Google Analytics, Feedburner and a few other programs give me solid data about traffic on this site. Some pieces tank, some get consistent attention - and it’s anything but an exact science.

One of the posts that has truly surprised me was a brief bit on teachers dressing professionally [re-posted below]. I wrote it in March of last year after spending a day in a public high school and it’s as true - if not truer - today as it was a year ago.

But I did leave something out of the original post.

The day that I wrote it, three separate students asked me if I was rich. It happened frequently at this small-city school.

What made me look so wealthy? A white shirt, a tie, slacks - all clean and pressed properly - and polished shoes. That’s it. Nothing fancy.

The most basic standards of professional dress were so far above and beyond what passed for normal teacher attire in this school that many of the students assumed I was wealthy. I felt bad for the district when I realized that.

Jeffrey S. Solochek of the St. Petersburg Times has followed up on a 2006 blowup about whether teachers in Pasco County, Florida should be subject to a dress code:

A committee of teachers and administrators convened by superintendent Heather Fiorentino, who identified the issue as a problem, completed its review of teacher dress Thursday by deciding that there really is no problem.

The group agreed that attire matters, even suggesting that it deserves a prominent mention in new teacher training. But it deemed the district’s current policy, which says the staff should dress in a manner that “will add dignity to the educational profession,” as quite sufficient.

The committee suggested that the rare cases involving inappropriate attire can be addressed by the principal.

General George Patton said that you must, “Always do everything you ask of those you command.” Maintaining a professional appearance and demeanor in a school is an important part of education. If a teacher doesn’t demonstrate the utmost pride in their appearance and respect for themselves, no one should expect the students to follow suit.

That means a teacher must:

• Dress neatly, wearing professional attire that shows students that you care about your appearance and are proud of it.
• Wear clean, ironed clothing. Dirty, wrinkled clothes are the most prevalent (and needless) problem I see in schools. If you don’t like ironing, buy a bottle of wrinkle releaser. It’s $3 and works in 30 seconds.
• Have a variety of outfits - don’t wear the same thing every day. You need not have an extensive wardrobe, just some standard tops/bottoms and a basic knowledge of how they can go together. If you don’t know how to do this, ask your sister, mom, or stylish co-worker. They’ll be glad to help. [If you’re a male teacher, make use of ties to mix up your appearance.]
• Conceal any obnoxious additions to your body, e.g. tattoos and piercings. This is not as obvious to many as it ought to be.
• Wear clothes that fit. Clothes that are too tight, loose or revealing are distracting and reflect poorly on you.
• Avoid “business casual” attire when possible. It looks lazy. It’s the equivalent of getting a grade of C. You know, just enough to get by without taking too much heat for it.
• Keep current. You don’t need to read GQ or Elle every month to look good. If your clothes are out of style, stop wearing them to school. Students don’t take you seriously if you wear badly outdated clothes.

If you want respect, you’d better look and act as though you deserve it. A well-dressed teacher suggests (actually, it’s more like “screams”) that there is an important purpose for his/her presence in the class. To most adults, clothes reflect a person’s seriousness of purpose - and they’re right. Kids think in more simplified terms; they’re even more likely to equate a well-dressed teacher with seriousness.

There is no excuse - none - for being a teacher and not dressing well. It is a necessary part of the job with which you are charged (and which you have chosen). Your personal preferences and comforts mean far less than the students’ rights to encounter positive examples of adult behavior. Think you can’t afford to dress well? Saturday I spent $95 at Macy’s and got a suede jacket, a tweed suit coat, a microfiber windbreaker, two pairs of dress slacks and two chic ties.

The Education Wonks sum it up well when they say, “Maybe it would be a good idea if those who wanted to be treated as “professionals” dressed professionally.”

If you don’t want to take it from me, take it from the high school girl who last week called me “divalicious.“

25 years ago, Ball State University [Muncie, Indiana] created an Entrepreneurship major with a final exam worthy of the label “high-stakes.” The New Venture Creation course - the capstone of BSU’s Entrepreneurship major and the only one of its kind - draws upon 4 years of study in the liberal arts and business. The course’s premise is simple; students create a business plan through the semester and present it to a panel of businessmen at the end.

Pitch your plan successfully and you pass. But drop the ball and you not only fail the course, but you don’t graduate from BSU with a degree in entrepreneurship [though the ~25% who fail are welcome to try again next semester].

And as exciting and unique as a ‘winner-takes-all’ philosophy is in higher education, it might not even be the most compelling aspect of BSU’s ambitious entrepreneurship project.

The program, a division of BSU’s Miller College of Business, started in 1983. It has always been about purposeful innovation, says Dr. Larry Cox, Director of the Entrepreneurship Center. “We try to be unique - we try to do what no one else is doing or we try to find new ways to do it.”

Consider the Nascent 500 Business Plan Challenge that the Center began last year. Most business plan competitions are roughly the same; teams submit proposals that are judged on their merits or their relevance to the competition’s mission. But the Nascent 500 builds on that model and embodies the commitment to the entrepreneurial spirit that Cox and the Center tout:

• 500-word abstracts accompany a business plan submitted for evaluation; 12 undergraduate teams move on to qualifying at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway;
• $500 is awarded to each member of the 12 qualifying teams;
• Teams have 500 words to pitch their plan to investors in the back of a limousine as it makes a lap around the Speedway.

“We took the standard business plan competition model and changed the experience. We attract a good, competitive group and we have a lot of fun.”

Four teams advance to compete for $18,000 in prizes. The winning team takes home $10,000 and, of course, a quart of milk to gulp after their victory lap [click here to watch last year’s highlights].

In short, BSU practices exactly the entrepreneurship that they preach.

In his 3-year tenure at the Center, Cox has continued the innovation that has made Ball State a nationally-recognized name in entrepreneurship education. Traditionally, Cox explains, schools focus on the implementation of business plans, raising capital, etc. BSU focuses not just on those standards, but also on creating and developing ideas.

“We’ve built [the Center] around the idea that entrepreneurship, at its core, is creative problem-solving. The search for the idea is the search for a problem that’s worth solving,” Cox says. “First, we teach them how to find a problem.”

The Entrepreneurship major consists of nine courses; electives, other majors/minors and required liberal arts courses are often the inspiration for projects in and out of school. “We start with passion. Our students bring some content to the table from personal and professional interests,” Cox explains.

And that marriage between process and content - mixing prior knowledge, academic studies and problem-solving - is what makes BSU’s Entrepreneurship major such an impressive undergraduate track. Students leave the program with practical, relevant knowledge and experience with the processes in which it operates. They enter the job market ready to contribute - and Entrepreneur Magazine, US News and Princeton Review and others notice year after year.

Graduating seniors get a unique opportunity to meet and network with successful entrepreneurs through The Ascent Awards, given annually by the Entrepreneurship Center to those who not only impress with their business success, but also with the “energy, grit and determination of the undertaking.” Ten businesspeople are listed for the students; they choose 3 who they want to emulate.

The idea, Cox says, is “to reach out nationally and find people who have not quite hit the radar screen or who are unique in some way.” Then Ball State students talk with the three finalists and ask them about the challenges they faced - and especially how they dealt with them - on the way to their entrepreneurial success. A dinner caps the festivities, at which the three finalists are honored and a winner is announced [click here for a recap video of the 2007 Ascent Awards].

Studying entrepreneurship isn’t a license to pretend that you’re a high-profile venture capitalist through 4 years of college. The academic rigor and professional experience provided by Ball State University’s Entrepreneurship major inspire 40% of its graduates to start a business after leaving the University. “If you think about entrepreneurship and economic development,” Cox says, “it’s central to our economic well-being. When [students] come in, we don’t define their career path. We ask them, ‘What’s your dream? What are you excited about?’”

Ball State University’s Entrepreneurship Center teaches them how to evaluate what they’re passionate about and make it into a business. Cox sums up the program and says what every department head in the country would like to say with sincerity about his graduates: “They go on and implement what they’ve learned.”

A few months ago I wrote about why teachers should dress professionally and gave a few tips on how to do it. Dressing professionally not only makes you look good, but also reflects your attitude and seriousness of purpose in any situation.

A common topic for discussion with young professionals - and those who are aspiring professionals - is dressing for the job. Most of them simply don’t have or can’t afford the wardrobe they need. With a little guidance, they can get an array of appropriate clothing more cheaply than they realize.

Others can’t do this as easily. I’d like to highlight two resources that provide job seekers with professional support and attire.

Dress for Success

The mission of Dress for Success is to promote the economic independence of disadvantaged women by providing professional attire, a network of support and the career development tools to help women thrive in work and in life.

Founded in New York City in 1997, Dress for Success is an international not-for-profit organization offering services designed to help our clients find a job and remain employed. Each Dress for Success client receives one suit when she has a job interview and can return for a second suit or separates when she finds work.

Dress for Success is registered with Charity Navigator, an independent charity evaluator; they’ve been given 4 stars, CN’s highest rating, for the last three years. Check out all the ways you can support Dress for Success - you can give time, money, hold a suit drive, etc.

Career Gear

Career Gear, a grassroots 501 ( c ) (3) non-profit organization, was founded in New York City in 1998 to promote the gainful employment and self-sufficiency of disadvantaged men who are actively seeking employment.

We started out with the simple goal of providing appropriate business clothing for job seekers and have grown to provide services and resources that help our clients in retaining employment and advancing in the workplace. Services include: 1) provision of interview clothing; 2) job retention and advancement skills; and 3) linkages to other resources and community based agencies.

Career Gear is an excellent “bridge” between training and employment - its reputation attests to that. You can donate funds or clothing to support their mission.

Be generous and clear out your closet. Everyone wins.

Weekly Musings, Norwich University’s admissions blog, writes what should be obvious but isn’t: don’t use an obnoxious e-mail address with your college applications.

“I cannot believe what some students have submitted, to a UNIVERSITY, as their email address. Yes, we all laugh over it and share our daily “bad” addresses, but really it’s something that we should discuss. In this day and age where you can have as many email accounts as you’d like, please, please dedicate one account to college admissions.

This address should be firstnamemiddleinitiallastname@wherever.com. Not only will you have one central place where all of your college information lands, but it allows all of us on the other end to easily identify you. It also saves me the personal embarrassment of having to verify your email address and having to say back to you, “yes is your email address still triplexplayaboy69@yahoo.com?” Really, it’s uncomfortable.”

When I was working for a non-US government about 7 years ago, I was in charge of pre-screening American resumes submitted for internships. Why? Because I was the only one there who knew all the American colleges and universities [most everyone else just knew the top-tier schools]. I remember the day I read a CV that was impeccable - a prestigious secondary school, a couple years at an Ivy and on pace for summa cum laude, etc. His e-mail address was longsacktheclown@_____.com. I’ve only laughed harder two other times in my life.

This advice goes for resumes/CVs used for all things - jobs, college admissions and more. The question is, “How do you want to present yourself to others?” If you’re comfortable with longsacktheclown, by all means, do it; just be prepared for the consequences. That goes for business cards and advertising, too. Musings ends with:

“So please, take a look at your current address and if need be, change it. Whether we should or not, Counselors take notice of these things, and it stays in our heads.”

Counselors aren’t the only ones.

*and don’t try to steal or bribe your way to a copy of the LSAT. That’s dumb, too.

Monday’s Courier Post Online, “South Jersey’s Website,” reports that having a good GPA may matter in school, but employers don’t really care:

Keeping your grade point average up can be vital to your academic success.

Slacking off could land you on academic probation, or the university could yank your scholarship.

Plus, according to U.S. News and World Report, maintaining a high GPA is crucial to those who dream of attending top graduate schools such as Harvard Medical School (3.8 average GPA), Yale Law (3.9) or Stanford Business School [sic] (3.6).

Thankfully, most employers don’t enforce these same academic standards on their applicants.

According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ “Job Outlook 2005″ survey, 70 percent of hiring managers do report screening applicants based on their GPA, but the largest group say they use a 3.0 as their cutoff.

Though not new, this is a major statement about the value of a GPA. If the private sector reaches consensus that something has little meaning, it’s usually accurate. GPA means so little to employers that the best conclusion they can draw is that 3.0+ is a only a general indication of quality that at best supports a larger body of evidence and is at worst irrelevant.

Generations ago, grades and the resulting GPA were a certification of knowledge. Grades of A/4.0 certified that a student demonstrated exceptional command of the material; B/3.0 showed mastery; C/2.0 showed competence; D/1.0 showed inadequate grasp of the material. If teachers and professors still applied universally this philosophy toward grading, employers would care - it would be useful information to evaluate a candidate because the number would have a clear correlation with measuring skills.

Grades - even at the university and graduate levels - can mean almost anything now. Some are a reflection of one or two assignments while others rely heavily on details like attendance and effort regardless of the quality of a student’s work. And, without matching a GPA up with a transcript that displays the courses taken, you don’t know whether a candidate’s 3.5 non-major GPA reflects exceptional knowledge in high-energy physics or 17th-century Siberian basket weaving. If your prospective employee went to Baja California Language College, he even graded himself.

I’ve interviewed plenty of job seekers, worked in executive recruiting and now consult privately on job/admissions applications (as well as going through all the processes myself). Players on both sides of the interview desk know that they have a very short time to get to know who’s across from them. The most valuable currency in these situations is a fact that isn’t open to interpretation. There simply isn’t enough time to investigate what a particular number means. For most jobs, employers are right to treat the candidate’s GPA as no more than a secondary measure of his knowledge or abilities.

Since the grade inflation of the 1990’s, many colleges and universities are trying their damnedest to make the GPA matter again [just read some of these articles about Boston University’s and John Silber’s crackdown on grade inflation, especially Chris Berdik’s treatment]. It usually takes a University a decade to see a leveling of their GPA; we’re just starting to see it pay off at some institutions.

Maybe by 2017 the GPA will matter once again to employers.