Expanding Kentucky's energy role is Chamber's top priority
Expanding Kentucky's role as a leader in energy production is among the top five legislative priorities recently approved by the board of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. The chamber board will urge the 2010 General Assembly to encourage investment in clean energy technologies, support the search for cost-effective carbon management solutions and support bio-mass and alternative energy initiatives.
Most of those priorities rely on significant investments in research at a time when the state is struggling mightily under a projected $1.9 billion budget deficit and the likelihood of additional cuts in education funding.
Other priorities listed among the chamber board's top five include making college more affordable; modernizing government; promoting healthier lifestyles; and better positioning Kentucky to compete in the global marketplace.
UK biomedical research center receives $10.5 million
A multidisciplinary biomedical research center at the University of Kentucky has received $10.5 million in renewed funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The Center for Biomedical Research Excellence in the Molecular Basis of Human Disease is supported by the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), a part of the NIH that supports thematic, multidisciplinary Centers of Biological Research Excellence (COBREs)
across the country through its Institutional Development Award (IDeA) program.
In its first five years, the center provided support for research projects led by 22 junior faculty members in nine different departments, mentored by senior faculty researchers. The focus has been on neurodegenerative diseases, cancer and diabetes. The center can support five pilot projects concurrently.
"Apart from the important new knowledge generated from these research projects, the COBRE supports the further development of biomedical scientists who are critical to our nation's health care," said Dr. Jay Perman, dean of the UK College of Medicine and vice president for clinical affairs.
In addition, the COBRE provides four support cores, in microscopy; in synthesizing organic compounds to be used in research; in protein characterization and structural determination; in production of recombinant viruses for research projects; and providing proteomic support.
"This is a tremendous asset for our researchers," said Dr. Louis B. Hersh, professor of molecular and cellular biochemistry in the UK College of Medicine. "It provides them with resources that wouldn't otherwise be available to them." - Keith Hautala
WEG needs foreign language volunteers
How's your Spanish and French? Not so hot? You might want to work on that. When the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games roll into central Kentucky next September, foreign language volunteers will be in high demand.
Sandy Suffoletta, director of language services for the World Games 2010 Foundation, said the presence of foreign language volunteers will make all the difference in visitors' perceptions of the Lexington experience.
Georgetown College has stepped up to the plate with a program of language proficiency exams designed to ensure the Games have volunteers who are skilled in foreign languages. The program is administered by Georgetown's Department of Modern and Classical Languages & Cultures. Every WEG language service volunteer is required to complete the tests before winning designation as an official language specialist for the Games.
These specialized volunteers will serve a critical role by facilitating communication for officials and athletes in more than a dozen languages.
Expert addresses challenges and solutions in workplace change
One of life's great ironies is the certainty of change. Yet, adjusting to change is one of life's great challenges. That is especially true in the workplace, according to a change expert who was a recent guest speaker at UK.
If employees "don't see themselves in the change, they'll resist and say 'nobody listens to us,'" said Kevin Knudson, workplace and communication strategist at the interior design and architectural firm Perkins + Will in Minneapolis.
And when employees are resistant to moving to different offices or buildings or merging with employees from another division or company, then such a change becomes both difficult and costly. Work production and cooperation decrease. Negative feelings and employee turnover increase.
Knudson knows a thing or two about change - cultural or physical location - in the workplace. An interior design graduate of the University of Minnesota, he's spent the last 20 years helping major companies do change better.
His past clients include Microsoft, Best Buy, Union Pacific Railroad, Land O'Lakes and other Fortune 500 companies. He's nationally recognized for facilitating and implementing the communication necessary for workplace change to happen as easily as possible.
That recognition and experience prompted the University of Kentucky's College of Design to invite Knudson to speak recently to its interior design and architecture students.
As part of the Planning + Strategies team at Perkins + Will, Knudson works with CEOs, managers and employees to prepare them to manage their parts in the change before, during, and as it happens.
Knudson specializes in working with corporations and institutions where change involves thousands of employees, often in multiple locations, even in other states. But what he teaches their CEOs and staffs to do can be emulated by a small business owner with fewer than 10 employees.
The biggest mistake that bosses make, Knudson said, is that "they don't communicate." The type of communication that is necessary for successful change, he suggested, starts with the recognition that "change is about something different."
Because change requires letting go of whatever place or organizational format or job duties the employees are used to and comfortable with, "fear is a natural part of change."
Company leaders need to communicate details of impending changes as early as possible and to involve employees in the planning.
Knudson told his audience of UK design students and faculty plus some local professionals in the field that change happens successfully as the result of a careful period of transition. Aside from paying attention to employees' fears and ideas, a transition stage involves keeping them informed as the process unfolds and resolving their negative perceptions.
As an example of a successful transition to change, he discussed the experience of working with a past client, Allina Hospital and Clinics. Moving 1,500 employees from 13 separate locations to the same new facility was a monumental task. Each division of employees had its own work culture. Most of the employees were women, and they really didn't want to be working in an inner-city, higher crime neighborhood where the new building would be located. Commuting time would be longer for most employees, and they felt that the work atmosphere would become impersonal and bureaucratic.
Knudson and his team worked for months to help the Allina's managers get the employees on board with the move. To combat their worries about the neighborhood, they took bus tours during their paid work hours.
Each employee received e-mail updates about the progress of the move and a folder to keep printouts in. Kiosks with interactive Web sites were set up in each location. Before a division's actual move, each employee received a map of her work area, including restrooms, drinking fountains and copiers.
Because the new headquarters would be in a renovated Sears distribution center, the theme of weaving fabric, of weaving together the separate health care divisions, was chosen. It was used repeatedly in videos and print materials.
This type of transition required months of expensive work and planning, but the change that followed was real. Allina's CEO Dick Pettingill wrote that "the reaction of the employees, many of whom had been skeptical of the move, was overwhelming."
The benefits of a good transition are "building trust, creating positive attitudes among employees, maximizing productivity and improving employee satisfaction," Knudson reminded his audience. -
Margaret Buranen
Newton's Attic
presents Mech-Antics Tournament
Teams from schools in Fayette, Woodford and Scott counties will compete in the Mech-Antics Tournament on Saturday, November 14, as the culmination of an after-school program with students from six area schools, including three middle schools and three high schools. The students designed and fabricated robotic grippers with a kit made from parts supplied to them by Newton's Attic and using tools in the Newton's Attic's Mobile Engineering Center, a portable mechanical lab that contains all the tools and resources necessary to build robotic devices.
Competing two at a time, teams will attach their grippers to robotic arms on drivable electric vehicles and race into an arena filled with obstacles in search of objects to retrieve with their grippers. The teams score points based on the number of objects they retrieve. The team with the highest score wins a cash prize.
Newton's Attic was founded in 1998 by Bill Cloyd, a mechanical engineer and former high school physics and math teacher. Frustrated by the confines of the regular classroom, Cloyd left teaching and pursued a career as an engineer working in litigation support. However his enduring passion for producing unique mechanical devices that illustrate fundamental physical principles drove him to create Newton's Attic, an organization dedicated to providing students with highly unusual educational experiences.
Students participated in this program by joining robotics clubs at their schools organized by Newton's Attic and sponsoring teachers.