape, form, or manner.

My Son Learned Group Work Sucks!

My son is a good student.  He goes to class, pays attention, does his homework and anything else he can to earn an A for his efforts.  He was well on his way apparently to accomplishing that goal until my wife got his report card on parent/teacher night.  As it turns out, he got six "A's" out of eight classes.  The one "B" he got was in math as he adapts to a new teacher and challenging subject which he was cool with cuz it meant he has to work harder and ask questions for clarification.  The "B" that did trouble him was in his science class due to a low grade on a GROUP PROJECT.  As it turns out, my son did his part of the project and did it quite well because he checked with my wife and I as to the quality of his work.  We agreed he had done his best and helped his team by doing his part.  On the other hand, his team mates did not have the same commitment to their part of the project and the team got a "B" as well and that dropped his grade enough in the class to earn a "B" at this point.  The kicker is that my son tried to control his destiny by motivating his other team members to do their best.

When all is said and done, here is what my son learned from his science teacher, GROUP WORK SUCKS! and there are slackers in the world that do not have the same dedication to their studies as he does.  I believe that was not in the lesson plan for the group project but a result of it nonetheless.  Of course, the science teacher is all "fat, dumb, and happy" that he had the kids work together on a project.  And has YET to ask my son about his experience in that situation which would make him the wiser when it came to assigning future group projects -- or so one would hope. 

So here is my question today.  Are you that science teacher?  Are you doing anything at all to enable students to have a successful experience when working in teams or do you just drop that assignment off on them without any guidance from the beginning to the end. If so, you are teaching what my kid learned in middle school this week -- GROUP WORK SUCKS!

The Meatrix

I hope that many of you are opposed to factory farms.  The substandard treatment given animals today to put meat and dairy on the table is inexcusable.  To stimulate class discussion there is an animated series called the Meatrix that speaks to factory farms and an accurate depiction of far too many producers in the United States today, such as those depicted in Fast Food Nation.  So for an entertaining and thought provoking resource check out: http://www.themeatrix.com/

Better still, when each animated segment is completed there is information from http://www.sustainabletable.org/ on what to do to celebrate local sustainable food and educate consumers on food-related issues.

Another Great Sustainable Resource

The Christian Science Monitor has a Bright Green Blog that has useful information on sustainability issues.  The recent post had information on reducing the waste of water, especially in drought-stricken areas of the US. 
A prior post had an interesting story on how marijuana growers are depleting California water supply, too.
Check it out the blog by visiting:  http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/blog-entry/. 

We Killed "Why?"

I was jogging around my neighborhood today.  On the final lap one of the little children I had passed several times finally asked, "What are you doing?"  I said, "I am jogging."  She said, "Why are you jogging?"  I said, "for my health."  She had another question she held up on as I continued to jog well past her.  That was when it occured to me, she is the age we all were at one point in time in our lives when we asked "Why?" all the time.  Sometimes we drove our parents nuts.

I also remember when my kids asked "Why?" all the time and it sometimes was a challenge to answer, "Why is the sky blue?"  or "Why are clouds white?"  See if you can provide an intelligent answer on those two questions to a four year old.

Then one day it ended.  That day was the day we (my kids) started to "go to school.".  That was the day the teachers stopped all the kids from asking all their silly questions and listen to how the world worked, compliments of your local school system faculty, administrator, and politicians.  In other words, the school system killed our desire and our kids desire to want to know things out of curiosity and replaced it with "at this age level, here is what you should think and know about the world."  To that I say, "bullshit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

If you are out there reading this post today do what you can to get the kids to start asking "why?" again whenever they choose and not when it suits you.  If we did more of that perhaps kids would have learned that we should not be still celebrating Columbus Day because he was a complete ASSHOLE who did not discover ANYTHING yet we carrry on teaching each new generation of kids what a wonderful thing it was that he did for all us here in this great land we stole from those who lived here.  For a fact check on Columbus, read, "Lies my Teacher Told Me."  See if you think the same things you thought about Columbus after that enlightenment.  Get those kids asking, "Why?"

What is Wolfram\Alpha?

There are search engines that are coming online to challenge Google's dominance of that market.  One of the ones I ran across from reading latest issue of Business Week (article on Google) and chatting with students in my honors class today -- who of course knew about it with me clueless until today -- Wolfram\Alpha. 

According to its website, Wolfram Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries...is an ambitious, long-term intellectual endeavor that we intend will deliver increasing capabilities over the years and decades to come. With a world-class team and participation from top outside experts in countless fields, our goal is to create something that will stand as a major milestone of 21st century intellectual achievement.

I performed a modest comparison with Google by asking a computational question, "How many calories in a cup of tuna?"  What I got from Google was hundreds and hundreds of links to websites that had the search terms in the sentence.  What I got from Wolfrap\Alpha was ONE SINGLE PAGE that gave the caloric information.  The same thing happened when I asked, "How many teaspoons in a tablespoon?"  I got the information specific to the question and that was it.  For those of you out there who teach baking enter in some of your formulas to see the response you get because the students I spoke to in class today love the computational capabilities of this search engine.

Tips on Reducing Cheating

Let's face it, there are some students who will cheat.  Heck, I had to change the way I faciliated a community service assignment in my freshman class a few years because the students were cheating on it, which many did not see to be a problem.

Here are some tips from a new book entitled "Cheating in School: What We Know and What We Can Do" by Stephen F. Davis, Patrick F. Drinan, and Tricia Bertram Gallant (published by Wiley-Blackwell).  The authors offer a few strategies instructor can implement to discourage cheating that are covered in depth in their new book:

1. Clearly articulate your expectations for the class and EACH INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT. Can students work with others on their homework assignments, for example? Can they use old exams, lab reports, etc. as aids in the course?


2. Explicitly link assignments to learning objectives. Students often cheat on assignments that they see as meaningless or “busy-work.” If they understand the point of the assignment, especially how it will help them learn the material, they are more likely to push through it on their own rather than copy from someone else.


3. Reduce temptations to cheating. We cannot control student behavior, but we can at least show them that we care about the integrity of our classes by doing little things. For example, space students out during exams, provide multiple versions of the same test, require students to leave all non-essential materials at the front of the room, and have the WiFi turned off in the test room.


4. Talk to students about the relation of academic integrity to professional ethics and their future chosen career. Students are more likely to uphold integrity in academic assignments if they see it as holding more value than just being “another institutional rule.”


5. Report all cheating when you see it, rather than ignore it or handle it on your own. A professor can become known as someone who does not tolerate cheating or look the other way, and then the cheaters will not choose her class! Also, many professors mistakenly assume that they can reduce cheating on their own, but it takes the entire campus. If instructors do not report cheating, that same student may be cheating in other courses and no one would ever know!

A Sad Loss Indeed

In case you have not heard by now, Gourmet magazine was cancelled yesterday by Conde Nast.  Perhaps that magazine inspired you to be a chef or become a better one over the years.  For more information on the magazine and the reason for its demise, read:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-conde-nast6-2009oct06,0,7266456.story

Sometimes I Wonder if We Matter

We just did  a curriculum revision and I am very proud of it.  We believe it is one that will truly prepare our graduates to manage any hospitality business, anywhere, anytime after graduation.  And then I see videos like the one below.  Take the time to watch the six minute video.  It puts my understanding of the world in perspective and makes me wonder if our curriculum is truly preparing graduates for the global market place:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljbI-363A2Q&feature=PlayList&p=DDE35FD7D46EC29C&index=0&playnext=1

Let me know what you think. 

More Insights on Learning Styles

As long as we are at it, here is another video from Willingham clarifying a point about good teaching he made on the video on yesterday's blog post:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKkHiAA3xu0&feature=channel
Have a great weekend!

No Evidence of Learning Styles

I know that there are many people who believe that there is such a thing as learning styles. However, there is little research from cognitive research that supports it.

In this video, Daniel Willingham, who recently published "Why Don't Students Like School?" explains why there is no support for learning styles. Something is going on the way students learn things differently but not what we may think.

So building on yesterday's post look at this current research. It will be worth the 6 minutes to watch it and well worth it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIv9rz2NTUk&feature=channel_page