Essay on Technical Education

On Sunday (13 April, 2008) I watched the show "Awareness" on WISTV and was inspired to share with you some of my ideas in this short essay.

During that program it was stated that we have approximately a 25% drop-out rate at about the 9^th grade level in South Carolina. The entire first segment Sunday was on the future of these drop-outs, particularly as it relates to their future job availability. The thing that I think was missing in the discussion during that show was any articulation of why these people tend to drop out at about the 9th grade level. There continues to be a need to work on the "before 9th grade" part of the problem.

Our current system of education in South Carolina in some cases is simply functioning as a filter, not an educator. The majority of the dialog that I have seen in the media recently was between college graduates that, to that 25% group, appear to be the academically elite talking about how to go to college and how to persuade or enable everyone to be like them.

It is evident, even when shown as good examples in the media, those that do go back to school and earn their GED and even beyond, are put in a special and separate category.

The SC Technical Colleges are spinning themselves as a means to get to and through a four-year college degree. I have watched the process over the last forty years that have led to the SC Technical Colleges current success of now being acceptable for college credit for most of the major universities.

In my opinion this success has come at a price regarding the original focus and even the current Mission and Vision of Technical Education in our state.  The 25% that are dropping out of school early are the ones that today, for multiple reasons, cannot see themselves surviving in an academic path. Humiliated, maybe even covertly, they just give up. There is truly no path obvious to this group that makes them want to continue. We need a means for these people to know about and see as viable the other options available to them. They need to be able to "drop-into", a different path of education.

When the Technical Schools were created in the 1960s, they did a better job of representing an alternative path. One could actually build a Life Strategy that ended with developing and applying a marketable skill obtained at a SC Technical school. It was possible to choose that path and not be seen as some sort of non-performer.

Presently some of our Technical Schools seem to be "Want-to-be-Universities". In this current environment I wonder what the ratio is between time/resources spent negotiating with the universities to achieve transfer accreditation and time/resources spent in working with industry to determining curriculum changes needed to stay in touch with industrial needs.

And even further, the loss of agility to make desired/recommended changes due to the impact on previously achieved agreements on accreditation. Do we even have the knowledge base or time availability of staff to accurately assess the industrial need Vs current curriculum?

Today, advisers at all grade levels must be aware of the message that is received when the student that they are helping make life strategy decisions realize that they, the adviser, and most these recruiters and professors that now work in the Technical School organization chose the four-year (or higher) degree path. There is a need for mentors to be examples of where we are advising the student to go. One problem is that we almost hide our non-four year successes. Pure Technical School Graduates are not celebrated. They, the graduates, in many cases are not proud of the source of their education.

To be effective as a mentor to that target 25% group one has to be able to show how they did it without ever having achieved that four year degree. A mentor holding a Ph.D. cannot do it!

In summary, the current risk and reality is that the Technical Schools are being sold largely as another bridge to the place that 25% group, cannot see themselves going. The feeling is that if they go to Tech and do not eventually achieve their four year degree they risk never feeling the pride of success.

If we continue on our current path our Technical Schools will simply blend into the higher education landscape without being distinguished as that much needed alternative path.

As with all progress we must plan strategy from where we are. The answer is not to undo all of the good things that have been done, but to restore the good part of our history that has been abandoned.

Essay by: David C. Mims – Sr.

AAS/EET Midlands-Technical College, Columbia South, Carolina (Honors 1970)

An Irony of life! The Paradox of Willingness to Share Vs Willingness to Receive

As we live our lives we gain experience.  Everyone agrees that at the end of life we have had the opportunity to see, hear and experience a unique set of lessons that each of us own and want to share.  Yes, it can be said that life is a learning event.

The paradox lies in the fact that our ability to be respected for what we know diminishes as one reaches the end of life.  Others see us through their eyes making assumptions that our life long developed beliefs are not credible because of our age.  Statements like, “I’m not buying it, that old fool only believes that because s/he knows that they are getting ready to die!” become common.  This issue only gets exaggerated in cases where there has been a diagnosis of a terminal illness or confrontation with certain near term death. 

To find disesteem by those that we want to help the most creates a sense of helplessness.  In these cases the result is that a possibly most credible resource is treated with the least respect.  What a waste!

Mitigation for this risk in life is to follow the following model:

• .      Learn from your elders early.  You never know when they will be gone.
• .      Develop your firm beliefs early in life so that you will not need to change as you get older.
• .      Pray for guidance as often as you can.  

The possibilities in life are ever changing and you will need to make choices continually.  Never forget, it is possible to choose wrong!

Managing the Project of Life

In the business of Project Management as an engineering science the challenge is to obtain a defined result by a specific point in time and for a predetermined budget of resources.  In the methodologies that aid in managing projects there are many techniques aimed at identifying risks, deciding which risks are most likely and their impact.  Then discovering and putting in place mitigations that improve the probability of the project being successful.

Project risks are always problematic because of constrained time and resources. 

Imagine how we could operate if there were no limits in time or resources.  What if the project objective was defined by an infinite set of resources and outcomes? 

In God’s infinity we have such a paradigm.  In quantum world all things are possible and all things exist.  The fact that I am sitting here writing this is one of those possibilities and the fact that you are reading it is yet another.  I have no way to know either who will eventually read this or what impact it will have.

Humans like me, and I suspect you, experience a limit to being able to fully understand God's plan.  In the history of His revelation of Himself to us we find expansive amounts of time and generations of people who lived to create conditions needed for His lessons to be taught to humanity.

The concept of the Trinity (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit) stands at the center of all lessons taught to date.  The “Father” represents the Love and Grace of God, the “Son” was the demonstrator and Teacher of how we are to behave in life, and God the “Holy Spirit” is the infinite nature of God that spans all time and creation.  All three are with us as we live our lives.

It is our impatience that makes the lessons taught to date ineffective.  We want our lives to matter, We want instant gratification, we want our Church to be successful, and we want to see our understanding of the plan completed in our lifetime.

As we live our lives and eventually die we must take comfort in knowing that whatever happens, God’s plan has already succeeded.  Our contributions may not be obvious as we live our lives but be assured that our contributions do matter. 

We must remember that Gods patience is unlimited.  In essence there are contingencies and resources in His plan to mitigate any risk that our decisions may create.  When time is unlimited all things are possible.  God already has results as He exists in the infinite. 

As we live our lives all action possibilities are known before we choose; however, the evaluation of our actual choices is knowable in the context of the quantum plan as soon as we make them.  There are no choices that we can make that will cause God’s plan to be ineffective; but, there are choices that we can make that are considered wrong. We can and do impact each other.

At the end of our individual lives our evaluation will be based on the choices we made.  Did we appreciate the Grace and Love of God the Father, did we follow the example of God the Son, Jesus Christ and did we follow the inspiration of God the Holy Spirit? 

Someone once said, “Did you love?”

As I say in the header of this Blog:

“The space between yesterday and tomorrow, the only lever that we have!” 

As I live my day to day life the question can only be, what am I going to do now?  I must remember that even inaction is a decision.

After all, I am a Project Manager and must do something!  

By: David Connor Mims Sr.

At the Moment of Death

It is said that at the moment of death we see our whole life pass before our eyes.  That we will see everything that has happened to us since the day we were born.

I think that it is true.  As we stand at the point of death we will be confronted with our first experience with life after death which almost certainly is infinite. We in fact will see God for the first time.

In the context of infinity time does not exist meaning that all things that can happen do.  In physics this is known as the state of singularity.  In quantum mechanics a singularity is said to possess the properties in which all things are simultaneously possible. All calculations in this realm are in the form of probabilities.  Our lives make real those things that were not only probable but in fact happen.  At death our lives are seen in the context of NO TIME; hence that movie in review.

The warning that we can understand in realizing this is that we must be aware of the importance of our opportunities and choices made as we live.  The consequences of our choices are so interdependent with all others living their lives.  Choices, once made, can not be undone.  Our choices impact the opportunities of others, positively and negatively.

Choosing well at each decision point in life ultimately results in having lived well.

My prayer is, "God please be with me at each decision point in my life and help me choose well!"

America's Choice in 2012

When our founders designed the three branches of government it was patterned after the three legged stool. Three legged stools do not not require a perfectly flat surface to be stable. With the addition of a fourth branch of government, e.g. the media, we now have the same requirement as the four legged stool, a perfectly flat surface, for stability to be achieved. The problem is that there is no

perfectly flat surface in nature. The current system will, by design, never be stable. The irony is that this is exactly what the new "fourth branch of government" needs to self sustain. This, my fellow Americans, is a systemic problem that is not solvable without system redesign, or in this case restoration. We can define the 2012 choice as: Democrats - Redesign as a Progressive Model; Republicans - Restore to Original Founders Model.

What did God Mean?

The verb “be” is the most important verb in any language. It is almost always the first verb that we learn. All that study language recall the joy of conjugation. We all are challenged when we have to learn the proper conjugation of verbs and their placement in sentences.

Just as a reminder, in English a partial conjugation of the verb “be” is:

Present			Perfect
I am you are she is we are they are			I have been you have been she has been we have been they have been
Past			Pluperfect
I was you were she was we were they were			I had been you had been she had been we had been they had been
Future			Future perfect
I will be you will be she will be we will be they will be			I will have been you will have been she will have been we will have been they will have been

I am amazed at how many of us in today’s world do not understand or use verbs properly. Ironically the verb “be” is one of the most frequently misused. E.g. I bees your friend… I is been… I been there…

When God spoke to Moses from the burning bush we were given the most fundamental piece of information about His nature. When Moses asked, “Who should I say the You are?” God answered, “I Am that I Am” (Exodus 3:14) If we take the literal meaning of what is recorded “I Am” would simply say that God is “all”. Moses had to use the answer to deal with the most important challenge of his time, that of competing gods and a lack of acceptance of a single God. Even today we spend a tremendous amount of energy understanding the dynamics of Moses’ problem and ultimately loose site of the “I Am “ answer.

In the context of “I Am” God is not a part of the universe; instead, the universe is a manifestation of being; albeit “I Am that I Am”. Most of us are comfortable with defining God as infinite even though none of us are able to define exactly what that terms means. Science is still struggling with the concepts supporting the “Big Bang Theory”, the edge of the universe, dark matter, what existed before the Big Bang, concepts of time, questions of time being real and propositions that time may be an illusion, etc.

As infinity is not measurable in time, the only verb tense that can apply in the context of an infinite God is the present.

Our past is not undoable thus is our history. I have heard it said that the Bible is a record of the history of God’s revelation of himself to man. Our future is dependent on what we do in the present. Yes, we do live in the moment of now. Therefore “I Am” is God, You are God, She is God, We are God, They are God.

Jesus taught us that God’s Grace forgives the past but demands proper action in the present. The present is our only power. Jesus demonstrated the criteria for dealing with the “present”. Love, humility, acceptance, forgiveness, trust ,….. The lessons are so simple that almost no one understands them.

Remember what is recorded as some of the last words spoken by Jesus from the Cross: “Father forgive them because they do not know what they do……”. Luke 23:24. Interesting that the verse accounts for what Jesus said and then goes on to tell what the people did. Those at the foot of the very cross on the day that Jesus was crucified missed the message.

Jesus’ statement acknowledged that he understood that we (humanity) did not get it. The statement applied to all of mankind not just those at his feet who were gambling for his clothes. Then and now we are incapable of fully understanding our place in God’s infinity and/or the importance of the present.

My prayer is that the “NOW” in which I write this and the “NOW” in which you read this are a proper use of the present. We exist in a thin instantaneous place called NOW. The use of our future “NOWS” is our individual responsibility. The impact made and results achieved from our actions are always a function of the criteria used in making decisions. The fact is that making decisions is unavoidable and decisions always precede action. Deciding to do nothing is still a decision!

The key is the CRITERIA USED!

God, help us all, THANK YOU JESUS!

Thoughts of: David Mims Sr. 10 Feb 2012

Circular Logic or The Answer?

Atheists say that they do not believe in God. God defined himself to Moses as “I Am”. “I am” is one of the conjugations of the verb “To Be”. The fact that people who claim to be Atheists are here to claim to be Atheists defeats their own argument. It is like a wet spot denying the existence of water. We are all a part of God because we “are” although we are not all correct in our logic. I may not be correct but I Am!