text:
Browsing posts in Workforce Development
Home \ Workforce Development
Governor Northam Announces World's Largest Flooring Manufacturer to Expand Operation in Carroll County
Governor Northam Announces World's Largest Flooring Manufacturer to Expand Operation in Carroll County Mohawk Industries to create 35 new jobs, invest $22.5 million to modernize production facility RICHMOND—Governor Ralph Northam today announced that Mohawk Industries, Inc. (NYSE:MHK), the leading global manufacturer of residential and commercial flooring products, will invest $22.5 million to expand its operation […]
DRRC Partners with Dream It. Do It. Virginia
RICHMOND, VA — The Virginia Manufacturers Association (VMA) is pleased to announce its newest Dream It. Do It. Virginia (DIDIVA) partner, the Dan River Region Collaborative (DRRC) led by Dr. Julie Brown. Dream It. Do It. Virginia – Southern Virginia is a regionally-focused effort that is a part of the statewide Dream It. Do It. […]
Editorial: Our No. 1 challenge – The Roanoke Times
Editorial: Our No. 1 Challenge – The Roanoke Times Last week, business leaders from around the region gathered for the Roanoke Regional Chamber's annual business summit. They heard from nearly two dozen speakers. They mostly heard just one message, though: If you want to grow your local economy, the talent level of the work force […]
Military2Manufacturing Partners with IVET
Military2Manufacturing Partners with IVET –Focused on Transitioning Veterans into Advanced Technology Careers- RICHMOND, VA – The Manufacturing Skills Institute (MSI) and Virginia Manufacturers Association (VMA) are pleased to announce a new partnership for its Military2Manufacturing (M2M) program with the Institute for Veterans Education and Training (IVET). M2M is a just-in- time career transition pathway […]
Editorial: A full embrace of the G3 program
Editorial: A full embrace of the G3 program When COVID-19 first hit Virginia, the societal impact on education and the workforce was instant. And nearly one year into the pandemic, both spheres still are sorting out how to best move forward. As college campuses closed their doors, the idea of students staying closer to home […]
Students get first-hand look at manufacturing
Students get first-hand look at manufacturing The Southwest Times | william.paine@southwesttimes.com Forty 8th grade students from Dublin and Pulaski middle schools visited Volvo Truck's New River Valley Assembly Plant Friday as part of National Manufacturing Day. Two similar sized 8th grade groups visited Pulaski County manufacturers Red Sun Farms and Korona Candles. Students gathered at […]
Dan River Region Collaborative to partner with VMA and Dream It. Do It. Virginia
Advanced manufacturing is a viable and well-paying job option for young people in the region, according to one workforce partnership. The Dan River Region Collaborative is working to implement a regional initiative to show young people that products are still being made in Southern Virginia and to educate them about the skills needed to enter […]
RELEASE: Marketing Campaign Targeting Veterans to Reach 1 Million Virginians
October 13, 2014 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Katherine DeRosear 804-643-7489 x22 kderosear@vamanufacturers.com Marketing Campaign Targeting Veterans to Reach 1 Million Virginians -VMA, Dream It Do It Virginia & NBC12 Partner to Inspire Veterans- RICHMOND, VA – The Virginia Manufacturers Association (VMA), the Dream It Do It Virginia Network and NBC12 […]
Technology Camp Gives Teens Hands-On Modern Manufacturing Experience
Technology Camp Gives Teens Hands-On Modern Manufacturing Experience – STIHL Inc. promotes skilled trades and career paths in manufacturing – Click here to view STIHL's press release
Amazon had it right: Virginia is America's Top State for Business in 2019
By Scott Kohn | CNBC In a year marked by historic economic development deals and marred by a damaging trade war, Virginia lands at the top of CNBC's 2019 ranking of America's Top States for Business. This is the Old Dominion's fourth win in the 13 years since the study began. In fact, Virginia was CNBC's inaugural […]
Not Your Daddy's Textile Mill
SoVaNow.com / September 20, 2012 Bret Berneche of Cardinal Homes in Wylliesburg, from left, Jimmy Farlow of SIPS of America in Blairs and Crawford Murphy of MDS10 Architect in Asheville, N.C., discuss the future of manufacturing with moderator Katherine DeRosear, with the Virginia Manufacturers Association. The Southern Virginia Higher Education Center held a day-long conference […]
VMA's Vassey answers "How Virginians can prepare for Jobs in Advanced Manufacturing?"
Metro Business asked Brett Vassey, president and chief executive officer of the Virginia Manufacturers Association, how job seekers in Virginia can prepare for jobs in advanced manufacturing. For more information, visit the Richmond Times Dispatch posting: http://www2.timesdispatch.com/business/2012/feb/13/60-seconds-with-brett-vassey-64457-vi-34646/
GENEDGE Leverages Federal CARES Act Appropriation to Accelerate Statewide Response for Reshoring Critical Industries in Virginia
GENEDGE Leverages Federal CARES Act Appropriation to Accelerate Statewide Response for Reshoring Critical Industries in Virginia MARTINSVILLE, VA.— GENEDGE announced this week that its proposal for a grant from the GO Virginia Economic Resilience and Recovery Program, with GO Virginia Region One serving as the lead applicant and the endorsement of all nine GO Virginia Regions, […]
Senator Kaine Hosts Roundtable At Virginia Manufacturer.
Senator Kaine Hosts Roundtable At Virginia Manufacturer. The Bristol (VA) Herald Courier (9/15, Nocera) reports that Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) "has a deep appreciation for manufacturing," and displayed it when he "toured the Utility Trailer Manufacturing Company's plant in Glade Spring, Virginia, on Friday." In addition, Sen. Kaine "hosted a roundtable conversation with managers and […]
Virginia Governor Announces $600,000 Competitive Grant Program For CTE Equipment
Virginia Governor Announces $600,000 Competitive Grant Program For CTE Equipment. WSLS-TV Roanoke, VA (3/23) reported Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced "$600,000 in competitive grants to 16 high schools and technical centers to upgrade equipment for their career and technical education (CTE) programs." The piece quoted McAuliffe saying, "As we continue to build the new Virginia […]
2016 MSI Annual Report is Now Available!
In 2016, we doubled access and capacity through MSI Workforce Solutions impacting industry and workforce leaders across Virginia. We inspired and engaged the MSI Academic and Workforce Network, students, job seekers, parents and anyone working on workforce solutions in Virginia. When you see the star symbol in our report, that indicates a doubling of that particular […]
Regional group forms to bring in manufacturing jobs
Regional group forms to bring in manufacturing jobs Like many rural communities, Mecklenburg County relies on regional cooperation to boost its economy. A newly formed partnership — Virginia's Manufacturing Region — is a regional coalition to market Southern Virginia as a top destination for manufacturing jobs. It's a bit like a supergroup, with Virginia's Growth […]
New operator to take over the former Colortree printing plant in Henrico, hiring 239 workers
New operator to take over the former Colortree printing plant in Henrico, hiring 239 workers The vacant Colortree Group printing plant in Henrico County, which abruptly closed in June, soon will come back to life. A Tulsa, Okla.-based provider of direct-mail marketing envelopes and flyers plans to invest more than $31 million to take over […]
CSIIP Webinar Features Dream It. Do It. Virginia Career Information System
CSIIP WEBINAR FEATURES DREAM IT. DO IT. VIRGINIA CAREER INFORMATION SYSTEM DIDIVA connects job seekers to STEM careers The Virginia Manufacturers Association (VMA) and Dream It. Do It. Virginia (DIDIVA) began a partnership with the Virginia Space Grant Consortium in 2012, when its new statewide initiative, the Commonwealth STEM Industry Internship Program (CSIIP), was launched. […]
Tempur Sealy to invest $16.7M in Scott County manufacturing facility
Tempur Sealy to invest $16.7M in Scott County manufacturing facility Expansion expected to create 25 jobs Bedding product designer, manufacturer and distributor Tempur Sealy International Inc. will invest $16.7 million to expand its Scott County operation, creating 25 jobs, Gov. Ralph Northam announced Thursday. "Southwest Virginia has been an ideal base of operations for Tempur […]
ITAC Advanced Manufacturing Summer Camp
ITAC Advanced Manufacturing Summer Camp Earlier this summer, ITAC and its industry partners sponsored an Advanced Manufacturing and Technology Camp as a way to educate local high school students about careers in manufacturing. The goal of the camp was to expose high school students and their parents to career paths that are in extremely high […]
Universities Look to Grow Partnership with NCI
Universities Look to Grow Partnership with NCI MARTINSVILLE BULLETIN, April 5, 2017 –Longwood University wants to add new bachelor's degree programs at the New College Institute (NCI) and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) wants to become involved in engineering and technology programs there. The universities expressed their desires to NCI's board this week as part of […]
ICYMI: Byron – Credentials offer a path to the middle class
Richmond Times-Dispatch: Credentials offer a path to the middle class By: Delegate Kathy Byron July 23, 2017 In the classic 1967 film "The Graduate," Mr. McGuire famously gives Ben this piece of career advice: "I want to say one word to you … just one word: plastics." That was 50 years ago. Yet, my advice to people […]
Students learn money-making skills at ITAC's Advanced Technology Camp
Students learn money-making skills at ITAC's Advanced Technology Camp CBS News Online – POSTED 8:43 AM, AUGUST 30, 2017, BY ROB CARDWELL CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. — Time flies during the summer, even when you're using your time wisely. "There's no time for boredom," ITAC Business Development Director Rachel Pest said. "We keep them very busy during this […]
Focus on the Workforce: Climbing Higher in Virginia
This article was first published in the March 2013 edition of Manufacturing Engineering magazine found here as a PDF. By Barry Johnson Senior Associate Dean and L.A. Lacy Distinguished Professor of Engineering University of Virginia's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; CCAM Board of Directors By Katherine DeRosear Director of Workforce Development […]
Universal Corp. completes acquisition of dehydrated foods company
Universal Corp. completes acquisition of dehydrated foods company Richmond tobacco leaf supplier buys Silva International Richmond-based international tobacco leaf supply company Universal Corp. announced Thursday it has completed the acquisition of Momence, Illinois-based dehydrated vegetable, fruit and herb processing company Silva International for $170 million in cash. The acquisition was previously announced in early September. Silva […]
Coronavirus pandemic may lead to manufacturing jobs returning to America
Coronavirus pandemic may lead to manufacturing jobs returning to America WASHINGTON (SBG) – With more than 16 million Americans filing for unemployment over the last three weeks, staggering numbers exceed even what we saw during the great recession of a decade ago. The Trump administration now recognizes the need — more urgently than ever for […]
Skilled workforce is biggest challenge for Tri-Cities manufacturing
Skilled workforce is biggest challenge for Tri-Cities manufacturing BRISTOL, Tenn. – The state of local manufacturing was the focus of a town hall meeting at Bristol Motor Speedway Thursday afternoon. Industry and government leaders from both Tennessee and Virginia weighed in to help shape the future. President and CEO of the Virginia Manufacturers Association Brett […]
The Talent War – Engaging Top Talent in a Multi-Generational Workforce
The Talent War – Engaging Top Talent in a Multi-Generational Workforce The Manufacturing and Distribution sectors are making a big comeback in the U.S. We've seen continued expansion on U.S. soil, and hiring managers in these sectors are poised to add staff, but we aren't seeing a multitude of people ready to take on these […]
Virginia Department of Education Adds Manufacturing Technician Level 1 Certification to Approved Credentials List
RICHMOND, VA – The Virginia Board of Education has approved the Manufacturing Skills Institute's (MSI) Manufacturing Technician Level 1 (MT1) Certification for inclusion on the Board of Education Approved Industry Certifications, Occupational Competency Assessments, and Licensure List. Effective July 1, 2013, Virginia's new High School Standard Diploma requires students to obtain an industry-recognized occupational credential […]
Virginia's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Successfully Launches Fourteenth Resupply Mission to International Space Station
Virginia's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Successfully Launches Fourteenth Resupply Mission to International Space Station Spacecraft named in honor of first woman astronaut of Indian origin RICHMOND—The 14th cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station successfully launched today at 9:16 p.m. from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Pad 0A located on Wallops Island. The mission, designated NG-14, […]
Partnerships Hail High Schoolers' Engineering Challenge and New Workforce Certifications
Partnerships hail high schoolers' engineering challenge and new workforce certifications MARTINSVILLE, VA – Starting on June 26, high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors will be tinkering with advanced manufacturing equipment and hob knobbing with industry leaders in the engineering, technology, and manufacturing sectors. Using these resources, students will go head-to-head in a product design competition. […]
Dream It. Do It. Virginia Newsletter, March 2012
Click here for the March newsletter Highlights include the Manufacturing Technology Training partnership between the VMA and ECPI University, Industrial Energy Auditor Training results from DuPont and more! (PDF of newsletter will open in a new browser window.)
Governor Northam Announces Service Center Metals to Invest $101.7 Million in Prince George County, Creating 94 New Jobs
Governor Northam Announces Service Center Metals to Invest $101.7 Million in Prince George County, Creating 94 New Jobs Manufacturing company to construct two new facilities, increase production capacity RICHMOND—Governor Ralph Northam today announced that Service Center Metals, a manufacturer of aluminum extrusions, will invest more than $100 million to expand in Prince George County. The […]
U.S. Secretary of Labor Talks Workforce Development at STIHL Manufacturing Facility
U.S. Secretary of Labor Talks Workforce Development at STIHL Manufacturing Facility The tour focused on the labor gap, apprenticeships and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). STIHL Inc. hosted U.S. Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia, the Hampton Roads Chamber and local business leaders for a roundtable discussion highlighting workforce development and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). […]
VMA Partner in Tobacco Commission Grant for Workforce Training
-Grant will fund Advanced Manufacturing Bootcamp at SVHEC- RICHMOND, VA — The Virginia Manufacturers Association (VMA) is proud to be a partner in the recent award to the Southern Virginia Higher Education Center (SVHEC) by the Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission (TIC) in the amount of $163,750 to fund an Advanced Manufacturing Bootcamp © (AMB). […]
MSI Presents Nationally-Recognized Certification Program
MSI Presents Nationally-Recognized Certification Program -MSI Presents Model at National NAWB Conference- Click here to read the full press release.
Wilson Workforce and Rehabilitation Center Named VMA Workforce Partner of the Year
Wilson Workforce and Rehabilitation Center Named VMA Workforce Partner of the Year – Center Works with Industry to Ensure Pipeline of Skilled Workers – Williamsburg, VA – The Manufacturing Skills Institute (MSI) announced the Wilson Workforce and Rehabilitation Center (WWRC) as the recipient of the 2016 VMA Workforce Partner of the Year Award for its […]
Governor's STEM Academy to be Established at Chantilly Academy
Wednesday, June 06, 2012 – The Virginia Board of Education has approved a proposal from Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) to establish a Governor's STEM Academy at Chantilly High School. The STEM Academy will offer rigorous academic and career and technical education programs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Full implementation of new courses […]
Nearly Three Dozen Organizations Come Together to Connect Veterans with High-Demand Jobs and Careers
Commonwealth of Virginia Office of Governor Bob McDonnell FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 12, 2013 Office of the Governor Contact: Jeff Caldwell Phone: (804) 225-4260 Email: Jeff.Caldwell@Governor.Virginia.Gov Virginia Community College System Contact: Jeffrey Kraus Phone: (804) 592-6767 Email: jkraus@vccs.edu Nearly Three Dozen Organizations Come Together to Connect Veterans with High-Demand Jobs and […]
Virginia Council on Advanced Technology Skills Announces New Chair
Virginia Council on Advanced Technology Skills Announces New Chair –Nance Focused on Rebranding Industry and Worker Skills Development- RICHMOND, VA – The Virginia Council on Advanced Technology Skills (VCATS), a council of the Virginia Manufacturers Association (VMA), is pleased to announce the appointment of its new Chair, Simon Nance of STIHL Inc. in Virginia Beach. […]
Dream it. Do it. Virginia Launches New Career Information System
WASHINGTON, D.C. – At the Manufacturing Institute's annual Dream It. Do It. Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C., the Virginia Manufacturers Association (VMA) launched the most advanced Career Information System (CIS) available in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The VMA has integrated the CIS into its Dream It. Do It. Virginia (DIDIVA) Network at www.dreamitdoitvirginia.com. A national […]
Manufacturing Technician Level 1 Certification added to NAM-endorsed Manufacturing Skills Certification System
-Focused on Skills Standards for Modern Manufacturing Careers- RICHMOND, VA – The Manufacturing Skills Institute (MSI) and Virginia Manufacturers Association (VMA) announced today that the Manufacturing Technician 1© (MT1) Certification has been added to the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)-endorsed Manufacturing Skills Certification System. The Skills Certification System was established by The Manufacturing Institute (MI), […]
Dyer and Hughes: There's a demand for manufacturing workers
Dyer and Hughes: There's a demand for manufacturing workers By John Dyer and Dan Hughes Dyer is coordinator of the Roanoke Manufacturing Executives Roundtable. He was Vice President of Manufacturing at Optical Cable Corp. for several years and is now Quality Manager at Global Metal Finishing. Hughes is Director of Operations at Wabtec-Graham White. He […]
U.S. Department of Commerce awards $876,000 to support manufacturing in Martinsville
U.S. Department of Commerce awards $876,000 to support manufacturing in Martinsville MARTINSVILLE, Va. (WSET) — The U.S. Department of Commerce National Institute of Standards and Technology has awarded $876,000 to Genedge Alliance of Martinsville. This is to support Virginia-based U.S. small- and medium-sized manufacturers, including rural manufacturers, in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Congressman Morgan Griffith […]
Governor Northam Announces Amazon to Build Robotics Fulfillment Center in Henrico County, Hiring Over 1,000 New Employees
Governor Northam Announces Amazon to Build Robotics Fulfillment Center in Henrico County, Hiring Over 1,000 New Employees New state-of-the-art facility to bring new jobs with industry-leading pay and benefits RICHMOND—Governor Ralph Northam today announced that Amazon continues to invest in Virginia with the launch of a new, state-of-the-art robotics fulfillment center on 119 acres of […]
Virginia Local Users Council Newsletter, April 2012
Click here for the April newsletter Learn all about the new Contractor Safety Readiness Certificate! (PDF of newsletter will open in a new browser window.)
Southern Virginia Higher Education Center named Dream It. Do It. Virginia Partner of the Year
RICHMOND, VA — The Dream It. Do It. Virginia (DIDIVA) network is pleased to recognize the Southern Virginia Higher Education Center (SVHEC) as its 2013 Partner of the Year. This honor is the first of its kind and was awarded during the 2nd Annual DIDIVA Symposium held in Charlottesville on October 17. The award was accepted […]
Manufacturing Skills Institute Launches eLearning Network
-Now offering certifications via award-winning Bluedrop technology- RICHMOND, VA – Today, the Manufacturing Skills Institute (MSI) unveiled its new eLearning Network, announcing that its Manufacturing Technician 1© (MT1) Certification will now be delivered on Bluedrop's award-winning CoursePark(R) elearning platform. This is the beginning of a strategic partnership between the Virginia Manufacturers Association (VMA), MSI and […]
Startup PPE manufacturer settles in Harrisonburg
Startup PPE manufacturer settles in Harrisonburg Valley Guard Supply to invest $1M, create 45 jobs Startup manufacturing company Valley Guard Supply LLC will invest $1 million to establish a personal protective equipment manufacturing facility in Harrisonburg, creating 45 jobs, Gov. Ralph Northam announced Wednesday. The service-disabled, veteran-owned company produces three-ply disposable masks and plans to […]
Manufacturing roundtable discusses filling skilled labor jobs
Manufacturing roundtable discusses filling skilled labor jobs WAYNESBORO, Va. (WHSV)— A group of local businesses, leaders and educators met Friday morning for a manufacturing and industry roundtable. It was the first of what will be a series of roundtables to address the unfilled manufacturing and industry jobs in the valley. Virtex, in Waynesboro, organized the […]
Valley Career and Technical Center hosted a five-day Summer Academy
Giving them an edge By CLARICE ELLINGER For The News Virginian | Jul 13, 2017 FISHERSVILLE— The Virginia Manufacturers Association projects that of the 66,000 job openings in manufacturing available over the next decade, some 40,000 will require skilled workers with more than a high school diploma. With the number of job openings becoming available in […]
DuPont Success in Industrial Energy Auditor Program
RICHMOND, VA – After successful participation in the Virginia Manufacturers Association (VMA)'s Industrial Energy Auditor training program, DuPont is pleased to announce the identification of several energy efficiency opportunities at the Spruance plant in Chesterfield, resulting in both an energy savings as well as a monetary savings of $75,000 (seventy-five thousand dollars) for the company. […]
Goodwill Partnership Provides Training and Certification for Careers in Manufacturing
Goodwill Partnership Provides Training and Certification for Careers in Manufacturing Provided by Community College Workforce Alliance Answering the call from industry and now in its third cohort of a Cameron Foundation-funded program, Goodwill of Central and Coastal Virginia collaborating with CCWA, provides an eight-week manufacturing technician training course for individuals who want a career with […]
Manufacturing facility in Rockbridge County to produce 60 jobs
Manufacturing facility in Rockbridge County to produce 60 jobs RICHMOND — Gov. Ralph Northam announced Thursday the Modine Manufacturing Company (NYSE: MOD) will establish a manufacturing facility in Rockbridge County with an investment of $7 million, according to a press release. The company will convert its former warehouse on Collierstown Road into an operation producing highly engineered […]
MSI Announces Partnerships to Enhance Credentials Through Use of AR/VR
MSI Announces Partnerships to Enhance Credentials Through Use of AR/VR MT1 Credential enhances it online materials with Augmentedand Virtual Reality Capabilities provided by Lifeliqe and TRANSFR RICHMOND, VA – The Manufacturing Skills Institute (MSI), the workforce development affiliate of the Virginia Manufacturers Association, announced today that they have enhanced the Manufacturing Technician Level 1 (MT1) Credential […]
Belvac Investing $3M In Virginia Expansion
Belvac Investing $3M In Virginia Expansion The company will add up to 50 new jobs as it expands operations at the New London Business and Technology Center in Bedford County, VA. Belvac, a worldwide leader in can forming and printing technologies for the two-piece can industry, will invest more than $3 million and add up […]
MSI Launches New Learning Network
MSI Launches New Learning Network -Enhanced Online Learning Lab, Training & Testing Tools- RICHMOND, VA – The Manufacturing Skills Institute (MSI) launched its new MSI Learning Network on Wednesday, October 26, 2016. The Network is designed to enhance the learning experience for trainers and students participating in MSI's skills certification programs and assessments, such as […]
New College Institute Board Approves Plans For Future Direction
NCI Board Approves Plans For Future Direction Martinsville, Va. – Progress and new programming were the themes of the New College Institute (NCI) Board of Directors meeting on Monday. During the meeting, NCI Chair Senator Bill Stanley presented a proposal for the future direction of the institution, which was unanimously approved by the Board. NCI […]
VA/TN Town Hall Meeting in the News
BRISTOL, Tenn. – The state of local manufacturing was the focus of a town hall meeting at Bristol Motor Speedway Thursday afternoon. Industry and government leaders from both Tennessee and Virginia weighed in to help shape the future. President and CEO of the Virginia Manufacturers Association Brett Vassey said the area's strengths are its location […]
Dream It. Do It. Virginia featured in VDBA's Small Business Resource Guide
Don't miss the "So What Do You Do? I Make Life Taste Better" ad on p.35, featuring National Fruit Product Company in Winchester Virginia! To access the Small Business Resource Guide produced by the Virginia Department of Business Assistance, click here. For more on Dream It. Do It. Virginia, the VMA's advanced technology careers exploration and employment online […]
Newport News Shipbuilding Partners with the State to Fill Jobs at Shipyard
Newport News Shipbuilding Partners with the State to Fill Jobs at Shipyard June 26, 2018 – Newport News Shipbuilding said Tuesday it is partnering with the state to hire almost 7,000 people over five years. That will include the creation of 2,000 jobs. These new hires will support Newport News Shipbuilding's contract to help build the […]
Dream It. Do It. Virginia wins 2nd International Award
Dream It. Do It. Virginia Wins International Hermes Creative Award -2nd International Award in 2 years- RICHMOND, VA — The Virginia Manufacturers Association (VMA) and the Virginia Industry Foundation (VIF) are pleased to announce receipt of a 2012 Gold Hermes Creative Award for Dream It. Do It. Virginia (DIDIVA) in the category of integrated marketing […]
Military2Manufacturing Receives Rapid Response Assistance Grant
Program Connects Military Veterans and Spouses to Manufacturing Careers in Virginia Richmond, VA – Today, Governor Bob McDonnell announced that the Virginia Industry Foundation (VIF) was awarded a Virginia Community College System (VCCS) Rapid Response Assistance Program for Veterans' Employment grant to launch its Military2Manufacturing (M2M) program. VIF, in partnership with the Virginia Manufacturers Association (VMA), ECPI University, Blue Ridge Community College, Northern Virginia Community College, Southern Virginia Higher Education […]
VMA partners with Virginia Space Grant Consortium on new STEM Internship Program
Commonwealth launches STEM Internship Program VMA partners with Virginia Space Grant Consortium (VSGC) RICHMOND, VA — The Virginia Manufacturers Association (VMA) is pleased to announce its partnership in a new statewide industry internship initiative, the Commonwealth STEM Industry Internship Program (CSIIP). CSIIP is a free online system to help companies find the best student candidates to fill summer […]
Dream It. Do It. Virginia Newsletter, September 2012
Click here for the September workforce development newsletter. (PDF of newsletter will open in a new browser window.) Highlights include the 2012 Manufacturing Technology Summer Camps, ACT Certified Work Ready Communities Pilot in Southern Virginia and DIDIVA marketing display at the Science Museum of Virginia!
Omega Protein Relocates Corporate Headquarters to Reedville, Virginia
Omega Protein Relocates Corporate Headquarters to Reedville, Virginia REEDVILLE, Va. — March 2, 2020 — As the final step in a multi-year process, Omega Protein has officially moved its corporate headquarters to Reedville, Virginia from Houston, Texas. As part of the move, additional employees have been added to the workforce, following a major renovation and […]
Richmond startup awarded $354 million federal contract to make ingredients for COVID-19 drugs
Richmond startup awarded $354 million federal contract to make ingredients for COVID-19 drugs A new Richmond-based pharmaceutical manufacturing company has received a $354 million federal contract to help build a strategic, national reserve of essential medications and to make active ingredients for more than a dozen medicines used to treat patients with COVID-19. And the […]
DBA Revamps Worker Retraining Tax Credit
DBA Revamps Worker Retraining Tax Credit –VMA Advocating for New Focus on Industry Credentials- RICHMOND, VA – The Virginia Manufacturers Association (VMA) is pleased to offer the Virginia Department of Business Assistance (DBA) the opportunity to unveil its new guidelines for implementation of Virginia's Worker Retraining Tax Credit at the VMA's West Central Virginia […]
Skyline College Becomes Newest VMA Certified Assessment Center
Roanoke, VA – The 5th Virginia Manufacturers Association (VMA) Certified Assessment Center is opening today at ECPI University's Skyline College location in Roanoke. ECPI and VMA are establishing VMA Certified Assessment Centers at all ECPI University locations across the Commonwealth to increase accessibility to advanced technology industry credentials produced by the association's new workforce development […]
Governor Northam Announces Huntington Ingalls Industries to Establish Unmanned Systems Facility in Hampton
Governor Northam Announces Huntington Ingalls Industries to Establish Unmanned Systems Facility in Hampton Nation's largest military shipbuilder will create more than 250 new jobs. HAMPTON—Governor Ralph Northam today announced that Huntington Ingalls Industries (NYSE: HII) will create more than 250 new jobs by establishing an Unmanned Systems Center of Excellence in Hampton. HII is the […]
Manufacturing Skills Institute Reaches Training Milestone
Contractor Safety Readiness Certificate Program Reaches 1,000 Trainees RICHMOND, VA – The Manufacturing Skills Institute (MSI) reached an important milestone today. The MSI Contractor Safety Readiness Certificate program enrolled its 1,000th trainee this week. The Contractor Safety Readiness Certificate program was created by Virginia's leading manufacturers and construction/engineering contractors as a "Gold Standard" for […]
As the laid-off struggle, high-tech US plants offer jobs
As the laid-ff struggle, high-tech US plants offer jobs ABC New.com | August 15, 2017 | By DAN SEWELL AND CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER, ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITERS Herbie Mays is 3M proud, and it shows — in the 3M shirt he wears; in the 3M ring he earned after three decades at the company's plant in suburban […]
Virginia Manufacturers Association partnering with Siemens to tackle workforce development issues
Press Release Contact Cassidy Rasnick […]
MSI Announces the VMA 2017 Workforce Partner of the Year
MSI Announces the VMA 2017 Workforce Partner of the Year Newport News,VA -The Manufacturing Skills Institute (MSI) announced Central Virginia Community College (CVCC) in Lynchburg, Virginia as the recipient of the 2017 Virginia Manufacturers Association (VMA) Workforce Partner of the Year for its outstanding leadership and diversity. The award was presented at the MSI Workforce Solutions Symposium at the annual VMA Industry Forum in Newport News, […]
Governor Northam Directs $30 Million to Support Workforce Training for Unemployed Virginians
Governor Northam Directs $30 Million to Support Workforce Training for Unemployed Virginians Re-Employing Virginians initiative will provide scholarships to enroll in programs in high-demand fields RICHMOND—Governor Ralph Northam today announced that Virginia is allocating $30 million in federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act dollars to help Virginians whose employment has been impacted […]
VDOE Education for Employment (EFE) Curriculum Revision
The Career and Technical Education (CTE) unit at the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) is in the process of revising the Education for Employment (EFE) curriculum. Prior to the actual revision, which will be accomplished by another group, CTE wants to hear from those who employ their graduates. The information you provide will guide the […]
Job Opportunities Focus of Workforce Forward Forum
More than 150 educators, economical developers, business and industry leaders and Southern Virginia Higher Education Center staffers were eager to hear successful players in the manufacturing arena share their stories and perspectives during Thursday's Workforce Forward Forum held at The Prizery. Hosted by the Southern Virginia Higher Education Center, the forum's theme was "Virginia Manufacturing: […]
Virginia Craft Brewers Guild


The X-Crafts ERJ Family for X-Plane 11 is making really good progress as the developer now posted a bunch of further preview screenshots of the cockpit.
Now the Carenado Saab 340 is also announced for X-Plane 11. The add-on itself was released a good ten months ago for FSX and Prepar3D.


Here's a tale of a rational (or irrational?) legal battle from the 1990s re: Cantor's diagonal argument.
In a nutshell, Cantor was the first to show that some infinities are bigger than others.
Cantor's diagonalisation argument for the reals is watertight, and has proved to be a model of elegance and simplicity in the century plus that has passed since it first appeared.
That didn't stop engineer William Dilworth publishing A correction in set theory, in which he refutes Cantor's argument, in the Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences in 1974.


text:
Platonic Idealism Reflected in Stoicism
Posted byashwinimokashi.com March 5, 2020 March 6, 2020 Posted inArticlesTags:#Happiness, #wisdom
By Ashwini Mokashi, Ph.D.
In this article, I would like to discuss the idea of the wise person in Stoicism, with a focus on Seneca's writings and the origin of the concept in Plato's writings. The article will discuss (a) who is a Sapiens, (b) the process of becoming a Sapiens and (c) philosophical critique of this concept. At each stage, the article shows the connection to Plato and Platonic tradition. The critique of the concept also evaluates pitfalls of the concept of the wise person and the pitfalls of Stoic attachment with Platonic idealism, which suffers similar setbacks.
Who is a Sapiens
The concept of a wise person, also known as Sapiens in Latin or 'ho sophos' in Greek first entered Graeco-Roman culture when the Delphic Oracle declared Socrates to be the wisest man of all. Although Socrates tried his best to refute that statement by pointing to weaknesses and lapses in his own life, the sobriquet never left him and he came to symbolize the ideal of life in that society. His influence was so great that even a century after his death, Zeno of Citium was found recommending the ideals of Socrates as standards of life for everyone. The life of a sapiens and that of Socrates became interchangeable terms. Every citizen was urged to be like Socrates. Hence it became important to arrange the Socratic values into a system to serve as a design for training and guidance. Zeno codified these norms and other Stoics including Seneca followed suit.
The process of Becoming a Sapiens
Comprehending the Sapiens as an embodiment of Stoic ethics entails understanding Stoic ethical notions. Stoic scholars listed them separately, commented upon them individually and made some attempts at defining them. Some of the common features of the ethics include the concepts of kathekonta (appropriate actions), oikeiosis (what belongs to oneself), eudaimonia (happy life), arête (virtue) and the Sapiens (wise person), in whom all the ethical terms find their apotheosis. Stoic dialectics plays a key role in understanding how the wise person acquires the expertise to match different situations with suitable arguments, to resist his impulsive responses, and to give his assent to the right judgment. The Stoic theory of indifferents, divided between preferable and less preferable indifferents, sheds some light on the essential and inherent sense of detachment or apatheia in the Sapiens. The telos of a human life, living in accordance with nature, contributes to virtue and wisdom and thereby leads to happiness.
Philosophical Critique of this Concept
Stoic theories seem to fall in the same trap, as does Plato's idealism including his theory of Ideas. Stoics take inspiration from Platonic philosophy. They ape his philosophical positions and are open to similar charges as Platonic philosophy. Stoic or Platonic theories are idealistic and attractive, but neither pragmatic nor detail oriented. As a result, it enables their critiques to call in question their holistic understanding without showing inconsistencies in their detailed footwork. The charges of creating a utopian concept of a wise person or supporting the elitist culture throughout their philosophies are aimed at the root of Stoic agenda of virtue.
Society upheld Plato's dialogue 'Apology' as a good defense of Socrates's viewpoint, after Socrates paid the price for his philosophical perspectives with his life. Seneca certainly gained a good following in the later literature, probably because of his unfair death at the hands of Nero or because of being one of the few Stoic writers, whose original writing had survived through the ages. Nevertheless, looking at the philosophical conception of Seneca's Sapiens, one can derive certain similarities in the fate of this theory with that of Platonic theory of Ideas. Both the theories make an attempt to grapple with some colossal issues of human understanding, namely how to attain human perfection or how to understand reality. They come very close to having solutions. But in the attempt to have perfect solutions, both create utopian structure – Seneca by creating a perfect wise person and Plato by creating an idea of the essence of an object. Nonetheless, neither Plato nor Seneca see this charge as fatal and here is why. It is important to understand a philosophical position in its own conceptual make-up. Given the ideological background of both philosophies, it is a little wonder that they understood the world in terms of perfection. If Aristotle had flourished prior to Plato, Plato would have been able to refute his theories. What is significant for Stoics is that they offer a perfect package of an ideal human being to the world and let everyone strive for perfection, so that the world will be a better place. The only way to make it possible was to create a theory, which was faultless.
Kurt Goedel proved that no mathematical system is both complete and consistent. The same principle would apply to a philosophical theory as well. Both Platonic theory of ideas and Seneca's Sapiens are beautifully designed 'consistent' theories, but whether they are complete or not, depends on how well we can interpret them and learn to apply those principles in our lives.
Published by ashwinimokashi.com
'Philosophy and Happiness, LLC' has been formed in New Jersey during the Covid times to respond to the need for dealing with mental health challenges among people and help them with Philosophical Counseling. LLC's motto is to bring the life of the community at ease during the pandemic. 'Philosophy and Happiness, LLC' is a small business built on its promoter's strength with decades of academic philosophy, corporate work, and volunteering experience. Dr. Ashwini Mokashi's book 'Sapiens and Sthitaprajna' is on Comparative Philosophy on the concept of the wise person in Stoic Seneca and the Gita. The book talks about how wisdom leads to happiness.	View more posts
Wisdom Leads to Happiness
Upanishadic Antidote to Anxiety

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
TagHub
======

A small utility to maintain a database with tags for Git[hub] repositories.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


We are going to teach some definitions and terms to help professionals from industries other than those in the energy sector better understand the natural gas side of the petroleum business. When a company goes out to drill a well, they are generally looking for either oil or gas. If they drill a gas well, they principally get natural gas. Natural gas consists primarily of methane but can also have higher alkanes. Sometimes they may also get NGLs (defined later) as well as some impurities that will need to be purged. If you drill an oil well, you will get primarily oil, but you may also get natural gas and various NGLs. This is called associated gas — that is gas produced in association with oil. Associated gas was a major problem for early oil men. They had no market for the gas (or no way to get the gas to market), so they ended up flaring the gas. This wasted a valuable resource and caused oil and gas regulators to issue rules discouraging flaring. This problem has been with us since the beginning of petroleum production, but it has intensified over the last few years with the increase in associated gas production. In May of 2010, approximately 7 percent of U.S. gas production was associated gas. This figure has increased to about 20 percent by May of 2018. The increase is primarily due to nonconventional oil production particularly in the Bakken, Eagle Ford and Permian Basin.
Article originally submitted, edited and released in the March/April 2019 issue of SHALE Magazine.


text:
S.3365 Sponsored — No latest title... 08/22/18
S.3363 Cosponsored — A bill to support States in their work to end preventable morbidity and mortality in maternity care by using evidence-based quality improvement to protect the health of mothers during pregnancy, childbirth, and in the postpartum period and to reduce neonatal and infant mortality, to eliminate racial disparities in maternal health outcomes, and for other purposes. 08/22/18
S.3360 Sponsored — A bill to amend the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 to improve access to broadband telecommunications services in rural areas, including by encouraging the provision of broadband loans and grants to increase broadband service in emerging harbor projects, and for other purposes. 08/21/18
S.3337 Cosponsored — Mental Health Services for Students Act of 2018 08/01/18
S.3333 Cosponsored — A bill to provide lasting protection for inventoried roadless areas within the National Forest System. 08/01/18
S.3314 Cosponsored — A bill to improve Federal data collection by requiring the collection of information on sexual orientation and gender identity in the decennial census and the American Community Survey. 07/31/18
S.3307 Cosponsored — A bill to create a new Federal grant program that provides grants to State libraries to allow schools with summer lunch programs to keep their libraries open for student use during the summer months. 07/31/18
S.3315 Cosponsored — A bill to allow for the taking of pinnipeds on the Columbia River and its tributaries to protect endangered and threatened species of salmon and other nonlisted fish species. 07/31/18
S.3304 Cosponsored — A bill to amend chapter 44 of title 18, United States Code, to prohibit the publication of 3D printer plans for the printing of firearms, and for other purposes. 07/31/18
S.3284 Cosponsored — A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to require certain tax-exempt organizations to include on annual returns the names and addresses of substantial contributors, and for other purposes. 07/26/18
S.3246 Cosponsored — A bill to provide enhanced protections for taxpayers from fraud and other illegal activities, and for other purposes. 07/19/18
S.3227 Cosponsored — A bill to reunite families separated at or near ports of entry. 07/17/18
S.3225 Cosponsored — A bill to ensure the humane treatment of pregnant women by reinstating the presumption of release and prohibiting shackling, restraining, and other inhumane treatment of pregnant detainees. 07/17/18
S.3211 Cosponsored — A bill to ensure greater accountability by licensed firearms dealers. 07/12/18
S.3192 Cosponsored — A bill to amend the Safe Drinking Water Act to update and modernize the reporting requirements for contaminants, including lead, in drinking water, and for other purposes. 07/11/18
S.3172 Cosponsored — Restore Our Parks Act 07/11/18
S.3194 Cosponsored — A bill to amend the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to cap prescription drug cost-sharing, and for other purposes. 07/11/18
S.3189 Cosponsored — A bill to exclude the discharge of certain Federal student loans from the calculation of gross income. 07/10/18
S.3188 Cosponsored — A bill to amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit gay and trans panic defenses. 07/10/18
S.3154 Sponsored — A bill to ensure Members of Congress have access to Federal facilities in order to exercise their Constitutional oversight responsibilities. 06/28/18


An extraordinary shift has occurred in the music business, and it holds an important lesson for us.
Over the last decade, sales of recorded music have steadily declined. This includes all types of music in all formats—CDs, digital downloads, and so on.
At the same time, concert ticket revenue for live pop concerts has steadily risen. These trends are displayed below, in the graph.
Buying a digital recording of some old Rolling Stones songs you've already heard is one thing; going to see the Stones live is quite another. Their live performance is worth a lot to a fan.
What's going on? And why is this relevant to us? There are many reasons for the decline in recorded music sales, not least the fact that there is now vastly more competition for our ears and eyes—think satellite radio, Internet radio, video games, you name it.
What this trend underscores is the fact that a good live performance can create a lifetime memory. It hits your emotions, your senses, and your analytical brain all at once. It's the difference between reading that boring history textbook in college and going to hear your brilliant history professor give a charged-up, energetic talk about the battle of Gettysburg.
Clients–like all of us–value an engaging, live performance. But increasingly, they do not assign a high value to written reports, analyses, memos, and yes, even physical products themselves. A case-in-point of the latter is IBM. It used to get most of its revenue from hardware. Then, from software. And now, much of their income comes from the intangible services, such as consulting, that surround and enable the hardware and software—in a sense, the "live performance" element of their service mix.
To put it bluntly, you may think there's huge value in that report you turn in to the client with all of sorts of great information and analyses. But what is really valuable to your client is your live performance. It's having a conversation with your client about your analysis and your conclusions. It's helping them to reframe the problem and consider their options. It's raising the potential risks and helping them evaluate those risks in light of their organization's specific strengths and weaknesses. It's a conversation that helps your client make the right decision or use your solutions more effectively.
Here's an example of the ultimate live performance, chronicled in a recent New York Times article "Goldman, Citi, UBS…and a Guy in an Office." Paul J. Taubman, a former Morgan Stanley banker, basically set up shop as an independent M&A advisor, and in 2013 he was credited with $175 billion in deals—putting him at number 11 on the league tables, surrounded by major investment banks on either side. Incredible, really. This is an extreme example, but it illustrates the power of the live performance. Taubman was not spending a lot of his time writing PowerPoint slides and doing spreadsheets for Verizon and the other clients he advised. No, he was out in front of his clients, on his feet, helping them navigate the intricacies of major deals.
Information and data, alone, are mostly commodities. Brokerage reports analyzing the stock market, for example, used to be only available to a firm's best clients. Now, virtually anyone can download them from the Internet.
Products are commodities. Even a breakthrough product like the iPhone is supported and enhanced by best-in-class telephone customer service as well as Genius Bars in hundreds of Apple stores all around the world, where you can get a personal consultation for free.
The value of what you do lies in the application of your products and services to the client's business problems and opportunities. The live performance ensures that happens.
A conversation is a dynamic, fluid event that can quickly adapt to a client's real problem or most pressing issues. A written document is utterly static and cannot adapt itself on the fly.
It's hard to make a written report or memo "stand out" and wow the client. But a great live performance can do exactly that.
First, reallocate time from report writing and formatting, internal meetings, etc. and hold more live meetings with prospects and clients. Instead of working on those PowerPoint slides till midnight—have dinner with your client to discuss your ideas and suggestions for improving their business.
Second, rehearse your live performances. If you play tennis or golf seriously, how many times do you practice your serve or putt in order to perfect them? How about your client conversations and sales pitches? Clients tell me that many professionals who present to them are woefully underprepared for their live performances. They ask poor questions or none at all, and lack coordination with the others on their team.
Third, make sure you're in sync with your colleagues. When the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964, they were relaxed, musically tight, and noticeably having a great time. But what most people don't realize is how much face time they had invested in together, leading up to what was their effective debut on the world stage—for example, 293 shows at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, and thousands of hours on stage together in Hamburg, Germany and throughout England in small town halls and clubs.
Fourth, create more informal client interactions over coffee, lunch, dinner, and so on. Meet with your client in-between major events or project milestones, just to share what you're seeing in the marketplace and to ask them thoughtful questions about their evolving priorities. Remember, the live performance doesn't have to be a big sound-and-light show at Madison Square Garden. It can be an intimate conversation over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine.
And fifth, be willing to travel to see the your clients to have more live performances, and double-up when you do travel. Going to Chicago for the day? Try and connect with another prospect or client for a quick visit before you leave.
Doing your email for two hours in the morning doesn't add a lot of perceived value to clients. Nor does editing and re-editing that report until you think it's perfect. In my experience, no report or memo survives contact with the client—you need the live performance to really engage with your client and process your insights for them in a way that is practical and leads to real change.
Are you getting enough live performances in front of your prospects and clients? Remember, if you want milk, you have to get out of your house, trudge through the snow, and go out to the barn. Are you willing to put your boots on?


text:
Foucault on the centrality of work
(Thomas Corbin and JP Deranty)
In recent weeks, our research has focused on Michel Foucault's contribution to debates on work. Throughout his immense corpus, Foucault never ceased to take work as a central object of his analyses. The History of Madness for instance begins with an alternative account of the new value that work started to take on early in the 17th century, with a shift in the fundamental ethos justifying the condemnations of idleness. These are crucial pages to elaborate an alternative Foucauldian version of the "work ethic" hypothesis. Similarly, in Psychiatric Power, Foucault continues his historical analysis of work into the 18th century, now focusing specifically on "work discipline" and the rising emphasis on the control and management of workers time. The attention and significance Foucault gives to work in his writings is striking and gains yet more weight when we consider his corpus as a whole, over the entire span of his thinking life.
We have collated 84 citations throughout Foucault's oeuvre in which work is significantly discussed. These citations are organised by publication and complement a collection of a further 133 citations from the secondary literature.
Simply listing the texts included in the repository gives a sense of the importance of work in Foucault's thinking: the 1961 History of Madness; the 1966 Order of Things; the 1969 Archaeology of Knowledge; the 1972-1973 lectures on "the punitive society" ; the 1973-1974 lectures on "psychiatric power"; the 1974-1975 lectures on "the abnormal"; the lectures "truth and juridical forms" held in Sao Paolo in 1974; Discipline and Punish published in 1975; the 1976 "Society must be defended" lectures; the 1979-1980 lectures on "the government of the living"; the 1979-1980 lectures on "subjectivity and truth"; the 1976 first volume History of Sexuality as well as subsequent volumes, ending in 1984. A full study is yet to be completed on the treatment of work by Foucault throughout his writings.
The impact made by Foucault's writings can be observed throughout the social sciences that study work from specific angles: the history of work; the sociology of work; labour process theory; management and organisational studies; industrial relations; governmental studies; accounting and business, including business history. In all of these areas, Foucault's writings continue to enrich and extend debates by adding a critical and historical depth to our understanding of the place of work in modern lives.
The wealth of empirical detail the work sciences gather on all aspects of contemporary work often has a critical edge itself. These details add new layers of complexity to the classical, negative accounts of modern work. The sheer weight of all these negative features of modern work leads one to ask: given all the "bads" of modern work, why should we try to justify the central place it has taken in our lives?
In the debates that focus more specifically on the centrality of work, Foucault's writings matter in two ways especially: descriptively, in terms of the immense amount of historiographical detail his analyses of disciplinary and biopolitical power add to factual denunciations of modern work; and methodologically, for the decisive rejection he mounts of ahistorical approaches in the social sciences, about the treatment of work in particular.
The discipline of modern work
Without a doubt, of all of the books of Foucault, it is Discipline and Punish that has had the biggest influence on critical disciplinary accounts of modern work. Foucault's famous descriptions of the rise of disciplinary society provide a sophisticated framework and themselves uncover a wealth of historical data, cementing the idea that the establishment of a capitalist economy coincides with new forms of coercion and oppression.
In the 1975 book, the new techniques of power that Foucault identifies as part of the deployment of discipline are applied as much to the experience of work as they are to the other fields, such as education, medicine or the military. Indeed, the fundamental logic underpinning the spread of disciplinary techniques across institutional realms is a historically novel one entirely, namely the "carceral", a new obsession demonstrated by society to "confine" individuals in new ways, pursuing aims that are different from the confinement of the middle ages. The aim, precisely, is no longer to maintain the excluded outside or at the margins, but also to educate and to exploit them, and for that, to learn to know them better.
In his 1973-1974 lectures at the Collège de France on Psychiatric Power, Foucault applies this logic to work directly, for instance in focusing on the imposition of the "livret", the employment record, on labourers:
in the [18th century], the great instrument of worker discipline, the employment document, the livret, is imposed on every worker. No worker can or has the right to move without a livret recording the name of his previous employer and the conditions under which and reasons why he left him; when he wants a new job or wants to live in a new town, he has to present his livret to his new boss and the municipality, the local authorities; it is the token, as it were, of all the disciplinary systems that bear down on him. (Psychiatric Power, 70)
In the lectures held a year before on "the punitive society", the fundamental conceptual coupling of "surveilling and punishing" (the book's title in French) was brought forward for the first time as the core functional nexus underpinning modern disciplines. In these lectures, the focus was even more explicitly the link between disciplines and capitalist exploitation. Work then was much more clearly central as an explanatory factor behind the rise of disciplines:
the supervision–punishment couple is imposed as an indispensable power relationship for fixing individuals to the production apparatus, for the formation of productive forces, and characterizes the society that may be called disciplinary. We have here a means of ethical and political coercion that is necessary for the body, time, life, and men to be integrated, in the form of labor, in the interplay of productive forces. (The Punitive Society, 196)
Reading these lectures of the years 1972-1974 as the preparatory material leading to Discipline and Punish thus further strengthens the descriptive force of all the passages in that book where the experience of work is shown to be wholly given over to the coercive, invasive, calculating control of disciplines. As the book famously outlines, new sciences, techniques and regulations, new architectural designs and modulations of time are constantly invented and refined to observe, train, control, shape, surveil and punish workers. The impression that arises from all these descriptions is that disciplinary power and all its different modes of exertion make the oppression of modern work a more intense, more intimate and exhaustive affair. To cite just one example, which describes a new procedure already mentioned in the lectures held three years before, Foucault analyses the emergence of the management and supervision functions as typical instances of disciplinary processes:
what was now needed was an intense, continuous supervision that ran right through the labour process (and that) also took into account the activity of the men, their skill, the way they set about their tasks, their promptness, their zeal, their behaviour… As the machinery of production became larger and more complex, as the number of workers and the division of labour increased, supervision became ever more necessary and more difficult. It became a special function, which had nevertheless to form an integral part of the production process, to run parallel to it throughout its entire length. A specialized personnel became indispensable, constantly present and distinct from the workers… But, although the workers preferred a framework of a guild type to this new regime of surveillance, the employers saw that it was indissociable from the system of industrial production, private property and profit… Surveillance thus becomes a decisive economic operator both as an internal part of the production machinery and as a specific mechanism in the disciplinary power. (Discipline and Punish, 174)
If modern work has become intrusive and oppressive in all these new kinds of ways, if the experience of work is now thoroughly framed by the attempt to intensify exploitation, then advocating its centrality would seem rather short-sighted and ill-advised.
A Foucauldian version of the social factory
Beyond the empirical features of oppressive modern work institutions, Foucault also presents his own version of what operaists in Italy a decade earlier started to describe as the "social factory", that is, the attempt by capitalism to refashion subjectivities and social relations to make them entirely adjusted to the functional requirements of economic activity. This means, precisely, making work the central, guiding principle in every social realm (notably the family and education), and for every person in how she conceives of her life goals and values. In this case, the centrality of work is not just imposed through external, institutional measures and techniques, it is itself the central ideological mechanism that modern capitalist society works at establishing.
We noted at the outset that Foucault had shown interest in the work ethos arising with the shift from "classical" to disciplinary society already in the History of Madness. Another text in which the Foucauldian version of the social factory and the new work ethic is clearly presented is the series of five lectures he held in Sao Paolo in 1975, exactly at the time when he was beginning to complement the disciplinary hypothesis with the biopolitical one.
Pursuing the underlying Marxian strand of his analyses at the time, Foucault gave a new disciplinary twist to the core idea that exploitation and the extraction of surplus-value rely on workers being shortchanged in relation to the time they put into production. Modern capitalism, he argues in 1975, works through a disciplining of people's times, seeking to make every moment of workers' time functionally useful to production:
the modern society that formed at the beginning of the nineteenth century was basically indifferent or relatively indifferent to individuals' spatial ties: it was not interested in the spatial control of individuals insofar as they belonged to an estate, a locale, but only insofar as it needed people to place their time at its disposal. People's time had to be offered to the production apparatus; the production apparatus had to be able to use people's living time, their time of existence. The control was exerted for that reason and in that form. Two things were necessary for industrial society to take shape. First, individuals' time must be put on the market, offered to those wishing to buy it, and buy it in exchange for a wage; and, second, their time must be transformed into labor time. That is why we find the problem of, and the techniques of, maximum extraction of time in a whole series of institutions. ("Truth and Juridical Forms", 80)
A whole set of new social policies and institutional procedures, some of which seemingly remote from the world of production and apparently serving welfare ends, were put in place to make the whole of workers' time functionally welded to capitalist interests:
During the nineteenth century, a series of measures aimed at eliminating holidays and reducing time off were to be adopted. A very subtle technique for controlling the workers' savings was perfected in the course of the century. On the one hand, in order for the market economy to have the necessary flexibility, the employers must be able to lay off workers when the circumstances required it; but, on the other hand, in order for the workers to be able to start working again after an obligatory period of unemployment, without dying of hunger in the interval, it was necessary for them to have reserves and savings— hence the rise in wages that we clearly see begin in England in the 1840s and in France in the 1850s. But when the workers had money, they were not to spend their savings before their time of unemployment came around. They mustn't use their savings whenever they wished, for staging a strike or having a good time— thus the need to control the worker's savings became apparent. Hence the creation, in the 1820s and especially the 1840s and 1850s, of savings banks and relief funds, which made it possible to channel workers' savings and control how they were used. In this way, the worker's time— not just the time of his working day but his whole lifespan— could actually be used in the best way by the production apparatus. Thus, in the form of institutions apparently created for protection and security, a mechanism was established by means of which the entire time of human existence was put at the disposal of the labor market and the demands of labor. This extraction of the whole quantity of time was the first function of these institutions of subjugation. It would also be possible to show how this general control of time was exercised in the developed countries by the mechanism of consumption and advertising. ("Truth and Juridical Forms", 81)
Radical historicism
One important generalising conclusion Foucault draws from these institutional analyses, is that disciplinary and emerging biopolitical techniques therefore aimed at creating a new injunction to work. A whole set of new mechanisms sought implicitly and indeed often explicitly to instill the urge to work, in other words, to establish the centrality of work not just in social structures, but even psychologically:
Someone said that man's concrete essence is labor. Actually, this idea was put forward by several people. We find it in Hegel, in the post-Hegelians, and also in Marx, the Marx of a certain period, as Althusser would say. Since I'm interested not in authors but in the function of statements, it makes little difference who said it or exactly when it was said. What I would like to show is that, in point of fact, labor is absolutely not man's concrete essence or man's existence in its concrete form. In order for men to be brought into labor, tied to labor, an operation is necessary, or a complex series of operations, by which men are effectively—not analytically but synthetically— bound to the production apparatus for which they labor. It takes this operation, or this synthesis effected by a political power, for man's essence to appear as being labor. So I don't think we can simply accept the traditional Marxist analysis, which assumes that, labor being man's concrete essence, the capitalist system is what transforms that labor into profit, into hyperprofit [sur-profit] or surplus value. The fact is, capitalism penetrates much more deeply into our existence. That system, as it was established in the nineteenth century, was obliged to elaborate a set of political techniques, techniques of power, by which man was tied to something like labor— a set of techniques by which people's bodies and their time would become labor power and labor time so as to be effectively used and thereby transformed into hyperprofit. But in order for there to be hyperprofit, there had to be an infrapower [sous-pouvoir]. A web of microscopic, capillary political power had to be established at the level of man's very existence, attaching men to the production apparatus, while making them into agents of production, into workers. This binding of man to labor was synthetic, political; it was a linkage brought about by power. There is no hyperprofit without an infrapower. ("Truth and Juridical Forms", 86)
From this historical hypothesis, a major methodological consequence derives: namely, that it is intrinsically misguided to argue about work and its value for individuals and society in transhistorical terms, as if there was an essence of the human for which work attributes would somehow matter analytically. Work is indeed central to individuals and society, but not "analytically": it has been made central, through deliberate and not so deliberate disciplinary and biopolitical strategies, for the purpose of control and exploitation. Historiographically-based, genealogical analysis leads to a radically historicist take on work issues, which condemns as illegitimate armchair or essentialist arguments about work.
COVID-19 and a new panopticon?
Over the past several decades, as we noted earlier, Foucault's writings have made a significant contribution to understanding the centrality of work in our lives. Today this impact persists, with scholars in many areas continuing to look to Foucault to find valuable tools which they can use to address contemporary problems surrounding the inescapable centrality of work. Organisational theory has been a major hub for such scholars, but perhaps the area of most impact has been on the discipline of Surveillance Studies.
Foucault's ongoing significance is even more obvious today in the changing context of work caused by Covid-19. With the pandemic making a resurgence around the world, the vision to which Foucault gave so much analytical depth and historiographical detail, of modern forms of power exerting themselves through distant control and surveillance mechanisms is gaining traction once again.
The ultimate impact of Coronavirus on work is not yet determined, and it will not be for some time. Yet some consequences can already be seen. At least for those who remain in work, the most obvious impact has been where work takes place. Working from home, a technologically enabled phenomenon which has been on the increase for some time, has become a necessity for many. Due to lower building costs, lower worker enthusiasm for commuting, and indeed lower environmental pressure, this is a phenomenon that may well be around to a significant degree well after this pandemic. Working from home, 'telework', allows workers greater freedom, and, on the other side of the scales, it seems to allow employers less control. This lack of control is a concern for many businesses, as is noted, for instance, in this recent OECD policy report:
"[T]o the extent that control over workers is exerted through face-to-face interactions and physical presence, telework can hinder managerial oversight and aggravate principal-agent problems, e.g. 'shirking' … Telework requires a change from assessing performance in terms of inputs, i.e. time worked, to outputs, which implies giving up some control over workers and, in principle, provides workers with more opportunities to "slack". However, digitalisation may also lead to more data on worker performance becoming available to managers, which may ultimately provide more information for efficient monitoring of workers than is generally available in a traditional office environment."
More people working from home means that employers are giving up "some control over workers". Technology, however, allows surveillance and monitoring to be effected at a distance, entering to the heart of the home from any remote distance and allowing companies to mitigate against their 'loss'. Worker surveillance is not, of course, a managerial tool that has become available just with the birth of the internet or because of this pandemic. It came into prominence with modernity and the very first steps of industrialisation. As Foucault demonstrates for us, focusing on these steps allows us to better understand the destination we find ourselves at today. We recall the many passages of Discipline and Punish, for instance, that seemed to foretell the ubiquity of panopticon-techniques:
The gradual extension of the wage-earning class brought with it a more detailed partitioning of time 'If workers arrive later than a quarter of an hour after the ringing of the bell . . .' (Amboise); 'if any one of the companions is asked for during work and loses more than five minutes . . .', 'anyone who is not at his work at the correct time . . .'. But an attempt is also made to assure the quality of the time used: constant supervision, the pressure of supervisors, the elimination of anything that might disturb or distract; it is a question of constituting a totally useful time: 'It is expressly forbidden during work to amuse one's companions by gestures or in any other way, to play at any game whatsoever, to eat, to sleep, to tell stories and comedies'; and even during the meal-break,' there will be no telling of stories, adventures or other such talk that distracts the workers from their work … Time measured and paid must also be a time without impurities or defects; a time of good quality, throughout which the body is constantly applied to its exercise. Precision and application are, with regularity, the fundamental virtues of disciplinary time. (Discipline and Punish, 150)
It may be the case that even with the latest technological improvements, notably with tracking and intrusive forms of tele-surveillance, not all workers can be monitored to the same degree as in traditional environments where they were physically under the gaze of managers. For this reason some business theorists are calling for an end to traditional salaried work, instead suggesting that employees who work from home should have their pay linked with their outputs. However, for the workers themselves the actual technological limits of managerial surveillance may not matter. The significance of technology, particularly technological reach, is entirely minimal when compared to the internalised effects of that technology by workers. In other words, it may simply be irrelevant that technology itself cannot keep up with worker freedom if indeed the "panopticon effect" continues to exert its influence:
A real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation. So it is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good behaviour, the madman to calm, the worker to work, the schoolboy to application, the patient to the observation of the regulations. (Discipline and Punish, 202).
A Foucauldian perspective on the subject at work
Yet, although managerial oversight might escalate in ways that are increasingly internalised, this story is not one sided. Critical management studies have been exploring at length the avenue opened up by Foucault's famous saying that:
where is power, there is resistance to power (History of Sexuality, vol.1, 95)
Resistance at and against work is a major topic of inquiry in critical management and organisation studies. Indeed, in a much-quoted passage of a 1982 interview, Foucault made resistance prior to power in the constitutive tension linking power and resistance. This move echoed again an operaist idea, namely that capitalism changes in its structures and class composition in response to challenges from the working class:
If there is no resistance, there would be no power relations… So resistance comes first, and remains superior to the forces of the process; power relations are obliged to change with the resistance. So I think that resistance is the main word, the keyword, in this dynamic ("Sex, Power and the Politics of Identity", 167).
Furthermore, as is well-known, in his late work, Foucault started to refocus his historical analyses to the subject as site of resistance and agent of truth-seeking. In the 1978-1979 lectures on "the birth of biopolitics", he seems to embrace the new economic philosophy of neoliberalism precisely for that reason. In a passage in which he takes to task both classical political economy and its critique by Marx and Keynes, he explicitly emphasises the need to turn economic analysis to the level of the subject herself, as the agent of activity:
This means undertaking the economic analysis of labor. What does bringing labor back into economic analysis mean? It does not mean knowing where labor is situated between, let's say, capital and production. The problem of bringing labor back into the field of economic analysis is not one of asking about the price of labor, or what it produces technically, or what is the value added by labor. The fundamental, essential problem, anyway the first problem which arises when one wants to analyze labor in economic terms, is how the person who works uses the means available to him. That is to say, to bring labor into the field of economic analysis, we must put ourselves in the position of the person who works; we will have to study work as economic conduct practiced, implemented, rationalized, and calculated by the person who works. What does working mean for the person who works? What system of choice and rationality does the activity of work conform to? As a result, on the basis of this grid which projects a principle of strategic rationality on the activity of work, we will be able to see in what respects and how the qualitative differences of work may have an economic type of effect. So we adopt the point of view of the worker and, for the first time, ensure that the worker is not present in the economic analysis as an object—the object of supply and demand in the form of labor power—but as an active economic subject. (Birth of Biopolitics, 223).
Applied to the critique of discipline and surveillance in the workplace, his late emphasis on the primacy of resistance and the subjective standpoing opens the door to a different Foucauldian take on work, one that no longer so obviously bolsters arguments against its centrality. For this late emphasis on the subject as a site of resistance and indeed as a potential driver of change invites us to look carefully, at a similar level of detail as Foucault's analyses are a model of, at the concrete actions that individual workers and worker collectives undertake in order to resist surveillance, disciplining and exploitation. Once this door is open, it might be the case that an important source of motivation for worker resistance and organising in fact are precisely the goods that worker expect from –and maybe sometimes find in– their work. Depending on what we then find behind this door of resistance to power, asking "what working means for the person who works" could in fact lead us to reassert something like the great significance, some kind of "centrality", of work.
As always, suggestions and contributions are welcome to continue to enrich the repository.
Michel Foucault during a series of conferences in Rio de Janeiro (30 October 1974), Brazilian National Archives.


text:
Crowd-Funding, Student Petitions Bring Computer Science Classes to California Districts
By Danielle Wilson — August 01, 2014 4 min read
Securing the financial resources and personnel needed to offer coding and computer science classes in schools has been an ongoing challenge for many districts. This fall, four high schools in California will begin teaching those courses—largely as a result of student petitions demanding those classes, as well as crowd-funding campaigns to support the purchase of laptops and equipment.
Year-long Advanced Placement Computer Science courses will be offered for the first time to high school juniors and seniors at Northgate High in Walnut Creek, Castlemont High in Oakland, and Lincoln High and Leland High in San Jose, Calif. according to The San Jose Mercury News.
At Northgate High, the effort was pushed along by a student-led petition to start a computer science class. Students at the school also formed a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics club, according to the article.
At both Lincoln High and Castlemont High, several students who previously attended a "Girls Who Code" camp formed computer science clubs at their schools where they taught classmates how to code. They petitioned to create an AP Computer Science class, and the class instructors began efforts to raise money to pay for technology for the course, through crowd-funding.
Students at Leland High also approached administrators about bringing computer science studies to their school.
The addition of the AP Computer Science courses at Lincoln and Leland is just a part of San Jose Unified School District's three-year rollout plan for a district-wide technology initiative. In a phone message to Education Week, Jackie Zeller, curriculum director for San Jose Unified, said an entry-level course, called Exploring Computer Science, will be added to a high school next school year. (See this recent blog post about the Chicago school system's efforts to add similar courses.)
Zeller said middle school teachers are receiving training through the non-profit Code.org and the "Girls Who Code" organization is helping the district set up after- school programs for middle school students.
Teachers at Castlemont and Lincoln have created crowd-funding campaigns using DonorsChoose, an online charity that allows people to donate directly to public school classroom projects. Both are requesting money to purchase laptops and related items including protective cases and hard drives.
"I had a lot of friends that work in technology fields suggest [to me] that hardware would hold us back, [so] I chose DonorsChoose because it's a known entity and people can donate in a secure space," said Claire Shorall, AP Computer Science teacher at Castlemont High, which is part of the Oakland Unified School District, in an interview with Education Week.
Shorall said that many students have started purchasing laptops of their own for the class. The computers purchased from donated money will be loaned to students unable to afford one. Part of the preparation for the course included advising parents about low-cost Internet service at home.
To date, Shorall's campaign has raised $7,879 for Acer laptops. Nancy Ureña Reid, the AP Computer Science teacher at Lincoln High is requesting $16,713 to purchase Google Chromebooks for her students.
Community Effort
Launching courses in those subjects creates other challenges for schools. Finding qualified teachers to teach the computer science and coding classes can be difficult. California does not offer a computer science teaching credential, and districts find it difficult to recruit tech professionals because schools are unable to offer competitive salaries.
Classes at both Castlemont and Lincoln will have the support of trained volunteers through Microsoft's Technology Education And Literacy in Schools, or TEALS, program. The program recruits high-tech professionals and places them in high school computer classes, as part-time volunteers.
The volunteers will also be assisting the instructors by helping customize the AP course curriculum and format all the computers for student use. Shorall said she has also had offers from various people in the community willing to donate older computers that she can have refurbished.
Teachers and administrators at the schools believe the efforts to spawn computer science study is especially significant because of the potential to lure underrepresented minorities, such as blacks and Hispanics, into the STEM-focused fields. Teachers for the AP Computer Science course plan to supplement the curriculum with field trips and guest lecturers that will provide additional insight on STEM related careers for underrepresented minorities.
Prior to the adoption of this course, Shorall signed her students up for any outside camps or afterschool programs she could find that taught coding skills. Students were also encouraged to compete in local hack-a-thons. Shorall said those activities alone could not meet the demand of students.
"I think it's important for students in Oakland to have this access to computer science," Shorall said.
At Lincoln High, 25 students have enrolled in the course. Most of the students were recruited because of their previous experience with coding programs or hack-a-thons. Other students may not have computer programming experience but received high scores on math tests or enrolled in the AP Calculus course.
"I haven't yet introduced a student to computer science that hasn't been enthused by it," Shorall said. "I feel like my work is really purposeful."
Danielle Wilson
Computer Science STEM Crowdfunding California
A version of this news article first appeared in the Digital Education blog.
Sarah D. Sparks, January 23, 2023
Curriculum Sponsor Teachers – Get Excited for Crayola Creativity Week 2023!


text:
Our thanks to Prof. William A Thomas for this report on the first day of the 12th Fota International Liturgical Conference.
The Fota International Liturgy Conference, organized in Cork, Ireland, each year since 2008, was opened today by Raymond Cardinal Burke, Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of St John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta. After the opening prayers, His Eminence welcomed delegates and speakers alike, and recalled the service and dedication of the St Colman's Society for Catholic Liturgy, which has promoted the study of the sacred liturgy through these conferences. Delegates and speakers have come from Germany, Great Britain and North America; the theme of this year's conference is The Roman Ritual: De Benedictionibus and the Rite of Exorcism.
Professor Dieter Boehler S.J. presented the first paper for the conference, entitled "The Priestly Benediction in the Psalter." Starting with Aaron's blessing in Numbers 6, "The Lord Bless you and Keep you, May the Lord make His face to Shine upon you and be gracious to you", Fr Boehler explained how these blessings are an important part of biblical worship and theology. Other Biblical texts such as the 50th chapter of Sirach and Luke 1, 5-23 show the central place that the priestly benedictions occupies in Israel's service both in the Old and New Testaments. The influence of the wording of Aaron's blessing can be detected in several places in the Bible, not least in Israel's prayer book, the Psalter, which shows that Israel's prayer is answered from above by heavenly blessings.
The paper's first analysis shows in detail the highly poetic form of the priestly blessing, then looked at several other allusions to the text of these blessings in various psalms. Father Boehler's main focus was on the Psalms of Ascents or Pilgrims' Psalms (Pss. 120-134), also known as the Gradual Psalms, which present a kind of spiritual pilgrimage from a point far from God to his nearness. These same 15 poems show a certain correspondence to the 15 words of Aaron's blessing. In conclusion, he stated that the blessings upward constitute praise, the lifting up of the hands , and that the blessings downward from heaven constitute a new creation, a charis, something freely given by God, expressing His kindness, His grace and the sharing of His life.
The second speaker at the conference was our own Matthew Hazell, MA (Sheffield) from the United Kingdom, who presented a paper entitled "A historical Survey of the Reform of De Benedictionibus (1959-1984)" Of the liturgical books reformed after Vatican II, De Benedictionibus (The Book of Blessings) is one that has received very little attention from liturgists and scholars, even thirty-five years after its promulgation; his paper would attempt to provide a historical survey of its reform, and hopefully encourage more detailed historical and theological research by liturgical scholars.
He began by examining the proposals (vota) of the future Council Fathers submitted during the ante-preparatory period of the Second Vatican Council (1959-60) regarding the reform of sacramentals and blessings, then looked at the various drafts of the relevant articles of Sacrosanctum Concilium from the preparatory period of Vatican II (1960-62) through to the first two sessions of the Council (1962-63), to see what the Council Fathers said about sacramentals and blessings, and how that influenced the final version of the Constitution on the Liturgy. Finally, utilizing the archival material found in the schemata of the Consilium ad exsequendam Constitutionem de Sacra Liturgia, he looked at the two phases of the reform process itself, from 1964 to 1974, and then from 1974 to the promulgation of the reformed De Benedictionibus in 1984. He concluded by highlighting the discussions of the Fathers of the Council who discussed the Reserved Blessings of bishops and how there should be no blessings that a bishop cannot give.
The third speaker, Dr Daniel van Slyke spoke on "Exorcism Rites of the Past and Present: Similarities and Differences" using examples from catechumenal exorcisms, the blessing of water, and the major rites of exorcism to explore the difference between liturgical exorcisms of the past and present. The pre-Vatican II rites and the rites revised after Vatican II provide the immediate points of comparison. Comparing these exorcism rites of the past and present -- both of persons and of things -- reveals markedly different compositions, purported effects, and underlying worldviews. The overall tenor of the revised rite of major exorcism reflects the tenor in the earlier revised catechumenal exorcisms and in the revised rites for blessing objects, and especially water, rites which have lamentably all but disappeared in the Latin Rite today.
The final paper, by Fr Joseph Briody of St John's Seminary in Brighton, Mass., offered a Scriptural and liturgical reflection on the evil spirit and Saul (1 Sam. 16, 14), and the coming of the Spirit upon David, whose lyre soothed the troubled Saul and banishing the evil spirit. David's harp becomes symbolic of the Psalter. The paper works through the election and rejection of Saul and Saul's deficient relationship with the Lord. Only the obedient, submissive one on whom the Spirit rests can be king of Israel. The wider canon expresses a longing for a future, perfect, Davidic king, anointed not only with oil but with the Holy Spirit. There is a dawning realization that it is Jesus, the Son of David, the One anointed with the Holy Spirit, who is the Christ-Messiah and who overcomes evil. The Church continues this liberating work of Christ. While Saul is not demonized in the biblical text, two contrasting models of kingship are presented: Saul or David? The choice between Saul and David indicates the fundamental choice between disobedience and obedience, sin and grace, the evil spirit and the Holy Spirit. When obedience, grace and the Holy Spirit depart, the result is not some kind of no-man's-land of moral neutrality or spiritual vacuum. The tragic departure of the Holy Spirit from a life leaves one susceptible to the anguish suffered by the first King of Israel: "Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him."
Posted Saturday, July 06, 2019
Labels: Fota