Education

I will admit that I experienced a feeling of dread when I reviewed the topics for this week’s assignment. Urban Education or Poverty? Initially, I did not find either of these two subjects appealing. My attitude regarding this subject matter stemmed from my belief that since my children are raised and out of the education system, I had no reason to be concerned with public education. As for the poverty topic, I have always worked hard to provide for my family and have never been directly exposed to people living in poverty. I did not think I could relate well enough to write about the issue. In the end I chose education and I was astonished at how much I learned about the American public education system.

Education as defined by the Merriman-Webster Dictionary is as follows:

1a: the action or process of educating or of being educated; b: the knowledge and development resulting from an educational process

2: the field of study that deals mainly with methods of teaching and learning in schools

This definition seems pretty straight forward. However, after viewing the Waiting for Superman video series it became very clear to me that at some point the people involved in America’s education system, administrators, teachers, parents and students, lost sight of the meaning of the word education. Although the videos only covered a small segment of America's public school system, the education system in our country is broken. The documentary highlighted several of the problems with education; these problems transcend location (urban or rural), gender, or race. The fact is students who attend public schools, no matter where they live and regardless of their skin color or gender, are not being educated. Unfortunately, as educators try to determine how to correct the problems faced by the system, America’s children continue to fall further behind students from other countries around the world.

Prior to this assignment I was aware that there were problems with the education system and like many, I believed the issues could be solved by investing money. However, as the producer of Waiting for Superman Davis Guggenheim pointed out, since the 1970’s the government’s per student spending for education has doubled. Obviously, spending more money is not the solution. In my opinion, the answer to a significant portion of the problem can be found in the video featuring Sir Ken Robinson, Changing Education Paradigms. Robinson claims that in order to solve the issues, educators are going to have to change their methods of teaching. He points out that in today’s society children are bombarded with information and technology. Traditional teaching methods are no longer effective at gaining a student’s attention. I also agree with Robinson’s contention that increasing a child’s ability to be creative is essential to improving their ability to learn.  

Modifying the methods used to educate children will stimulate their desire to learn. Ultimately, this will lead to a highly educated workforce, a critical factor in the United States’ ability to remain competitive in the global economy. Solving the problems that exist in the education system is essential to our country’s future.

Letni Corporation

Hello my name is Mark Wible I am the CEO of Letni Corporation, a large manufacturer of semi-conductors. The products that Letni produces are used in the vast majority of computers that are sold around the world. Today, Letni is the largest producer of semi-conductors in the world. As the global demand for computers and computer based products has increased so too has our company’s sales volume. In order to keep pace with this explosive demand the Board of Directors along with myself, made the decision to build a new production facility in Chandler, Arizona. Our company currently has several other manufacturing plants in the Chandler area and our ongoing relationship with the City of Chandler certainly had some influence in our decision. However, I would like to use this blog post to discuss several of the other factors that also contributed to our decision to locate our new state of the art manufacturing facility in City of Chandler.

As I mentioned above, Letni currently has several other manufacturing facilities located in the Chandler area. Locating our new facility here will allow us to take advantage of the specialized labor force that has developed in the area. Microchip manufacturing is an extremely complex process that requires a highly skilled workforce. The fact that our other manufacturing facilities are located in Chandler has created a division of labor, both domestically and internationally, between the Chandler area and the other regions that were considered. In addition, amalgamation of production in one large, central facility will permit Letni to streamline production, operate more efficiently and take full advantage of this economy of scale. This will ultimately allow us to lower production costs, making our company even more competitive in the global economy.

Another consideration was the cost of purchasing the land and the location of the property on which the facility will be constructed. The Chandler site was once used as farmland and its rural location offered Letni a significant cost savings over property in a more urban area. Additionally, the site’s close proximity to the existing freeway system will keep transportation costs low and will prevent external diseconomies associated with transporting finished product from an urban production facility from affecting our ability to meet the demand for our product.  All of this being said the most convincing argument for building the new plant in Chandler was provided by our current employees. When polled our employees overwhelmingly stated that they preferred a suburban lifestyle over living in an urban setting. Letni employees emphatically chose the neighborhoods, schools and general living environment that the City of Chandler and the surrounding area has to offer, over any of the other regions in the poll. Initially, it was the desire of the board to move our workforce from the suburbs back to an urban setting, allowing our company to participate in the internal migration phenomenon that is underway in other cities around the country. However, our employees voiced a strong unwillingness to give up their suburban lifestyle.

January 10th Assignment

As I mentioned in my first blog posting, I had the opportunity to work as an intern for the Arizona Rock Products Association (ARPA). During this time I had the occasion to attend regular meetings of the Construction Standards Committee of the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG). MAG is a association comprised of representatives from the municipal governments of the cities and towns that make up the Phoenix Metropolitan area. This coalition of municipal governmental officials holds regular meetings in order to discuss and formulate public policy on a vast array of issues including transportation, air quality, public safety, construction and other common issues. MAG is an excellent example of a Regionist's vision of policy making. It provides proof that cities of any given area can work together to create policy that provides a solution to  problems and issues that are common to the region. 

While I personally tend to favor a more Decentralist philosophy, believing that less government is best and in resident empowerment, my exposure to this agency has shown me the strengths of the Regionalist point of view. Representatives from area municipalities, working together over the course of many years, have written and revised a set of regulatory policies that take the form of construction standards. This set of guidelines have been adopted by member communities and provide municipal engineering departments and area contractors with a uniform set of building standards that are used in roadway construction throughout the Phoenix Metropolitan region. This uniform set of construction standards is the reason why a person traveling on the surface streets in the Valley can exit one municipality and enter the next without any perceivable change in the roadway infrastructure that they are driving on. 

A Little About Me...

 

Hello and welcome to my blog. Before I get started I would like to tell you a little about myself and how I got to this point. I moved to the Phoenix area in 1982 and began my career working in roadway construction, primarily as a concrete finisher and project superintendent. I left the construction industry in 1994 to start my own commercial printing company, which I sold eight years later to return to heavy construction. It was at this point in my life that I began to think about returning to college to finish my degree studies. Finally in 2008 I enrolled at Arizona State University in order to finish what I had started a long time ago - obtaining my college degree. I have been married to my wife, Angel, for twenty eight years. Together we have two sons, Ryan, who is twenty five years old and a graduate student at the University of Memphis and Tyler, who is twenty three years old and is currently working as a personal banker for Chase after graduating from Wright State University with a degree in finance.

I recently had the privilege of working through the summer break as an intern for the Arizona Rock Producers Association. This alliance is best known by the acronym ARPA. ARPA's member companies are producers of aggregates, ready-mix concrete, asphalt and cement. These materials are used in every construction project throughout the State of Arizona. Collectively the companies that make up ARPA are a significant contributor to the Arizona economy and as an advocacy organization, ARPA prides itself on its ability to effectively represent its membership on any policy issue that is relevant to the industry. While working for this organization I was able to see first hand the process, from conception through implementation, of public policy being formulated. This peaked my interest and my desire to pursue a career in policy making/advocacy as it pertains to the construction industry here in Arizona.