Sue Darby, MOS

Original posting Sunday, 10 August 2008  Sue Darby

Update July 8, 2009: I have since ended this class last summer and graduated with honors this summer. In an effort to consolidate blogs and sub-domains I am re-posting this assignment here.

Part I English 401

Annotated Bibliographies

Alaska Department of Labor, comp. “Job Market Explorer.” ALEXsys – Alaska Labor Exchange  System.

8 Aug. 2008.

<http://alexsys.labor.state.ak.us/occanalyzer_onet.asp?session=occanalyzer&geo=0260000000&wage=>

Using a basis of Bachelors degree minimum education, $35,000 or $16.75 an hour and several business, retail, health care and IT related choices I was able to generate a series of tables to analyze for projected job growth or shrinkage in various industries mentioned by other sources. This will be used to backup what interview sources report.

American Association of Family & Consumer Sciences, comp.

“Today’s Profession Offering Tomorrow’s Careers.” AAFCS American Association of Family & Consumer Sciences.

8 Aug. 2008 .

<http://www.aafcs.org/students/career.html>

There are a large number of majors that Charter could offer under this major. * Apparel and Textile Design * Apparel and Textile Merchandising * Dietetics * Education * Food and Nutrition Sciences * Human Development and Family Science * Hospitality * Interior Design * Nutrition and Fitness * Communications * Consumer Economics and Financial Planning *Developing Improved Products And Services *Marketing Consumer Products And Services *Researching Needs, Attitudes, And Markets *Informing The Public *Working In Family And Community Service Agencies *Managing Operations *Food And Nutritional Sciences. All of these areas have transferable skills into many other career fields which could be of use to Alaska’s workforce.

Banahan, Harry. “Anchorage Alaska Job Trends 2008-2015.”

Telephone interview.

5 Aug. 2008.

Interview conducted by the author. Harry Banahan is a Career Development Center Coordinator for Nine Star Education & Employment in Anchorage Alaska and also a former colleague. Harry’s opinion is that the Alaska job market is leaning towards a service based economy. The main focus of jobs now seems to be the new retail centers opening up – Super Wal-Marts, Targets, Sam’s Club, Various larger malls and Walgreens are all in the process of being built or are set to open in the next several months. Heath care is in serious need of qualified care givers of all levels from PCA (Personal Care Attendants) to full RNs (Registered Nurse) along with all levels of administrative duties. IT will be big as we move into the next decade and new technology must be deployed along with the upgrade, and maintenance of older technologies. The gas pipeline will also need many individuals in the vocational jobs along with support positions such as logistics. Four main areas – Service based occupations – retail & customer service, health care – PCA to RN and administrative, IT – new technologies, maintenance of older tech, pipeline – vocational such as welding and construction but to focus on Charter, logistics and project management.

Nurridin, Kaleem. “Anchorage Alaska Job Trends 2008-2015.”

Telephone interview.

5 Aug. 2008.

nterview conducted by the author.Kaleem is the Career Development Center Coordination Supervisor of Nine Star Education & Employment and former supervisor. His opinions match Harry in that the market is going retail & customer service based up here but sees several majors that Charter could offer as certificates either stand alone or as add on certificates to the business program. He also sees skills such as keyboarding, general computer skills and data entry skills such as 10-key being important to the Anchorage area as a whole. Understanding Citrix, Access or Oracle type databases and programming languages such as SQL are also critical to even the service industry. His suggestions for other majors include: Family & Consumer Science Services, Merchandising, Market Analysis, International Business with regard to importing and exporting, Adult Education to assist students in becoming college instructors, logistics, transportation, web design, e-commerce and human services. Other skills that will be important are English, communication, literature, technical writing, math – Algebra to a minimum of geometry and as many foreign languages as possible. For the small businesses a seminar type course could be offered that discusses “Entrepreneurship – Finding your Niche” which would focus on unique selling positions and how to compete with some of the larger chains in the modern job market. This suggests specific ideas for majors or additional topics to offer as classes. Subjects such as Family & Consumer Science Services needs further research, exact numbers are needed for each of the suggested majors.

State Data Source: Alaska Department of Labor & Workforce Development, comp.

“Fastest-  Growing Occupations.” Career OneStop.

8 Aug. 2008 .

The information shown in the table correlates with the interviews previously done. Health care is in highest demand with IT and business occupations further down the list of Fastest Growing Occupations requiring at least an Associates level of training or certification.

*Please note that this is a subject near and dear to the author who worked in the career development field professionally until April of this year (2 years total). A future projection of the job market is a hobby subject that is kept up with on at minimum of a weekly basis. Both Harry and Kaleem were my supervisors and became good friends/mentors after my AmeriCorps Term was completed. I will be talking with Josiah Brewster another Career Development Center Coordinator also one of my supervisors, along with Judith Parker a Career Mentor, who specializes in Nine Star Education & Employment’s statistics of employment and current trends of job placements which was one of the duties I formerly performed.* Last Updated ( Sunday, 10 August 2008 19:36 )

Sue Darby, BS Business, MOS
Certificate in Fashion Design
Microsoft Office Master Certified
Alpha Beta Kappa Honors Society
Business Owner & Webmistress

I use many systems to try to keep everything straight in my life. I have my now 5 year old Palm Tungsten E, my Circa notebooks with custom pages, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Bookmarks, Power Point, OneNote and my precious Gmail. I use Outlook at work to organize my meetings and other to do’s that are specifically work related.

My Tungsten E is my “other brain” I put my to do’s, shopping lists and long term goal steps in it. Every week or so I bring it out and start checking stuff off and take pride in the shrinking of my list until I start adding to it again…. the Palm holds my “never ending to do list”. Without it I am lost.

For weekly and daily must dos that have deadlines I have my Circa notebooks. I have to give credit to my friend Stacy who got me hooked on the system which I used extensively in my last year of college to organize my term papers and project notes. The customization and expandability of the system is amazing. Unlike a 3 ring system where if a hole breaks or the paper wears out the Circa system can keep going without having to repair the paper. I have designed several pages and it took a while to get a daily and weekly planning page I really like and use. I have various size, shape and description pages and notebooks and the scrap paper that I tend to grab for a quick note can be put in a notebook too. While I like the Levenger site and the selection I found that Rollabind beats them for prices on some things. If you’re thinking of trying to find another system to use to organize I would recommend the Ring bound type system.

I am constantly on the go and using many computers and just love the portability of Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Bookmarks and Gmail. I have access to some of the most important things that normally reside on a flash drive which can be forgotten or lost or corrupt easily, right at my fingertips as long as I have internet. I normally have net access so there’s no problem with not getting to things. I use Docs & Spreadsheets to have access to many of my most common business files and specific to do lists or project plans even. I have PDFs of how to books and even copies of some of my non-sensitive financial information in Docs. I also used it for gathering research for term papers and keeping tabs on favorite sites for projects.

Google Bookmarks is incredibly useful to me as I use both Windows and Linux at home and FireFox, Opera, Safari & Crome on the same system. With Google Bookmarks I can get to my favorites from any of the browsers and in either OS. I am also on a couple different computers at work and can get to my work favorites from either system by using the single online system. Best part is that if my computer crashes.. any of them… I can get to my bookmark sites and continue working quickly.

My Gmail is my home… I love my Gmail. I have my incoming mail from several addresses filtered and forwarded to Gmail and then tagged so that I can find what I want. There have been days where I’ve needed a user ID for a site or a password and been able to search my mail… several years of mail using Gmail’s quick system. I’ve tried some of the plugins which have helped and discarded others but basic Gmail comes through. I also use the chat to talk to people discussing things with my out of state family and saving on phone bills or finding out what was needed at home for dinner to be made.

PowerPoint is my long term goal planner or as I aptly named one of my plans “Battle Plan”. I regularly create a “Battle Plan” for large goals everything form planning a website to buying a house to what I want to accomplish in X years. PowerPoint lets me break the mega goals down into the various areas of my life and then further break down those areas into mini goals and finally into baby steps that I can do on a daily basis. It’s great to say I accomplished everything on my original “Battle Plan” from 2006 just last month… the last thing was cross the stage and graduate college with honors. I’ve had to go on to modify my battle plans since and need to continue to do so.

Last but not least, is OneNote. I use OneNote to divide up a Master To Do List into bite size pieces also but it tracks resources needed for each project as well as what has to be done. I like this system but am not as consistent with it as I could be perhaps it’s because I use so many other systems.

I will explore and post more about how my systems work for me and even examples of some of my worksheets and ways of keeping it all straight. I may even at some point eliminate some of my systems in an effort to simplify.

Sue Darby, BS Business, MOS
Certificate in Fashion Design
Microsoft Office Master Certified
Alpha Beta Kappa Honors Society
Business Owner & Webmistress