Workplace Equality

I hope you all had a great holiday weekend. If you haven’t responded already, I’ve emailed you a question and would like you to go into as much detail as you feel necessary to answer.

One question I find lurking at the office water cooler is the question of equality in the workplace. While there are many resources about gender equality, I’d rather talk about workplace equality in regards to your degree. Do you feel you will be treated equally with the type of degree you’re earning?

Workplace fairness has been around for some time now and has been advocated for my many diverse groups. But how far have we come? According to an article by Stephen Ohlemacher of Washington, employees with bachelor’s degrees earned an average of $50,000. Ohlemacher also portrays the message that of states with numerous high school diploma graduates the number of college degree graduate will also be high. ***By the way, Florida doesn’t rank high!*** What does that mean for people who earn a degree in a less than well known area of study? Currently, the mentality in the United States is centered on specialization of work to the extent that our universities offer degree programs just for those specialized jobs. For example, if you wanted to be a human resources manager there is a degree program for that. But you can also have an interdisciplinary studies degree and be a human resources manager. So the question becomes, with the trend in specialization that our society has, do you think the employee with the interdisciplinary studies degree be treated equally with the employee with the specialized degree? In an article by James Lardner, upward mobility is discussed relative to several factors, one of them being degrees. Lardner states, "upward mobility is determined increasingly by a college degree." And a New York Times article regarding the economic disparity of college graduates asserts that the gap between college graduate and high school graduate employees is diminishing. According to the NY Times article, the reason for the rise of inequality is a "lack of strong policies and institutions that broadly distribute economic gains."

If your answer to the interdisciplinary studies versus specialized degree question is no, I have another question for you: what can be done to correct the situation?

Revamping the workplace is one start point. The Out & Equal Workplace Advocates provide several steps for creating equality in the workplace. Granted they are more concerned with inequality related to sexual orientation, but a few of their suggestions can be applied broadly: create an employee resource group, hold degree diversity seminars (or cross training sessions), market and advertise employees varied backgrounds and degree studies, and advocate for leadership development in employees with different degrees.

Another way to correct the workplace inequality is to update policies and create organizations to advocate for benefits. This is what was encouraged in the New York Times article by Levy and Temin. They argued that we had unions and affirmative action groups years ago and today we don’t have those benefit advocates anymore. They also state that employer policies are outdated and should be revised.

If you find that you’ve been discriminated against based on your degree you should pursue the matter further with risk management or human resources. This may not always be the case, however, as you are the marketing tool for your degree. Do not hesitate to promote your education to your employers. Hopefully, you will never experience workplace inequality. If the situation ever arises, I think you should reflect on ways you can work with your employer to correct it and then advocate with your local workplace equality group.

“Economic Life After College.” 11 June, 2007. New York Times. Retrieved 06 July, 2009 from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/11/opinion/11mon3.html?_r=2&oref=slogin.

“Fifteen Steps to an Out & Equal Workplace.” Out & Equal Workplace Advocates: Workplace Resources. Retrieved 06 July, 2009 from http://outandequal.org/steps-to-equal-workplace.

Lardner, James. “Mobility Check.” The Progress Report. Retrieved 06 July, 2009 from http://www.progress.org/2004/labor06.htm.

Ohlemacher, Stephen. “Monetary Success a Matter of Degrees: Bachelor’s Brings in $23,000 More a Year.” 26 October, 2006. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 06 July, 2009 from http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2006/oct/26/news/chi-0610260286oct26.

Interdisciplinarity + Everyday Life

How do you find ways to utilize interdisciplinarity in your life? We can all talk to people about how interdisciplinarity applies to our education; but what about everyday life? Can the tools we learn throughout our program of study be applied to our daily lives?



I believe we can not only apply interdisciplinarity to our day by day actions, but we can also advise others to take notice and try it themselves. Consider applying interdisciplinarity to organizing your workspace. Now you may think of it as simply straightening up, but to really organize, you may include elements from some of these disciplines: architecture, organizational psychology, anthropology, and design. Four different disciplines have come together to maximize your workplace organization! Now bearing in mind we all maintain health, psychology, or criminal justice components of our interdisciplinary studies degree; how can we apply aspects of interdisciplinarity of one of these areas into our daily life?



Besides applying interdisciplinarity in academia, what other organizations utilize this tool? On a global scale, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations published a research study in 2001 employing an interdisciplinary approach to field research and case studies. http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/003/X6996E/x6996e00.htm#Contents Also, the state of New Jersey has developed a linguistics program using interdisciplinary studies in the education arena and also the corporate workplace arena: "an interdisciplinary, systems thinking
approach—is needed to provide cohesion and foster the development of workplace readiness
skills." http://www.state.nj.us/education/frameworks/worldlanguages/chap1-4.pdf



Let's consider specific characteristics that are incorporated into an interdisciplinary lifestyle. Are there traits that are essential for the application of interdisciplinary studies? One characteristic I find necessary is curiosity. Although the desire to create something, conduct the research and find ways to apply those findings to any market is useful, it all begins with curiosity. You wouldn’t have the desire to create, the stamina to research, or the proficiency to apply the results if you weren’t curios about what was being queried. Curiosity, in moderation, is a great tool that can be used to advance your career, jumpstart new projects, or even improve livelihoods.



When assessing or applying interdisciplinarity, are there standards to measure against or should everyone be considered individually? What are pros or cons of each?

Interviews

Thank you for introducing yourselves. I am confident with the group that we have that our interaction will be beneficial. Please remember if you haven’t posted an introduction to copy the welcome post and change the answers to reflect yourself; then post an intro. Also, any concerns or suggestions you may have are welcome. Please remember you can email me (feedback is always desirable)!

For our first discussion topic, I decided to focus on interviews. I was informed that the majority of you had concerns about presenting your degree in an interview. I will admit that I have been on quite a few interviews before (I believe practice makes perfect)! In each of these I found out that there are two deciding factors that will land you a second interview or the position applied for. **Disclaimer: when I’m talking about two deciding factors, I mean outside of the requirements like education or experience qualifications, besides mannerisms, etc.**

The first factor is confidence. Confidence, not arrogance! You have to be confident in your presentation and your answers. Confidence in your presentation comes through in how you dress for the interview and your body language. Confidence in your answers comes from being truthful, knowing your resume, and knowing the company & position applied for. The University of Buffalo Interview Guide (http://mgt.buffalo.edu/files/career/InterviewGuide.pdf) provides plenty of information regarding interview skills. Pages three to four discuss researching the company and position; also, on page 15 begins a discussion about your educational experience.

The second factor is playing on the strengths of the question asked. What I mean by this is if you come across a question that may actually point out a weakness, turn the question around to portray a strength. The University of North Carolina provides an Interview Guide (http://www.unca.edu/career/interviewingskills.pdf) that suggests using their STAR formula for answering questions. STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, Result (page two). In other words, select a prior experience and draw attention to the positive actions and results. The guide also provides good sample interview questions on page four.

• Consider this example: Grace has other responsibilities besides work (i.e.: family, school, weekly book group, etc.) that doesn’t permit her a lot of time for working extra or on weekends. In a recent interview, Grace was asked if she would be available for team projects that may require extra hours. Instead of giving the many reasons why she may not be able to fit in more time at work, she could highlight the points of the question: is this person reliable and are they a team player? So a possible answer Grace could provide would highlight that she is consistent in her deadlines, in her last position she was only late twice in three years, she initiated a team project that decreased accounts payable by ten percent, that she is glad to help others meet their deadlines, and that she assisted in the creation of a company softball team. See, Grace isn’t saying that she’s too busy. Instead, she is actually providing points that showcase how responsible and dependable she is, how she takes the initiative, works well with others, and even interacts outside of the workplace.

When it comes to a degree such as ours that isn’t well known outside of the academic world, depicting its strengths and how it can benefit the company is how you market yourself. Although I have not had many interviewers ask about my degree, there is a direct question that pertains to it. Interviewers may ask about your general education experience or your GPA; but I’ve found one question in my interviews thus far that has forced me to actually market my degree to the employer (which was completely unrelated to my concentrations). The interviewer asked, “How will your educational career benefit our company?” Granted this is an open-ended question and there are many ways you can answer this. I would like to hear how you all would respond to this.

Now employers can phrase it any which way they want, “tell me about your degree,” or they can be really blunt and say something like, “what exactly is interdisciplinary studies?” The point is to relate the degree to the company. Perhaps you can tie in the company mission to your response, or if the qualifications of the position require you to work with many departments in the company you can talk about how flexible and versatile your degree has made you. Face the fact: our degree program is new to the career world and they don’t know a lot about it. Yes, you may have to explain it a bit during an interview. Do not become discouraged!!! There are many aspects about the degree you can emphasize. Such as: yes it’s new, but it is adapting with the changing times; studying several disciplines provides you will skills that are transferable to another department, etc. If the employer doesn’t ask about your educational background (perhaps because you have enough work experience – which is generally my situation) there is always a time at the end of the interview where you can ask questions. A good tip is to develop these questions prior to the interview. In your research of the company you may discover two to three questions about the company or the position or the future thereof. You also have the opportunity here to tell your future employer about the strengths of your degree. Our degree is certainly viable in today’s economy and can prove to be advantageous to securing your future career!

I mentioned earlier that I believe practice makes perfect. I also believe that having others critique your responses to questions is effective. Certainly you should utilize friends, spouses, professors and coworkers to help you practice for an interview. Remember, knowing your resume and the company is essential for answering these questions. I don’t know if your class has done this yet, but my Cornerstone class participated in practice interviews through a service called Perfect Interview. If you have reached this part of class yet, feel free to share your interviews with me. If you haven’t I look forward to hearing your experience with it in the future. Either way, I am available if you would like to practice.

I’m going to share with you all my interviews from my Cornerstone class. I hope they help!

http://www.perfectinterview.com/online/review_gateway.asp?id=3017853&type=standard

http://www.perfectinterview.com/online/review_gateway.asp?id=3017852&type=standard