In his article, “Dr. Ronit Molko,” explains how individuals with neurological issues, such as autism, should be more represented in the workplace, because of fairness, and because individuals with autism for example could greatly benefit companies. Molko touches on how big corporations such as SAP, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Ford, and IBM are starting to tap into the benefits of hiring employees with neurological disorders such as Autism. He notes that small business should also do the same. Hiring individuals with autism is not only fair, but it will also benefit the overall objective of the company. Individuals with autism, for example, have an ability to hyper focus on a topic or a task. This makes them valuable in the work space. What company would be opposed to hiring an employee who is able to hyper focus in on their assigned job or task? The answer should be none. That’s what ever company, small or large, dreams of, employees that are disciplined and able to hyper concentrate on their job. With all this being said, those with neurological disorders, such as autism, are perfect for the work place. Mary Ellen Smith, corporate vice-president of Microsoft, said that “people with autism bring strengths that we need at Microsoft.” This is an example of a huge step forward in the movement of having more individuals with neurological disorders in the work place.
Summary of Diversity article
The Journal article/study titled “Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Classroom: Does It Promote Student Learning?” in The Journal of Higher Education from September-October 2001 conducted a study of 1,258 students spread out throughout seven four year colleges. The students were in the field of engineering, and were mostly white males.
Students completed a series of questionnaires upon completion of the course which shed light on their experiences- how they retained information, what their diversity experience was like, how well their problem solving skills grew, etc. The answers were on a basic 1-4 scale.
The numbers in this study show that while having a less homogenous, more diverse population in the classroom may have had a positive impact on class performance, it wasn’t enough to be considered statistically significant. Even more, there was virtually no difference in class performance in the classrooms where there was no diversity at all.
A valid reason for this is that the seven colleges represented in this study are not representative of higher education as a whole, and even more importantly, the field of engineering consists of students who already are performing at a high level academically and have high problem solving skills, and are mostly (73%) male who are non minority. Taking this into account, it’s very likely that the data is skewed. The authors of this study themselves even urge not to take this as gospel, and that more studies would be needed in order to come to a more concrete conclusion.
(I have attached the pdf version of this article below)
Summary, Week of 6/1 Dominique
The article that I chose focuses on neurodiversity in the classroom. The author’s of this article use their experiences as students, educators, etc. in order to inform the reader. The article begins by explaining the importance of understanding that neurodiversity has many benefits, then lists ways that teachers can help students achieve their goals in the classroom. Although this article highlights so many important ideas for teachers who have students with autism, ADHD, and Dyslexia, in my view, one of the most important ideas that everyone should understand is that people who have disabilities do not need to be “fixed” or “cured”. However, teachers can do things that can help their students be successful. This includes presuming competence, which means setting high standards for all students, no matter what abilities they may or may not have. Another important thing that teachers can do is let students be themselves, and allow them to explore to find their strengths. This helps students to be less frustrated in the classroom. Teachers must be able to accommodate students who need certain things in order to be successful. Overall, the purpose of this article is to assist teachers in valuing their student’s differences, and allowing for diversity in the classroom. Students should always feel welcomed in the classroom, and it is the teacher’s responsibility to help make the classroom a safe space for everyone.
Article Summary
In The Changing Definition of Workplace Diversity, Shackelford discusses today’s changing definition of diversity, while considering the diversity philosophies of several corporations and authors. Employers have broadened their concept of what diversity is. The case for broadening the definition is built on the changing labor force demographics. The majority of workers entering the workforce this decade will be women, minorities and foreign nationals. The labor shortage that began in the 1990’s will continue to grow and is projected to reach 10 million workers by 2010.
Employers have moved diversity from a “nice thing to do” to a business necessity, says Donna Brazile. It’s recommended to use your cover letter to highlight your diversity status, to include on your resume your fraternity or sorority membership, to mention any affiliation with prominent minority or diversity organizations, to include military service on your resume, to state any community service or other volunteer work, or to stress your willingness to apply your degree in non-traditional ways. Discrimination in hiring has taken a back seat to issues of homeland security, terrorism, war and economic security. These changing times present a window of opportunity for “equal opportunity” for diverse candidates.
For one example, Merck as a company takes extra care to attract, hire, develop and retain highly capable and motivated students. Merck provides strong foundations for their development (scholarships and workshops) and welcomes diversity. Because of this, students look at Merck as an “Employer of Choice”after college. These types of programs are becoming more and more common to not only seek diversity, but welcome it.
https://go-gale-com.libezproxy2.syr.edu/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=T003&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=SingleTab&searchType=BasicSearchForm¤tPosition=2&docId=GALE%7CA108966746&docType=Article&sort=Relevance&contentSegment=ZAHW&prodId=PPDS&contentSet=GALE%7CA108966746&searchId=R1&userGroupName=nysl_ce_syr&inPS=true&ps=1&cp=2
Thinking about summary and genre
Why summary is important
Summary is a task that you’ll encounter often in research-based writing–as an author, you’ll need to explain the essence of a text that you have worked with in developing your own ideas. Writing an effective summary means offering your reader a genuine understanding of the text, not just a list of its greatest hits. Your reader needs a little context–
- what is this text?
- what is the author doing in it?
- what are the key ideas we should take from it?
- and then what are you going to do with it?
Because you’ll need this skill regularly, we’re going to practice and use it regularly–we develop writing skills just like any other kind of competency, through examining models, trying it out, and repeating the drill.
You’ll find a handout on Blackboard that offers some more explanation of writing effective summaries. It’s also linked here: Handout on summary
Let’s think about this in terms of the Herring article you just read for last week. If you were going to explain this article to someone else, it wouldn’t be enough to say that Gundemir and her colleagues talk about some of the pros and cons of workplace diversity. We wouldn’t know anything about who Gundemir is and why we should take her word for it. We wouldn’t know whether this article was grounded in good research. We wouldn’t know whether the idea that there are more fruitful and less fruitful ways to frame diversity is central to her argument, or a kind of tertiary point that she mentions. We wouldn’t understand what the article is.
A summary like this, however, would offer us a lot more value: In his article…. from the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, Seval Gundemir, an organizational psychologist at the University of Amsterdam, examines how companies’ diversity policies affect the way that minority employees view their own leadership potential within their companies. She reports data from 2 different studies that she and her colleagues conducted. She finds that…..
Notice what that summary does–it offers a quick biographical blurb about the author (which tells us that she’s an academic), lets us know that this is a scholarly article (written by a scholar for other scholars in the field), gives us a window into her data set and methods, and then lets us know what she’s arguing. If we know all that, then anything else that you share with us from the article will be a lot more meaningful. We’ll get why it matters and what evidence there is to back it up.
Because effective summary is so essential to writing about research, we’ll be practicing this skill quite a bit in the weeks to come.
Why it’s important to think about genre
This is a term we’ll use quite a bit throughout the course, so it’s worth taking some time to discuss what it means. We often think about genre in relation to music or movies, where we’re accustomed to using it to refer to different ‘types’ of media. These genre labels communicate something to consumers, shape expectations for what that media will be like, and serve as handing sorting mechanisms for us (what we like, what we don’t, what we’re in the mood for, how we would describe something to another person, etc.)
When it comes to genres of writing, that same sort of understanding applies, but it’s worth pushing beyond this simplistic idea of ‘categories’ (as though they’re just sorting buckets) to understand how and why genres take shape.
For starters, genres tend to responses to recurring writing situations–in other words, the same kind of need keeps popping up and we can use the same sort of text to meet that need. Let’s think about applying for a job. That’s a recurring situation, right? Lots of people find themselves having to do that. And there are ways that writing can help to make that situation work. Now, job application materials–resumes and cover letters–didn’t just emerge spontaneously. They took shape because readers and writers found them to be useful ways of meeting that situational need–front-loaded documents that quickly communicate a job seeker’s qualifications, skills, and experiences. AND they’ve taken the fairly standard form that they do (consistent across many decades) because that pretty standard approach to organizing and formatting makes it possible for the reader to plow through a whole bunch of these documents pretty quickly, while still finding what they need.
Thus, we can think about genres as responsive and organic–developed to meet the needs of writers and readers and changeable depending upon circumstances. They’re not fixed, not static, and not simply interchangeable. We need to match genre to situation–thinking about our readers, about our purposes, about our publication/delivery venues.
Everything you do as a writer is a choice. And our choices are shaped by the situations in/for which we write. This rhetorical situation consists of a few key components, illustrated in the diagram below:
Understanding the rhetorical situation of texts helps us as readers understand what to expect from them and how to read them. And for us as writers, understanding our audience and purpose will help us to craft texts that work for our readers, meeting their needs and expectations and providing them a clear path to understanding.
The texts that you’re reading this week come from 2 rather different genres–Gundemir’s article is a fairly typical scholarly text, written by academics for an audience of other academics in their field and providing the sort of intensive research and analysis those readers demand. The other text by Austin & Pisano is from the Harvard Business Review, a publication with a much broader audience of professionals. They turn to HBR for quick insights into topics they might be interested in and are generally not looking for the same kind of deep-dive. When you know what you’re looking at, it’s much easier to navigate through it.
Now, because most of us are not organizational psychologists (I presume), Gundemir’s text isn’t really designed for us. We have to make our own path through it. There’s a handout on Blackboard (also linked here: Handout on Reading Scholarly Articles ) on how to wade through sometimes dense scholarly articles like this one.