Ronald C Thomas, Jr.

When faced with a scheduling conflict, instructors can change an in-class discussion into a hybrid writing assignment. Given the pervasive nature of the Internet, the interaction with the assignment changes and adds another layer to the learning outcomes. In this instance, a scheduled in-class discussion of Artistotle's rhetoric and President Obama became an out-of-class writing assignment on the inauguration speech that was ultimately far better than the original design.

Jean (Moebius) Giraud was one of the greatest talents ever in comics illustration, raising it to fine art, and one of the key influences of the magazines Metal Hurlant (France) and Heavy Metal (U.S.). In this exclusive interview, he reflects on his long career with a prestige format retrospective collection about to be published my Marvel Comics.

Forging relationships in online courses is a faculty member's greatest challenge. This program will present models and practical demonstrations of several ways for professors to add the power of their personalities into online courses. These techniques would also apply in blended, hybrid, and web-enhanced face-to-face courses. Information from student evaluations will also be included. There will also be opportunities for live interaction.
ON-DEMAND VIDEO HERE:
http://www.ubtechconference.com/session/multiple-methods-telepresence-online-courses

Since its heyday in the 1960s, when match results were reported with a straight face in the Tampa Tribune, St. Petersburg Times and on WTVY-TV, to the modern era with behind-the-scenes documentaries on ESPN, professional wrestling in Florida has evolved from a niche sport presented in roller rinks to a worldwide media conglomerate.
The top stars in the industry, such as Hulk Hogan (Hillsborough CC and USF), Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (U. of Miami), and Ron Simmons (FSU) trace their origins to Florida. Likewise, the latest crop of performers is being developed in Florida at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando and streamed live over the WWE Network from Full Sail University in Winter Park.
Championship Wrestling from Florida was not only one of the top training grounds in the country but also one of the top television productions. It was one of the first to be satellite rebroadcast around the country and produced the acknowledged greatest wrestling play-by-play man ever, Tampa’s Gordon Solie. When WWE recognized its need to develop new performers, it resurrected the show in Tampa as Florida Championship Wrestling, which has evolved to the current WWE/NXT show from Orlando.
This paper will examine the evolution of pro wrestling in Florida from a “sport” that was not considered legitimate into its modern incarnation as “sports entertainment.” The way it was been chronicled in both the wrestling media, traditional print outlets like Sports Illustrated, and online media such as BleacherReport.com reveal not only the change in the show but also the evolution of sports and entertainment media.
Further, this paper will make use of backstage knowledge from personal experience as a reporter, photographer, promoter, and sometime performer in this unique field.

Preview of an untethered doctorate of the 21st Century

Delivering a credible doctorate via the web is not only plausible but perhaps preferable if the full potential of next generation web technologies is deployed. However, it calls for a recasting of the roles of students and faculty and a reassessment of their maturity. Informed by theory and practice, this presentation cuts across multiple disciplines to preview an untethered doctorate of the 21st Century. How can doctoral directive faculty become more facilitative and how can doctoral students become more collaborative while still producing authentic scholarship?

http://www.ubtechconference.com/node/765

"While public two-year colleges have been faced with increasing enrollment demands, the amount of direct financial support received from their state governments decreased. With the college president as chief fundraiser, these institutions have embarked on private fundraising programs to address these deficits. The public two-year colleges have fared not as well as four-year colleges or the K-12 public school systems in legislative funding and have less well developed external fundraising capabilities. Further, much emphasis is placed on community college presidents’ fundraising abilities although the majority of the presidents have little fundraising training or experience.

Conclusions and Recommendations

From the literature reviewed and the results of the survey conducted, it seems clear that the increasing professionalism of the development office at community colleges is key to their success. Even though two-year colleges have been late to get into the fundraising business, this study shows that the potential is there to be successful for community colleges of any size, age or locale.

Implications for Theory

The results of this study corroborate the Worth and Asp Vector Paradigm. Both that theory and the study results presented here assert that foundations increase in effectiveness as they develop over time. This is accomplished through the status of the director and the staffing of the foundation, as well as its time in existence.

Implications for Practice

First, establish a foundation or endowment corporation for the community college as soon as possible, if it does not have one. The correlation shown between foundation assets and foundation age suggests that this function has the ability to have success over the longer term. While a community college foundation cannot “instantly” mature, the longer the college waits to get serious about fundraising efforts, the more likely it is to miss opportunities and the longer it will take for an endowment to grow.

Second, make the director of the fundraising operation a full-time position, either at the inception of the position or as an upgrade to whatever college official is currently overseeing the foundation as a part-time responsibility. The survey responses clearly show the positive impact of full-time effort in managing development activities.

Third, provide adequate staff for the development office. Again, the survey shows a strong connection between size of foundation staff and size of endowment balance. With more people active in the fundraising office, all activities can be performed with greater community penetration. This would mean more prospect management, more direct contact with professional donors, and more people going throughout the community making the funding appeal.

Recommendations for Further Research

While universities can work their alumni base and draw larger gifts from philanthropic foundations, community colleges, by their nature, are linked to the community in which they operate. Since per capita income did not prove to be a useful gauge of a community’s giving potential, some other measure must either be found or developed. Since many gifts to community colleges take the nature of fee-for-service training grants from local business and industry, it would be interesting to find an equivalent figure to per capita income that would be an indicator of local commercial wealth instead of personal wealth and see if that correlates to fundraising success. Potential figures that could be used would be the total valuation of the county’s taxable property base, the total sales tax revenue reported in the county, and the total payroll for non-public employers. These could be obtained from open source public records.

More difficult to measure would be the value of manufactured goods in a county that is more based on that kind of industry than on retail or service. Totaling the first three figures of property tax base, sales tax revenue and non-public payroll would generate a figure that could be representative of local commercial wealth. Then, a correlation analysis of county commercial wealth to foundation assets could be performed.

Much is known about the career development path for community college presidents but little about how development officers trained and selected. Are they existing college officials who have been assigned fundraising duty and then stay with it if they are successful? Or, are the development officers professional fundraisers from other sectors such as health care or social services who have the technical skills but little background concerning community colleges?

Building a characteristic profile of successful community college development officers might be a useful guide to future presidents looking to hire chief development officers. The same type of analysis of presidents would be useful to perform on development officers. Among the characteristics to collect would be years in college fundraising, years in fundraising in any industry, highest degree obtained, previous position held, number of persons supervised, and title of the position in the college. From this information, a composite profile of community college development officers could be built.

It might also be beneficial to do parallel studies of development officers and foundations at public universities to see if there are noticeable differences between two-year and four-year institutions. Such a study should also include questions about the type and proportion of activities performed. This should include alumni campaigns, annual campaigns, capital campaigns, special fundraising events, planned giving and donor cultivation. The mix of activities by class of institution and the resulting fundraising success would be especially enlightening and may present unconsidered options for community college fundraisers. "

Complying with the language of the Higher Education Act of 2008 as it relates to authenticating online learners requires more than a technology solution. In this case study, a task group also wrestled with instructional, financial and ethical issues including academic freedom and student privacy rights.

http://www.ubtechconference.com/node/767

The sport of female bodybuilding, in particular, and women's participation in strength sports in general run contrary to the conventional ideas of how an ideal women's body should look. Within the sport itself, there is a division of opinion on whether a woman can be "too muscular" to be a champion, while that discussion never arises in men's bodybuilding. Male bodybuilding champions can go on to successful careers in television and film (most notably Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno) but no female bodybuilder has ever achieved such recognition. The former Ms. Olympia champions who have been able to have any noteworthy crossover success, Cory Everson and Rachel McLish, were able to build an "acceptable" amount of muscularity while still bowing to conventional models of female body types. Cheris Kramarae's work on Muted Group Theory, as applied to communications, provides a structure for understanding the ways in which female physique athletes have been relegated to second-class status, much as their counterparts in tennis, golf, and basketball. This paper is based on extensive literature review within the sport, interviews and memoirs with competitors and promoters, and original source documents. Additional perspective comes from authors such as Susan Sontag, Camille Paglia, and Joanna Frueh.