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| MATR Newsletter - Tue May 11, 2010 |
"For identities that are perhaps a bit lonely, a bit anxious at the thought of the world, this could be the place to hinge a life." –Allen Jones on Ingomar, Montana
Montana's showcase of our best and brightest entrepreneurs - please plan on attending: "21st Annual John Ruffatto Business Plan Competition, 5/13, Missoula, Montana" http://matr.net/events ... =3221 --- Hey kids, do you have ideas about lowering the dropout rate? "Looking for Young People’s Ideas to Address Dropout Crisis - National grants of $10,000-$20,000 available" http://www.matr.net/ar ... .html --- How is your state doing? "Enterprising States Creating Jobs, Economic Development and Prosperity in Challenging Times" http://www.matr.net/ar ... .html --- "Who is Winning the Google Fiber Race? How is Your Community Doing? [Updated Daily]" http://www.matr.net/ar ... .html
"Montana's Race To The Top - The State with the Best Education Wins!"
iConnect Montana
- New Jersey Plan Calls for Bonuses for Effective Teachers and Schools
“When you increase efficiency, you’ve got more money to reward people,” Bret D. Schundler, the state’s education commissioner, said at a news conference in Trenton.
- An Inconvenient Truth - "Waiting For Superman" Coming This Fall
For the first time in America this generation will be less literate than their parents.
- Maryland teachers union objects to state's 'Race to the Top' draft proposal
The Maryland State Education Association sent a letter to State Superintendent of Schools Nancy S. Grasmick detailing objections to the proposal, which would base 50 percent of each teacher's evaluation on student progress, overhaul statewide exams and offer extra pay to qualified teachers and principals who work in low-performing schools.
- Bozeman Schools go after federal bucks, including Race to the Top money
Even if Montana doesn't win Race to the Top funds, Miller said working on the project is useful because the reforms promoted in Race to the Top are expected to be central when Congress rewrites the federal education law that affects all school districts.
- Looking for Young People’s Ideas to Address Dropout Crisis - National grants of $10,000-$20,000 available
"My Idea" will empower young people to examine the high school dropout crisis and take action to help more of their peers to graduate on time – improving outcomes for themselves and their community.
City Club Missoula
- TecNet Networking Group Starts in Billings, Montana - Get Involved!
TecNet held, last week, their second gathering, hosted by iConnect, one of Billings’ older technology companies. The gathering drew people from throughout the region, with business owners and employees, and people wanting to be employees, as well as would-be entrepreneurs. “Tech businesses have trouble communicating with each other,” explained Chapman about the purpose of the informal organization.
Montana SBA
- ParentPower.Mt.Gov - The power to prevent underage alcohol use in Montana
The Parent Power Montana web site http://parentpower.mt.gov/ is designed to give you tools you need to curb underage drinking, binge drinking, and drinking and driving in Montana.
- Missoula justice of the peace details DUI concerns at City Club Missoula Forum
"When we are dealing with people who have a second or third DUI, often they have been drunks since they were 10 or 12 years old," Orzech said. "Intellectually, they haven't made reasoned decisions and it's why I have 48-year-olds appear in court with their moms, acting like 13-year-olds."
MSU Leadership Institute
- Location Does Matter: Entrepreneurs Create Economic Growth Across State and County Lines
High technology is the only industry sector specifically favored in counties with access to an educated workforce and a local research and development structure.
Leadership Montana
- Introductory Reading For Being a Leader and The Effective Exercise of Leadership
Students cannot master that which they do not create for themselves. This is especially true of anything that is at first counterintuitive.
Montana Business
- Lead Like A Child
The reason great leaders ask why is simple
- What the Brightest Scholars Say about Leadership
Everyone has been writing about leadership, in fact, except the people you would expect to be most active in the field: scholars.
Montana Economic Development
- Grasslands Renewable Energy of Bozeman, Montana gets backing for wind project
"It's a big day for us," he said. "It's not (all of the money) we will need to push forward with development. But we hope to keep continuing to make steps forward."
- WGM Hosts Office Warming And Friendraiser For United Way, 6/9, Missoula, Montana
Bring on the sunshine at WGM Group's Office Warming & United Way of Missoula County Friendraiser. This first-class celebration promises to kick your summer off right with live music, beverages overlooking the river, sunshine, snacks, and lawn games.
Regional Economic Development
- Whatever happened to Project "Vitesse" ....BMW coming to Montana?
So often the staff at Montana West Economic Development works on a project where the Flathead Valley is competing with communities all over the country to attract a new or expanding business.
- New Feature Film Slated to Shoot in Montana
Last Man Stands is a narrative, feature drama about race relations between Native Americans and the Marine Corps in Hardin, Montana.
Careers
- Enterprising States Creating Jobs, Economic Development and Prosperity in Challenging Times
Click on the interactive map below to access a brief case study that highlights key policies and best practices for each state.
Economic Gardening
- Fed chief Bernanke tells graduates: Don't go for the gold, be happy
"We all know that getting a better-paying job is one of the main reasons to go to college. ... But if you are ever tempted to go into a field or take a job only because the pay is high and for no other reason, be careful!" Ben Bernanke said in his commencement address.
- Even in Silicon Valley, college isn't for everyone
For every Larry and Sergey or Filo and Yang, for every kid who can't wait to devise the next killer algorithm or tablet computer, there are kids who have a burning desire to work just as hard but at something more hands-on.
Funding and Building your Business
- A new tactic for creating jobs in Michigan: 'Economic gardening' instead of 'Economic hunting'
Hunting season is mostly over and it's time to start cultivating the garden.
Incubators and R&D
- Venture Capital In Education Summit 2010 Seeks Ten Game-Changing Early Stage Education Companies
The Showcase will provide a select group of ten early-stage companies, poised to make their mark in the education sector, the rare opportunity to present their companies to the Summit attendees, which will include venture capitalists and influential leaders in the education industry.
- Students jump straight into business for themselves
"There's a case to be made for starting a business while you're in school."
- Startup Insights From Paul English, Co-Founder of Kayak
The difference between an A team and an A+ team is the difference between a million in revenue and a billion in revenue.
Montana Education Excellence
- Senator Tester tours Butte, Montana research lab
U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., visited Butte Friday to tour a titanium research laboratory that is working to develop a new, environmentally friendly process of refining various types of ore.
Montana Education/Business Partnerships
- Only 23 percent of American Indian students who enroll at the University of Montana graduate within six years.
"It's an issue of academic integrity," she says. "I support the Native American studies proposal in general. But I found those three things bothersome."
Regional Business
- University of Montana Students Award $10,000 To Local Nonprofits
Doris Buffett, sister of Warren Buffett, is the benefactor of the Sunshine Lady Foundation, which provides the grant money for this opportunity to integrate curriculum focused on philanthropy.
University Business Plan Competitions
- Northwest tech firms gearing up to grow again
The unexpectedly strong demand has manufacturers thinking big again.
University TechTransfer
- University of Idaho students rake in $24K in business competition
This year, 15 teams competed in three tracks: innovative ventures, small business and internal University of Idaho revenue enhancement.
Developing an Angel Network in Montana
- VC firm scours college classrooms for next Facebook
"The really principal issue is whether the entrepreneur will listen," he said. "Sometimes you get someone who is just bloody stubborn and doesn't want to listen at all and thinks that they know best. Generally speaking, they don't."
Idaho Business
- Friend Or Foe? Angels, VCs Debate Who Has The Upper Hand
The big opportunity, Peters said, “is to connect more angels together.”
- Angel Investors more powerful than VCs
Individual Angel Investors with strong business skills and extensive operations experience are in the ideal position to bring about the financial and operational revitalization needed to create new businesses.
Oregon Business
- Surviving with help from SBA - Local businesses benefit from guaranteed loans
"Without the SBA and Mountain West Bank we wouldn't be here."
Education
- Oregon is an early and eager test market for several electric car automakers
Automakers are racing to unleash electric vehicles in Oregon, one of the nation's first significant test markets for plug-in cars.
Other Economies
- League for Innovation in the Community College
The League is the only major international organization specifically committed to improving community colleges through innovation, experimentation, and institutional transformation.
- 18 Wyoming schools land on list of worst in state
“This gives us some insight into what we believe the new No Child Left Behind law is going to look like — the competitive grant nature of it and much, much more guidance.”
- Should college tax credits be linked to community service?
College leaders just about uniformly endorse the idea of community service by students.
- The Williston State College Foundation to award additional $500,000 in scholarships for students from western North Dakota and eastern Montana.
"The Foundation has been fortunate to have several families donate mineral acres over many years."
- Higher-ed execs earn their keep
The quest for knowledge has been supplanted, for most college presidents, by the quest for money, an even more important responsibility in an era of (for public institutions) budget cuts from sponsoring governments and (for just about everyone) income-producing endowments that have been perilously shrunk by the financial meltdown.
- Formspring the latest teen craze to upset parents
http://www.Formspring.me, a relatively new social networking site, has become a magnet for comments, many of them nasty and sexual, among the Facebook generation.
- Westminster Introduces New Project-Based MBA Program
“By the end of the MBA program, students have the skills and abilities needed to lead today’s most dynamic firms.”
- Guest-Teaching Chinese, and Learning America
China wants to teach the world its language and culture, and Ms. Zheng is one of about 325 guest teachers who have volunteered to work for up to three years in American schools, with their salaries subsidized by the Chinese government. A parallel effort has sent about 2,000 American school administrators to visit China at Beijing’s expense.
- Altered State: How the Virginia Community College System Has Used Achieving the Dream to Improve Student Success
When Achieving the Dream was launched in 2004, most states focused on college access as a central policy agenda for community colleges. Since then, this initiative has dramatically changed the policy environment in the 16 states that signed on. In each, community college student success particularly for low-income and underprepared students, is now a central priority.
Connectivity & Communications
- Governor signs economic development bills
Creation of business plan competition programs at university and college campuses. The act also provides $125,000 annually for these and other efforts to extend entrepreneurial services to students and foster entrepreneurism.
Energy and Climate Change
- Who is Winning the Google Fiber Race? How is Your Community Doing? [Updated Daily]
The community support levels are calculated by taking the single social networking source with the largest following and dividing by the population of the city.
- REMEMBER: Cell Phone Numbers Go Public this month.
REMINDER..... all cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies and you will start to receive sales calls. ..... YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR THESE CALLS
- Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh)
Is Social Media a Fad.... Or the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?
Miscellaneous Ramblings
- Climate change could render much of world uninhabitable
"We found that … a 21-degree warming would put half of the world's population in an uninhabitable environment,"says study co-author Matthew Huber of Purdue University.
- REAP Grant and Loan Guarantees
To apply for the state’s allocation of these funds, the application must be received in the Rural Development Area Office no later than June 4th.
The Creative and Cultural Economy
- The Last Taboo - The Issue No One Likes To Talk About
What unites the Vatican, lefties, conservatives, environmentalists, and scientists in a conspiracy of silence?
- 'Lux Aurumque' - Virtual Choir -- Breathtaking!
Lux Aurumque - a work of 185 voices from 12 countries, and Sleep , merging hundreds of tracks individually recorded and posted to YouTube.
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