Back to School

Para Jones will tread on very familiar ground come Feb. 6. She will return to an employer for whom she has worked for 22 years – but this time as president.

Jones said she is delighted to become the fourth president of the tax-supported Stark State College.

“To say that I have goals would be presumptuous,” said Jones, 56. “I do know what’s most important to us – access, affordability and, increasingly, accountability.”

Stark State hired Jones away from Spartanburg Community College, near Greenville, S.C., where she has been president for two years. But Ohio apparently was never far from her mind.

She was a finalist in 2010 for the presidency at Owens Community College near Toledo. That didn’t happen, so she applied to Stark State when John O’Donnell quit to accept a similar post at MassBay Community College in Wellesley Hills, Mass.

Stark State trustee chairman Dr. Michael L. Thomas said the search committee whittled the applicants from 35 to four and then to Jones, Stark State provost Dorey Diab and Quintin Bullock, president of Schenectady County Community College in Schenectady, N.Y.

Thomas won’t confirm written reports that trustees were divided over the selection of the president. “All three had avid supporters,” is all Thomas would say.

Jones emerged the victor because she had “the necessary charisma,” he said. “Her intellect and philosophy are aligned with the community and the school.”

Outside experience

Jones also comes to Stark State’s top job with more outside experience than many in higher education.

After graduating from the University of Mount Union, she edited books and manuals for flight simulators at Goodyear Aerospace, then went on to public relations and marketing posts at the city of Canton and Roadway. She spent a semester in journalism school before deciding that wasn’t for her.

Her interest in higher education administration was piqued when she joined Stark State in 1987 as head of public relations.

She earned an M.B.A. from Ashland University in 1994 and a doctorate from the University of Nebraska in 2008, the latter while vice president for advancement, planning, college and community relations at Stark State.

Along the way, she raised twin sons who are now 26, wedging study into the early morning hours before she went to work.

Expanding institution

She will rejoin an institution that’s been successful in many ways.

A surge of students propelled college enrollment to more than 15,500 last fall — an 82 percent increase since 2007 and the fastest rate of growth among Ohio’s two-year colleges.

As enrollment has grown, so has the number of students graduating with certificates and associate degrees – from 582 in 2001 to 1,084 in 2010, an 86 percent increase, according to the Ohio Board of Regents.

Stark State has kept a lid on tuition, which at $4,215 a year is less than half that of the University of Akron ($9,500) or Kent State’s main campus ($9,300).

Jones will oversee the largest college in Stark County — 73 acres in Jackson Township plus seven satellite locations. The college employs 428 full-time faculty and staff and hundreds of part-timers on a $70 million operating budget.

Fair offer

At the same time, though, Jones will not make as much as her predecessor or colleagues at other two-year institutions.

Her three-year contract calls for a salary of $225,000 a year plus standard Stark State benefits, while O’Donnell, her predecessor, made $284,000 plus fringes such as allowances for housing and personal travel and a $50,000 performance bonus in 2010.

In contrast, Cuyahoga Community College’s Jerry Sue Thornton makes $259,000 plus $44,000 for housing and $25,000 each for longevity and performance. And Roy Church, president of Lorain County Community College, made $256,500 plus a $76,000 longevity supplement in 2010, six weeks of vacation and up to four weeks of sabbatical leave yearly.

Thomas, the Stark State trustee chairman, said Jones is being paid “appropriately to her level of experience. We’re trying to be cost conscious with the taxpayers’ money.”

Jones implied that money is not her goal.

“The trustees made me an offer and I thought it was fair,” she said.

Now, she’ll return to the Tudor home in Jackson Township that she shares with her husband, Greg, who is the general manager of an industrial and commercial roofing company.

He stayed in Ohio to try to sell their home when she moved to Spartanburg.

Jones may be able to pursue her hobbies — reading and gardening — after she settles in. But she said she will spend the first three months conducting listening sessions with students, community leaders, employees and others.

Then she said she will come up with a plan.

The ultimate goal will be to help students to find employment and “earn a good, solid living. That’s what we’re about,” she said.

There is a rumour that an imminent Apple event is going to concentrate on two large educational projects, a subject area that was close to the heart for Apples co-founder, Steve Jobs.

Insiders and those in the know are reporting a strong possibility that one of these projects is based around the iTunes and iBook stores storing and providing digital textbooks, eBooks, or eTextbooks.

MacRumors reported that Apple has filmed promotional interviews with executives from the textbook publishing industry, possibly affirming that this upcoming event will focus on digital textbooks. They noted that while these interviews have indeed been worked on, there is no confirmation that they relate to this upcoming event.

The other big project is rumoured, by Goodreader, to put Apple in direct competition with Amazon (again) by making it easier for self-published work to be made available through the iBook store. It is recognised that content that Amazon and B&N provide with the Kindle and Nook devices make these devices enough of a threat to Apple to mean this attempt from Apple could be a way to redress the balance? Expect a handsome percentage from any book sale to go to Apple before you, the author, gets a look in though.

So, heres your chance to say what youd pay, or expect to pay, for a digital edition of the paper-copy. Bearing in mind the costs involved in getting a paper-copy to of a (e.g.) $30.00 textbook to the shop (based on the figures in the Guardian: The true price of publishing) are in the region of 10% ($3.00) to print and distribute the book, how much of the remaining 90% is for the author, editor, reviewer, etc?

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The poll will run until February 1st, 2012.

There are several options to become an electrocardiogram technician. You will need to take EKG technician training. Some hospitals require applicants to have only a high school diploma or GED equivalent, plus interest shown and the potential expected in the health sciences. If employed right out of high school, you can receive on workplace training from a cardiologist or EKG Tech Supervisor to prepare for the duties of an ECG technician.

Most people, however, enroll in a university program to receive their basic education and increase their chances of advancing a career in the health care industry. Certificate, associate and baccalaureate programs are available, lasting from one to four years on average. These programs teach students to adjust and maintain the equipment, to communicate using medical terminology, and understand the importance of patient safety and medical ethics. Specialties in the field, such as cardiovascular tests are always included in the course. If you choose one of associate and baccalaureate programs, you will have to take courses in general academics.

A third way to start a career as an ECG technician is suitable for specialists who have a job in the medical industry, such as nurses. These people can enter a course in a medical organization, or they can enroll in a special teaching program that allows them not to participate in general medical classes. Before choosing a course, make sure there is a possibility to exchange experience for credit and you can move on to specialized courses. To start your career as an ECG technician, you might consider to be certified. Check with your institute to ensure that their training program is suitable for passing certification exams.

Of course, you need to choose an accredited institute with good history and reputation. If you will get advanced courses, this is a good option to get an edge over your competitors.

Decisions are a part of everyday life. The only thing is, we make decisions in a landscape that may not be the most rational place  We may all display messy emotions, imperfect memories and short attention spans on occasion.

There’s always hope.

1. Listen to your instincts. Listen, but don’t let them boss you around. Avoid making snap decisions without the necessary information. Allow things to flow, but respect your instincts.
2. Make a list of alternative actions. If your decision doesn’t have to be made on the spot, write down a number of options and spend quality time analyzing each one.
3. Think ahead. Ask yourself what will happen if you do or don’t take action. Weigh your actions against any similar challenges in your past.
4. Look at things from a distance. Distance can quite often give you a better perspective on matters. Step back and put a little time and space between now and when the decision must be made.
5. Make a concrete decision. Once you’ve decided on a course of action, stick to it with gusto. Otherwise, it’s easy to over analyze your own decisions to the point of not being able to act.

Are you contemplating the decision to attend school? If so, Everest can help you choose a program that matches your career goals and allows you to finish your program in less than a year.* This means you can get the education you need and get on with your life in as little time as possible.

The best decisions are usually made when we have the right information and support structures in place. Everest can help.

2 in 5 students who attend college fail to get a degree from the college at which they began within 6 years.

This scary statistic is based on data from the U.S. Government’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). According to the NCES, 42.7% of students did not get a bachelor’s degree from the college at which they began within 6 years.

While the rates vary farily heavily by sector, they are alarming nonetheless. See the below chart for the all students cohort graduation rates.

Total Public Private 
not-for-profit Private 
for-profit All students         4-year rate 36.2 29.4 50.9 18.6 5-year rate 52.6 49.1 61.6 22.4 6-year rate 57.3 55.0 64.4 24.5

Interesting notes:

• Across all sectors, there’s a significant jump in attainment from year 4 to year 5.
• 60% of women graduate within 6 years, while only 54.2% of men do .
• For each yearly rate, women have a higher attainment percentage than men in both the public and private not-for-profit sectors. However, women trail men in each yearly rate for degree attainment in the private for-profit sector .

It is unclear if most parents are aware that cohort graduation rates are so low. When seeing these numbers for the first time, they can be rather unsettling if one thinks about his/her student’s probable college success. That discomfort may be exacerbated when one considers the potential residual effects that not completing college can have on future employment and the financial investment in college.

Over the next week, I’ll be blogging on some key factors that lead to college withdrawal and failure to persist to a degree. With regard to this information, the more you know about why students withdraw, the more you can prepare and strategize to minimze the risk to your child’s education, your financial investment in school, and your child’s future.