Making Communication Count Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Making Communication Count - Assignment Example Therefore, while she was attempting to illustrate the proposed changes to me, I kept on nudging my head as if I was agreeing to her. At one point, she asked me if we have enough funds assigned to use ICT in our coming classes and I answered, â€Å"I think that would help students†. The statement was self-explanatory about span of my attention at that particular point in time. Once she clarified what she meant I responded by saying, â€Å"I don’t know if students from ethnic minorities are up for this kind of advancement.† A visible expression of dismal was visible on her face as she was actually an Asian American herself. The statement was based on the workshop that I had attended a week earlier about discrepancies in our educational system about which she did not knew anything. Analyzing my non-verbal and verbal communication during this meeting, there are few changes that would be required to make this conversation better. Firstly, there should have a complete display of focus and undivided attention. If not possible, the meeting should have rescheduled as it is unethical not to exercise self-discipline during a dialogue. Furthermore, there was also a lack of responsibility and consideration for values of the respondent in this situation. Perhaps, use of culturally sensitive language and explanation for my statement would have made the overall conversation more effective. Part 2 Description of the Scenario Leaders in educational settings need to be aware of the responsibility that is inherent to their organizational status. Being a head of department makes faculty members responsible for their statement as their views and inputs are being examined by school’s management whereas the same piece of information can have a significant impact on the behavior and strategies used by junior faculty members. In a meeting with school principal, Mr. James and a junior teacher named Ms. Rachel (Pseudonym) who had recently joined and was suppose d to be supervised by me, there were some mixed responses and directions given by Mr. James that later on created difficulty for me and Ms. Rachel. The meeting began with principal being over occupied with domestic telephone calls which made us question if the meeting bears any importance to him. Once done with that, Mr. James kept on leaning back and forth on the chair which further projected an impression that he is not even considering it to be an important conversation despite the fact that it was Ms. Rachel’s first official encounter with him. While addressing the new teacher, Mr. James kept on addressing her as â€Å"Newbie† and mentioned that we have many students from you people i.e. the teacher was Iranian. I believe that instead of showing racism, he was just attempting to make her feel that her presence in the faculty will further help students. While continuing discussion about the curriculum and division of classes, he just mentioned that all the instructi ons are available on your portal and I will be providing directions to Ms. Rachel in day to day proceedings. However, instead of using the word ‘direction’, he said ‘helping’ which projected an impression that I will not be responsible for new teacher’s performance evaluation which was against organizational policies. When

Virtual Leader Essay Example for Free

Virtual Leader Essay According to the book, management is the process of working with and through others to achieve organizational objectives efficiently and ethically, as well as effectively. Before we started to learn the class material and before the Virtual Leader simulation began, I thought that managing others would not be too difficult. I mainly thought that with authority came power, but as we learned in class this is not the case. My initial perception was that employees under managers would comply with their manager’s requests without much hesitation since the manager would automatically have reward, coercive, and legitimate power. The Virtual Leader scenario was quite a learning experience as I was not too good at it to begin with. Beginning with scenario 1, I struggled getting Oli to accomplish the tasks that I wanted him to do. Even though I (Corey) was new to the company, I thought that I could get my ideas passed more easily since I was Oli’s manager. My pure authority over him was not enough to convince him easily. At the beginning of the simulation, Oli is noticeably overqualified and underpaid for his position and is showing little respect for his new manager. I learned after running the simulation multiple times that you have to â€Å"give and take† with Oli. If you support his ideas and encourage him, then he is more likely to support your ideas. You also have to keep him under control and negatively influence him if he was encouraging wrong ideas. As I did the next scenarios, I tried to apply original leadership style of using my authority to try and push my ideas through. Again, this was unsuccessful. As the scenarios continued and I (Corey) was no longer the highest position, my overpowering approach again proved to be the wrong approach. For example, I could not exercise my legitimate power in scenario 3 with Herman and Will because they were both superior to me in terms of position. I had to adjust my style as I did in scenario 1, and gain support from others by supporting them. These adjustments of my leadership style according to the situation is an example of the contingency leadership approach that we learned about in class. I especially had to change my leadership behavior in scenario 4 because I had the least amount of authority in the meeting. I had to take more of a back seat and wait for the other 3 members to bring up different ideas, support others’ ideas so I could gain their support, and then finally push my ideas such as â€Å"Keep Nortic Vendors†. My original assumptions of legitimate power is all a leader needs and that the best way to accomplish a task or an idea is to just keep pushing it without listening and supporting others is what made it difficult for me to achieve high scores relatively quickly. After analyzing my flaws and realizing what I was doing wrong, it made me realize that I should have been using the exact same leadership style that my former employer and CEO of The Motley Fool implements. As I noticed while sitting in during a meeting last summer, he did not do much of the talking. He would merely listen to and support others’ ideas that he liked and then propose his ideas once the time was right. Even once he proposed the ideas he would let other members in the meeting discuss his ideas first to get a sense of others’ opinions on it, and would then elaborate. If I had to guess, he would be brilliant at Virtual Leader. Virtual Leader really made me realize that leadership is more of a â€Å"give and take† relationship between the manager and his/her employees instead of an overpowering relationship. Employees do not want to be bullied and told what to do all the time, they want a leader who can encourage them and ultimately steer the company in the right direction, no matter where the ideas come from.

Charles Dickens Hard Times Essay -- Charles Dickens Hard Times Essays

Charles Dickens' Hard Times Charles Dickens’s novel Hard Times critiques the use of extreme utilitarianism as an acceptable means to governing a society in which citizens are able to lead happy, productive, flourishing lives. â€Å"Just the facts,†19th century English utilitarianism argued, are all one needs to flourish. Those answers that we can arrive at by way of mathematical, logical reasoning are all needed to live a full human life. Hard Times shows however that a â€Å"just the facts† philosophy creates a community inhospitable to the needs of one another, a society nearly void of human compassion, and one lacking in morality. Underlying the novel’s argument is the Aristotelian concept that the primary purpose of government is to correctly educate citizens in morality and, consequentially, to cultivate an upright social environment where all are inspired to flourish. How fitting, then, that early in the novel we are introduced to Thomas Gradgrind, educator and owner of the M’choakumchild school where â€Å"just the facts† are taught and the apotheosis of 19th century English utilitarianism. Although â€Å"Gradgrind intellect† is calculated to be the best way to maximize happiness, in the M’choakumchild class room it soon becomes clear that its adherents are the most unhappy and immoral in Coketown, even more so than the â€Å"Hands† who suffer from its cruelty indirectly. If the purpose of the state is to cultivate moral individuals who are able to flourish together, the state built on utilitarian values inevitably fails. Part of the inadequacy of utilitarianism and its statistical approach to addressing human problems is its objective, mass-quantity view of people. Gradgrind’s description alone captures the disconnected nature and col... ...human nature† makes for a bare-bones human existence, replete with crime, immorality, greed, and as especially demonstrated in Louisa’s case, unhappiness. Mr. Sleary’s compassion gives voice to Dickens’s hope for a more unselfish perspective on human motivation. His critique concludes that the success of government lies in realistically evaluating humanity in all of its general and idiosyncratic tendencies. As Nussbaum says in her essay, Dickens does not call for a â€Å"relativistic† approach to governance but one more in touch with the realities and complexities of being human. Works Cited Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. Ed. Fred Kaplan and Sylvà ©re Monod. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2001. Nussbaum, Martha C. â€Å"The Literary Imagination in Public Life.† Hard Times. Ed. Fred Kaplan and Sylvà ©re Monod. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2001. 429-439.

I Am Legend Film review

From its gripping start to its touching finish, this high-grossing blockbuster film is the film everybody has been eagerly waiting for. The third big-screen adaptation of Richard Matheson’s â€Å"I Am Legend† novel (1954) this box office hit is sure to have you gripping your seat the whole way through. Hollywood hunk Will Smith stars alongside an Alsatian called Abby, who steals every scene she’s in. This post apocalyptic film is surely one of a kind. After watching this, I am definitely going to read the original novel. PLOT New York City-2012. Robert Neville (Will Smith) gets up every morning. Does his exercises. Eats breakfast. Takes his dog, Samantha, out for walks, and to pick up supplies. Goes to work. Plays a little golf. At exactly noon, he sends out broadcasts on the radio. Sounds completely normal? Well†¦no. Once a normal man with a loving family, Robert Neville is (as far as he knows) the only living human being left on Earth. He and Samantha are entirely alone, and have been for three years. In 2009, a scientist called, ironically, Dr Krippen (Emma Thompson), announces that she has discovered the cure for cancer; which at the beginning was praised as a breakthrough in modern medicine. But it isn’t long before the virus has mutated into a deadly airborne form, killing millions of people. And those who the virus didn’t kill, it changed†¦ Neville, a military scientist, is part of the team working to find a vaccine, but as the pandemic spreads, the government orders Manhattan locked down, with only the uninfected allowed to evacuate. And now Neville lives alone with Sam, surrounded by strange creatures that devour or infect anyone or anything in their path. Sensitive to UV radiation, they dwell in darkness, only emerging at night to eat. And all the while, the infected lurk in the shadows, watching Neville’s every move, waiting for him to make a fatal mistake. Perhaps mankind’s last and best hope, Neville is driven by only one remaining mission; to find a way to reverse the effects of the virus by using his own immune blood. But his blood is also what the infected hunt, and Neville knows he is outnumbered and quickly running out of time†¦ CHARACTERS The title â€Å"I Am Legend† is very relevant; Will Smith’s acting was LEGENDARY! If you actually think about it, it’s not easy when you’re the only character most of the time. Throughout the film, he was pretty much interacting with a dog†¦and that was about it. We witness Robert trying his best to lead a normal existence, slowly losing his sanity, and yet trying to save the world; all at the same time. It is nice to know that his range of acting is not just limited to action films (although there is a fair bit of action in I Am Legend) but it’s in the quiet moments that Smith gracefully and effortlessly shines- his strained expressions and his persistent battle for his sanity. The close relationship with his dog is extremely touching. His performance was excellent and believable, so hats off to him. TECHNICAL ELEMENTS/ SOUND The opening scenes of â€Å"I Am Legend† have special effects so good that they just about compensate for some later special effects that are slightly clumsy. We see Manhattan three years after a deadly virus has killed every healthy human on the island, except one. The streets are overgrown with weeds, cars are abandoned and the infrastructure of clumsily quarantined buildings is beginning to collapse. The film does a good job of revealing the monsters bit by bit, but once displayed, their CGI-ness is hard to ignore. By the time they're in full-on assault mode, they resemble something like zombified versions of something out of a video game. This makes for exciting action sequences, but dials down the horror considerably. The song â€Å"3 little birds† by Bob Marley is used extensively and is also on the soundtrack in the film. The song has bittersweet undertones as Robert sings the song â€Å"Don't worry about a thing, ‘Cause every little thing gonna be all right† in an attempt comfort himself and his dog, to avoid intense loneliness, and also to remind him of his family (his daughter was called Marley; after Bob Marley). THEME/ CONCLUSION Cleverly set in the year 2012, the film just makes us feel even more paranoid. Like many of the best sci-fi films, I Am Legend says a lot about the times we are currently living in. One of the main themes of this film is that one day, we, humans ourselves, could be the cause of the wipe out of the entire human race if we keep on messing with nature and trying to play God. Smith clearly states so in the film, â€Å"God didn’t do this. We did!† But Smith is like a ray of hope and reminds us that there are good people left in the world. Using a quote from Bob Marley, he says that â€Å"the people that are trying to make the world worse never take a day off, so why should I? Light up the darkness.† In this case, Smith feels it’s his duty to save humans and â€Å"Light the darkness† (cure the Dark seekers). I Am Legend is available in Blu-Ray and DVD on Monday 21st April 2008. Bring home the 2 disc special edition of I am Legend and you’ll not only get the theatrical version, but also the complete alternate unseen version with a controversial ending. Definitely worth having on your shelf.

Management and Leadership at Cvs Caremark

Management and Leadership at CVS Caremark Michell McGill MGT/330 September 10th, 2012 Ed Robinson CVS Caremark is the largest pharmacy health care provider in the United States with integrated offerings across the entire spectrum of Pharmacy Care. CVS Caremark is a market leader in mail-order pharmacy, retail pharmacy, specialty pharmacy, and retail clinics and is a leading provider of Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Plans.As one of the country’s largest pharmacy benefits managers (PBM’s) CVS Caremark provides access to a network of more than 65,000 pharmacies, including more than 7,3000 CVS/pharmacy stores that provide unparallel services and capabilities(â€Å"Recruiter contact information,† 2012). The size and components of the company CVS Caremark has implemented a leadership team comprised of talented and diverse leaders who’s abilities makes the company a leader among retail and specialty pharmacies in the United States.CVS Caremark divides the com pany into a Business Unit that consists of MinuteClinic, Pharmacy Benefit Management and Retail Pharmacy. Leadership, defined as influencing individual and group activities toward goal achievement. Executive leadership is a key component to the success of CVS Caremark. CVS Caremark fill many of their Executive Leadership opportunities from within, colleagues are offered development plans and encourage open dialog with colleagues and managers.Regular training and leadership development programs ensure that talent can be promoted from within the company. CVS Caremark employs Senior Executive Teams and department and line executives these positions are responsible for support and to work with teams that manage most of the major staff support functions (â€Å"Recruiter contact information,†2012). Management is described as the process of working with people and resources to accomplish organizational goals. At CVS Caremark there are several types of managers in the retail stores.T here are district store managers, district pharmacy managers, store managers, shift managers, photo lab supervisors, pharmacy managers, lead pharmacy teach, minute clinic manager and each manager report to the store managers. The distribution center employs more managers as well as other departments. Roles and Responsibilities MinuteClinic are managed by nurse practitioner who offer services to treat minor health issues such as strep throat, and ear, eye, sinus, bladder, and bronchial infections. Others convince of the minute clinic is the ability to have several common vaccinations, flu shots, hepatitis A and B, tetanus, and pneumonia.The benefit to the customer is there are no appointment necessary and the practitioner specialist can diagnose and treat and write prescriptions, which can be filled immediately in the store pharmacy with little or no waiting. Other convient services are camp, sports, and college physicals on a daily walk in, no appointment necessary. Pharmacy Benefit Management is another business unit that assists the customers with managing their benefit, filing prescription by mail and in the retail setting. The services offered help the customer file insurance and fill his or her prescriptions.Services such as ready fill and 90 day supply of maintenance medications like blood pressure, asthma medication, birth control, etc. can be automatically refilled every month or 90 days according to their insurance plan. The benefit to the customs is that they do not have to file their insurance and be reimbursed by the insurance company. The prescriptions can be automatically refilled every month or every 90 days. CVS/pharmacy retail division is America’s leading retail pharmacy with more than 7,300 CVS/pharmacy and Longs Drug stores .Many of CVS/ pharmacies are open 24 hours, which is always a benefit to the customer who may have a late night trip to the ER. CVS/pharmacy offer personalized expertise, in the retail stores and online at CVS. co m. This is a benefit to the elderly patients, they do not have to remember to call in their prescriptions, and they get a coursity phone call if the prescriptions are not picked up within two days after the fill. As people are living longer today the elderly many times do not have help maintaining their drugs or other needs and at time the responsibility can become overwhelming.Customers enjoy the convince to speak with a pharmacist about minor issues with their health or medications. Cot to cost every CVS/pharmacy offer prescription medications related health care products and other health products, such as first aid products, crutches, walkers for the elderly, bed pan, etc. There are 600 in-store minute clinics with more to come by 2016. The front store offer a wide variety of popular beauty supplies, health, and personal care brands, well stocked convince foods and a photo lab with one hour services and many other photo needs, seasonal aisle, and gift ideas and a large supply of cards for every occasions.CVS Caremark is in the United States, the company is launching a Spanish version of Caremark. com. CVS Caremark planes precipitations have access to most comprehensive Spanish-language Web site in PBM industry. The services provided will be the same services as English-speaking customers. While CVS Caremark offers great services and benefits to their employees, turnover can be a problem, due to some factors that stand out, According to Sam Walton of Wal-mart, â€Å"If you want to know where the problem is ask the front line†.The employees at CVS have several issues that if corrected the employees may be happier and offer better customer service. One issue is with the work environment, in retail pharmacy employees work an eight-hour shift and many days there is no breaks, no lunch, and many times no bathroom breaks. When dealing with customers who are sick and not feeling well, and all they want is to get their medicines and go home. The employees nee d to have a break from the crazy fast pace of the frontline. This would take care of the bathroom problem.While the management does not tell employees not to take a break, they also do not make taking break easy. As for a lunch break, employees can have food in the store but many times some stores may fill 800 to a 1,000 prescriptions a day. This leaves little time to eat or anything else. If employees had a break and a little time to eat, service with a smile, is more likely. Another employee issue is the work schedule, no set schedules are , most store employees including managers are required to work two- day shifts and two evening or night shifts and every other weekend.If the store is open 24 hours the last shift get off around 11:00 p. m. . . The 24- hour stores never close for anything, rain sleet or snow. If CVS Caremark would look at these couple of problems the service would improve, the customers would be happier. Customers can at times wait 30 minutes to an hour for thei r prescriptions. Employee who are exhausted and hungry and need to go to the restroom are less likely to provide great customer service. CVS Caremark management is always looking for ways to improve their service at the store level.There are weekly phone conferences for the management team, the pharmacist, the technicians, and the minutecilnic, and retail front store. To discuss the monthly service goals and what need to be completed to improve the service for the months to come. The district managers need to be in the store more often and the management need to take better care of their employees on a daily bases and management will see a change in customer service scores. References: Recruiter contact information. (2012). Retrieved from http://info. cvscaremark. com

Exactly What to Expect From AP Language Multiple Choice

Exactly What to Expect From AP Language Multiple Choice SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Perhaps because the free-response section of the AP Language and Composition exam is worth more than the multiple-choice section, some teachers spend much more time preparing you for free-response than multiple-choice. While it's great to be prepared for the essays, this might leave you feeling like a lost and confused lamb when it comes to the AP English Language and Composition multiple choice section. But never fear, the guide is here! This guide will give a brief overview of the AP Language and Composition multiple-choice section, the eight question types you can expect to see on the test, three preparation strategies, a slate of AP practice question resources, and finally some tips for success on test day. The Multiple-Choice Section: An Overview Section I of the AP English Language and Composition test is the multiple-choice section. This section will have 52-55 questions testing you on how well you can read and understand nonfiction passages for their use of rhetoric. On the exam, you will be presented with four to five nonfiction passages. You will receive a bit of orienting information at the beginning of this passage, for example "this essay originally appeared in a major national newspaper in the 1980s." Each passage will have about 10-15 questions associated with it. The AP Lang multiple choice section is worth 45% of your total exam score. You will receive one point to your raw score for every question you answer correctly. However, as on other AP exams, your raw score will be converted to a scaled score from 1-5. But what's actually on the multiple-choice section? The next section explores what kinds of questions you can expect to actually be asked on the exam. The 8 Types of Multiple-Choice Questions There are eight kinds of multiple choice questions on the AP Language exam. In this section, I'll go over each type, provide an example question, and walk you through answering it. All of the example questions come from the "Course and Exam Description." You can find the original passages these questions are referring to there as well. Type 1: Reading Comprehension As you might expect, reading comprehension questions are about testing if you understood the passage on a concrete level: what does this particular sentence mean in a literal sense? And so on. You can usually identify them from phrases like "according to" and "refers." To succeed on these kinds of questions, your best strategy is to go back and re-read the part of the passage the question is asking about. Do so carefully, and when you then answer the question, focus on what the passage is actually saying outright. Don't infer on reading comprehension questions! Example: Let's go back and look at Lines 23-26 to answer this question: "But ‘books are not about schedules,' author Stephanie Nolen argues; rather, they are ‘about submerging yourself...about getting consumed.'" To return to the question, what is her "primary criticism of book clubs," then? Well, she says, "books are not about schedules." So, they shouldn't have to be a scheduled-in obligation. The only answer that choice that resembles what she actually says in the passage is that the problem with books clubs is that they (A), "are too programmed." Type 2: Implication This question style moves beyond basic, concrete reading comprehension into the realm of implication. Implication is what the author seems to say without actually coming out and saying it directly. However, even though the answer may not be written out clearly in the passage, the question will still have a clear correct answer based on textual evidence. You can identify implication questions from phrases like "best supported," "implies," "suggests," and "inferred." As for reading comprehension questions (and indeed, all multiple-choice questions on the AP) turn and look back at the relevant part of the passage before you answer. Then ask yourself: Which interpretation put forth by the answer choices does the passage *most* support? Example: First, we need to find where in the passage names for hurricanes and tornadoes are discussed. We can find this in lines 14-17: "A tornado, although more violent than a much longer lasting hurricane, has a life measured in minutes, and weathercasters watch it snuff out as it was born: unnamed." What answers about why tornadoes are unnamed and hurricanes are named are at all supported by this line? Choice (A), "there are too many of them," is clearly incorrect as the line says nothing about the frequency of either weather event. Choice (B) says, "their destruction is not as great as that of hurricanes." This is a trap! You may know based on your own knowledge that hurricanes generally incur much greater damages overall than tornadoes, but the passage doesn't say that. You have to choose an implication that is actually supported by the passage, and the passage doesn't say which causes more destruction. Choice (C) says "they last too short of a time." The passage does say that hurricanes are "much longer lasting" and that the life of a tornado is "measured in minutes." This could be a reasonable answer, but let's make sure it's the best one before we select it. Choice (D) says "they move too erratically to be plotted" and Choice (E) says tornadoes "can appear in any area of the world." It doesn't matter if either of those statements is true since the question asks what the passage implies, and the passage does not discuss either their movements or where they appear. Thus, (C) is the answer most supported by the passage. It's a trap! Don't be fooled. Type 3: Overall Passage and Author Questions Overall passage and author questions want you to identify key, overarching elements of the passage or author's views, like the purpose of the text, the author's audience, the author's attitude toward the subject, and so on. These questions are identifiable because they won't refer back to a specific place in the text but will instead ask general questions that apply to the entire excerpt. These questions can be a little more difficult to answer than those where you can look to a specific place in the text to answer your questions. You'll really need to have an overall impression of the passage based on its overarching details. It might be helpful to jot down a couple overall impressions of the excerpt right after you read it, to refer back to when faced with overall passage questions. Example: This passage is about the rise of book clubs. The first paragraph gives examples to demonstrate that book clubs have become a popular phenomenon. The second discusses book club backlash and some book club guides. The third paragraph asserts that book clubs are positive and sharing literary experiences is a good thing. Which of the answers fits with the passage? Answer (A) can be eliminated right away because there is no personal narrative. Answer (B) can also be eliminated because the passage begins with an example about Oprah, not any "empirical" (numbers-based) data. Answer (C) can be eliminated because the passage never introduces any questions related to the practice of book clubs. Choice (D) could be good- the first two paragraphs give mostly description, and the third and final paragraph gives an evaluation. Choice (E) doesn't fit because there is no initial condemnation of "the practice" (i.e. of book clubs). So (D) is the correct answer. Type 4: Relationships Between Parts of the Text Another question type will require you to identify or describe a relationship between two specific parts of the text. This could be paragraphs or shorter line segments, or a specific part of the passage compared to the rest of the passage or the passage as a whole. My advice for answering these questions is similar to my advice for most questions- go back and read the parts of the passage in question! You may want to jot down an overarching impression of what each part of the text is accomplishing or saying as you do, which should help you compare them and identify the relationship. Example: Because this passage is only two paragraphs long, this question is essentially asking us about the relationship between the first and second halves of the passage. What is the main idea of each of the sections? Well, the first paragraph describes essentially what makes a strong writer. The second paragraph establishes that Carlyle is "such a writer" and then discusses some of his works and why they are important. When we look at the answer choices, what matches up best with our main idea descriptions? Clearly (A), which describes how the first paragraph describes the strengths of a writer (which we know Carlyle has based on the topic sentence of the second paragraph), and the second describes Carlyle's "legacy." What kind of relationship do the parts of the text have? Type 5: Interpretation of Imagery/Figurative Language This type of question is concerned with the underlying meaning or implication of imagery or figurative language used in the excerpt. What is the author trying to accomplish with this particular phrase or this metaphor? Again, it is critical that you go back and read the part of the passage that the question refers to, or you will be completely lost on these questions (more so than on most others). You may want to re-read a few lines before and after as well so you can get a sense of the imagery in context. Example: For this to make sense, we need the entire sentence the "acorns" appear in: "It is an idle question to ask if his books will be read a century hence: if they were all burnt as the grandest of Suttees on his funeral pile, it would only be like cutting down an oak after its acorns have sown a forest." What could this mean? Well, acorns come from oak trees and make more oak trees. So this must refer to something that comes from Carlyle and is somehow a replication of him or his works. The best choices if we think about that, then, would be (A) his children, or (C) the ideas in his books. However, since the passage doesn't mention anything about his children that would be an irrelevant detail and can't be what the acorns represent. So the answer must be (C). Type 6: Purpose of Part of the Text These questions will ask you to choose the answer that best states the purpose that a given part of the text serves in the piece. What is the author hoping to accomplish with this specific example/sentence/device? These questions can usually be identified because they will ask specifically about purpose or function of a specific moment. To address these questions, you will need to, of course, re-read the part of the text in question. Think about what point the author is trying to make in that specific moment, and how that would serve their larger argument. All parts of a given text will serve the larger argument if they are well-constructed, so if it seems like an interpretation of the text presented in the answer choices doesn't work with the main argument, eliminate it. Example: These lines read, "You may meet a man whose wisdom seems unimpeachable, since you find him entirely in agreement with yourself; but this oracular man of unexceptionable opinions has a green eye, a wiry hands, and altogether, a Wesen, or demeanor, that makes the world look blank to you, and whose unexceptionable opinions become a bore; while another man who deals in what you cannot but think ‘dangerous paradoxes,' warms your heart by the pressure of his hand, and looks out on the world with so clear and loving an eye, that nature seems to reflect the light of his glance upon your own feeling." This sentence is really overwhelming, so let's try to break it down and re-write it in a simpler way. "You might meet a man who seems wise because he agrees with you, but this man might eventually become a bore; while a different man who presents challenging ideas may warm your heart and eventually convince you." This fits into the larger argument because Carlyle is the writer who presents challenging ideas, and this piece is in praise of Carlyle and his legacy. Let's go through the answers and see which choice fits best. Choice (A) describes a contrast between a writer who reinforces reader viewpoints and one who challenges them. This sounds like it could be right- let's keep it. Choice (B) describes an analogy between kinds of people and types of writing they prefer. There's no analogy in these lines, so we can eliminate (B). Choice (C) says that these lines challenge the idea that writers modify their ideas to appeal to readers. But since this passage overall refers to Carlyle's legacy and doesn't give any indication that he modifies his views to appeal to readers, so we can eliminate it. Choice (D) doesn't even refer to writers, and Choice (E) doesn't work because the lines say nothing about good and evil. So (A) is the best answer choice. Good and evil? Aren't all these questions evil? Type 7: Rhetorical Strategy For these questions, you'll need to identify the specific rhetorical strategy used by the author in the specific place in the passage. Essentially, you'll be identifying the particular argumentative "move" that the author is deploying to try to convince the audience of their position. Example: The passage identified in the question says: "The character of his influence is best seen in the fact that many of the men who have the least agreement with his opinions are those to whom the reading of Sartor Resartus was an epoch in the history of their minds. The extent of his influence may be best seen in the fact that ideas which were startling novelties when he first wrote them are now become common-places. And we think few men will be found to say that this influence on the whole has not been for good. There are plenty who question the justice of Carlyle's estimates of past men and past times, plenty who quarrel with the exaggerations of the Latter-Day Pamphlets, and who are as far as possible from looking for an amendment of things from a Carlylian theocracy with the ‘greatest man', as a Joshua who is to smite the wicked (and the stupid) till the going down of the sun. But for any large nature, those points of difference are quite incidental. It is not a theorist, but a s a great and beautiful human nature, that Carlyle influences us." So which of the rhetorical strategies in the answer choices makes the most sense? Choice (A) says the author berates Carlyle's opponents. This doesn't seem accurate- while she mentions those who disagree with him, she doesn't berate or insult them. Choice (B) says she acknowledges but discredits other arguments. While, again, she acknowledges that there are those who disagree with Carlyle, she doesn't really mention their specific arguments or discredit them. Choice (C) suggests she claims most people don't recognize Carlyle's genius. This can't be right; she says "few men will be found to say that this influence on the whole has not been for good" and describes how many of his ideas are now "commonplace." Choice (D) says she cites facts. She doesn't- she gives examples of his works and describes reactions. Thus, choice (E), which says she gives examples that reflect his influence, is correct. This is the best choice as the passage repeatedly emphasizes that even those who don't agree with him are affected by his thoughts. Type 8: Style and Effect The last question type asks you about stylistic moments in the text and the effect created by those stylistic choices. Essentially, what does the author accomplish by making that particular stylistic choice? To address these questions, re-read the sentence or moment in question with an eye for how it sounds and feels. Don't just think about what it says- what does it evoke? Example: The sentence says, "‘Oh God, that I were a writer!' She cried. ‘Surely a writer could not string words together about Henry Irving's Hamlet and say nothing, nothing.'" The stylistic choice in question is the italicization of "nothing, nothing." We may notice that this mirrors the italicization of "writer." Italics generally indicate emphasis- so what's the effect of emphasizing "writer" and "nothing, nothing"? Be careful here, because it might be tempting to choose (B) - indicate a sarcastic tone. This kind of emphasis is often used to communicate sarcasm. However, that doesn't fit with the rest of the passage, or the fact that she "dropped her pen in despair" just before. The best choice is (A), that it emphasizes her frustration. With the eight question types addressed, we can move on to more general strategies to prepare to take the multiple choice section of AP Language and Composition. You are the general of your own AP preparation army! How to Prepare There are several key strategies you can use to prepare yourself to rock the multiple-choice section of the AP Language and Composition exam. #1: Read and Engage With Nonfiction A key prep strategy is to read nonfiction of all different types, particularly nonfiction that argues a position or advances an agenda of some kind. When you read, you should work on identifying and understanding how the author makes use of rhetorical strategies and techniques. Ask yourself: What is the author's argument? What evidence do they use to support their position? What is the nature of their evidence- anecdotes, statistics, illustrative examples? What rhetorical techniques and strategies do they use to build their argument? Are they making particular kinds of appeals? Is their argument strong? If yes, what makes it strong? If no, what makes it weak? Constantly considering these questions as you read will help you learn to analyze passages quickly and informally, which is an essential skill for answering multiple-choice questions focused on rhetorical analysis. #2: Learn Rhetorical Terms and Strategies In order to analyze works, of course, you need to know rhetorical terms and strategies. You will undoubtedly learn many techniques and strategies from your teacher, and you should definitely review those before the exam. You can also check out my essential list of 55 AP English Language terms you need to know. Make sure you aren't just memorizing the terms and the definitions, but that you can actually identify all of the techniques at work in the things you read! #3: Practice Answering Multiple-Choice Questions To succeed on the multiple-choice section, you need to practice answering multiple-choice questions! This will help you get familiar with the feel of the multiple-choice section and identify any gaps in your understanding. The next section will suggest tons of sources for practice multiple-choice questions. A whole pile of practice questions! Practice Question Resources There are a variety of practice test resources you can use to hone your multiple choice skills. The best multiple-choice practice resources come from the College Board. This is because they write the AP exam, so their practice questions are the most like real AP multiple-choice questions. Unfortunately, there are not as many official resources for the AP Language and Composition exam as there are for some other tests. However, once you run out of official College Board practice questions, there are still some unofficial resources that you can use for multiple choice practice. In this section I'll go over both. Official Multiple-Choice Resources The College Board offers both complete released exams and sample multiple-choice questions. Complete Released Exams Complete official exams are a great resource if you can find them, because they will have complete multiple-choice sections for you to practice with. Unfortunately, the College Board has not released any official previous exams for AP Language and Composition, as they have for many other tests. You may, though, still be able to find complete official exams from past years by Googling "AP Language complete released exam" or similar variations on that. You might also ask your AP teacher if there are copies of old AP exams you can use for practice. They often have access to past exams and may be able to loan them to you. Sample Questions From the "AP Course and Exam Description" The AP Course and Exam description for AP Language and Composition includes 50 sample multiple-choice questions. This is actually only two questions short of a complete multiple choice section, so this a pretty sizable collection of questions to add to your practice bank. Better get a safe so you can put it in the bank! Unofficial Multiple-Choice Practice Resources There are tons of sites out there offering free multiple-choice practice questions and quizzes for the AP Language and Composition exam. But they aren't all created equal! In this section I'll highlight just several of these resources that are most worth your time. For an even more comprehensive list, see my list of all practice tests available for AP Lang and Comp. College Countdown Complete AP Language Practice Test This site has a complete unofficial practice test. You can ignore the essays for the purposes of multiple choice practice. The wording of questions on the multiple-choice section aren't exactly the same as on a real AP exam, but the tasks are very similar and the passages are well-selected. This is a great source for sample multiple choice questions once you run out of College Board official options. McGraw-Hill AP Practice Quiz McGraw-Hill, an academic book publisher, offers this free 25-question multiple-choice "diagnostic quiz." It has difficult, well-written multiple-choice questions that really look and feel like real AP questions. The passages do open in another window, which is slightly awkward and annoying, but the questions are so good that it's worth it! The quiz is supposed to be 25 questions, but you could theoretically get more than 25 questions from this resource since every time you open a new test window you get a subset randomly selected questions from a question pool. Albert English Language Practice Albert has a decent number of small multiple-choice quizzes that offer practice questions analyzing the rhetoric of various notable nonfiction passages. The style of the questions is a little more informal and to the point than genuine AP questions published by the College Board, but they are still good practice for answering multiple-choice questions about rhetorical techniques deployed in a passage. So when you've exhausted your other resources this is still a solid multiple-choice practice question source. In order to answer questions, you need to sign up for a free account. It then costs "credits" to answer questions. You can both buy additional credits and earn credits for answering questions correctly, so if you are good at answering questions, you can use this service for free pretty much indefinitely! Otherwise I don't really advise buying credits since there are frankly better paid resources available (like review books). Review Books Most review books also have practice multiple-choice questions designed to mimic College Board questions and are a good resource when you've used all of your official and unofficial free questions. However, not all review books are of equal quality, and some have questions that are downright poor quality. Be sure to look at reviews and flip through the book to check out its questions and how they compare to College Board questions before buying if you can. As a starting place, Barron's and the Princeton Review are usually reliable review book sources. You might need a nap after you do all of these questions. Test Day Tips Here are four key strategies to help you succeed on the multiple choice section on test day. Interact With the Text When you are initially reading a passage, do some preliminary marking up! Underline things that seem particularly significant, like a thesis statement or major shift in the text. Make notes of motifs or confusing sentences. These marks will help you familiarize yourself with the text and navigate it when you come back to answer the questions. Identify Main Ideas Once you finish reading a passage through, quickly jot down the main idea/argument of the piece, the author's purpose, and the intended audience. This will help you answer overarching passage questions. Additionally, preemptively identifying these points before addressing the questions should help make many of them more clear and help you keep the passage framed in your mind as you work through questions. Always Re-read Never rely on your memory when the question is about a specific place in the text: always go back and read the line in question. If the answer still isn't clear once you've consulted the text, read a little bit around the specified line for more context and clarity. Eliminate Off-Topic Answers An easy trick to eliminating wrong answers for many questions is to simply identify answer choices that are clearly off-topic. At a first pass these might not be obvious, since they may use a word or phrase from the passage and will sound stylistically similar to the other choices. But a closer look will reveal that the answer has nothing to do with the paragraph or passage topic! Here's an example: The sentence says, "‘Oh God, that I were a writer!' She cried. ‘Surely a writer could not string words together about Henry Irving's Hamlet and say nothing, nothing.'" We might see the words "writing" in answers (C) and (D) and think they are on topic- after all, Ellen Terry wishes she "were a writer." However, the very point of the sentence is that she is not a writer. So does it make sense for the effect to have to do with writing parts for actors or how to succeed at writing? No! Those answers are completely off-topic. A highly professional and profound production of Hamlet. Key Takeaways The multiple-choice section of AP Lang and Comp has 52-55 questions and is worth 45% of your exam grade. There are eight types of questions you can expect to see on the AP Language and Composition multiple choice exam: Reading comprehension Implication Overall passage and author questions Relationship between parts of the text Interpretation of imagery/figurative language Purpose of part of the text Rhetorical strategy Style and effect The multiple-choice section of the AP Language and Composition exam can be challenging for students who are more used to literary close-reading than rhetorical analysis. However, you can learn to succeed! Here's how to prepare: Read and engage thoughtfully with nonfiction so you can identify essential rhetorical elements quickly and thoroughly. Learn rhetorical terms and strategies and both how to identify them in other works and how to use them in your own writing. Practice for the multiple-choice section! There are a number of resources, both official and unofficial, where you can get practice AP language and composition multiple-choice practice questions. There are some official resources from the College Board and some unofficial free online resources, though you should always be careful to thoroughly investigate unofficial material for quality. Once it's time for test day, here are four strategies to succeed on the multiple-choice section: Interact with the passages as you read them for the first time. Identify the main ideas- the author's purpose, argument, and audience- right after the first time you read the passage. Always go back and re-read the part of the passage in question- don't rely on memory! Watch out for answer choices that are clearly off-topic and eliminate them! Ready like a freshly baked muffin! What's Next? If you need more help with AP Language and Composition, we have a total list of practice tests and a complete guide to the exam. In addition to our guide to AP Lang terms, we also have several more detailed articles about specific literary devices that might prove helpful. We recommend reading through our posts on point of view, tone words, personification, and the literary elements you'll find in every story. For analyzing poetry and poetic prose, we have specific articles on assonance and iambic pentameter, with explanations and examples of each. Taking other APs? See six tips for acing your AP exams, our five-step AP prep plan, and our guide to finding the best AP practice tests. Wondering if you can retake AP exams? We have the answer! Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points? We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now:

Effective Grad School Recommendation Letters

Effective Grad School Recommendation Letters Youve been asked to write a letter of recommendation. No easy task. What makes a recommendation letter good? Effective letters of recommendation have these 8 characteristics in common. 8 Simple Characteristics to Feature Explains how you know the student. What is the context for your evaluation? Was the student in your class, an advisee, a research assistant?Evaluates the student within your area of knowledge. Within the context in which you know the student, how did he or she perform? How effective is a research assistant?Evaluates the students academic capacity. This is easy if the student was in your class. What if the student is not? You can refer to his or her transcript, but only very briefly as the committee will have a copy. Dont waste space talking about the objective material they already have. Talk about your experience with the student. If a research assistant, you should have some grasp on his or her academic competence. If an advisee, refer briefly to your discussions and provide clear examples that illustrate academic potential. If you have little as academic contact with the student, then make a broad evaluative statement and use evidence from another area to support. For example, I e xpect Stu Dent to be a meticulous student, as he keeps very careful and accurate records as the Biology Club Treasurer. Evaluates the students motivation. Graduate study entails more than academic skills. Its a long haul that takes a great deal of perseverance.Evaluates the students maturity and psychological competence. Is the student mature enough to accept the responsibility and manage the inevitable criticisms and even failures that will accompany graduate study?Discusses the students strengths. What are his or her most positive attributes? Provide examples to illustrate.Its detailed. One of the most important things you can do in improving the effectiveness f your letter is to make it as detailed as possible. Dont just tell them about the student, show them. Dont just say that the student can understand complex topics or work well with others, provide detailed examples that illustrate your point.Its honest. Remember that although you want the student to get into graduate school, it is your name that is on the line. If the student really isnt a good fit for graduate study and you recommend him any way, the faculty at that school potentially could remember and in the future take your letters less seriously. All in all, a good letter is highly positive and detailed. Remember that a neutral letter will not help your student. Recommendation letters, in general, are very positive. Because of that, neutral letters are viewed as negative letters. If you cant write a glowing letter of recommendation, then the most honest thing that you can do for your student is to tell him or her and decline their request to write a letter.

The Compton Effect or Compton Scattering in Physics

The Compton Effect or Compton Scattering in Physics The Compton effect (also called Compton scattering) is the result of a high-energy photon  colliding with a target, which releases loosely bound electrons from the outer shell of the atom or molecule. The scattered radiation experiences a wavelength shift that cannot be explained in terms of classical wave theory, thus lending support to Einsteins  photon theory. Probably the most important implication of the effect is that it showed light could not be fully explained according to wave phenomena.  Compton scattering is one example of a type of inelastic scattering of light by a charged particle. Nuclear scattering also occurs, although the Compton effect typically refers  to the interaction with electrons. The effect was first demonstrated in 1923 by Arthur Holly Compton (for which he received a 1927 Nobel Prize  in Physics). Comptons graduate student, Y.H. Woo, later verified the effect. How Compton Scattering Works The scattering is demonstrated is pictured in the diagram. A high-energy photon (generally X-ray or gamma-ray) collides with a target, which has loosely-bound electrons in its outer shell. The incident photon has the following energy E and linear momentum p: E hc / lambdap E / c The photon gives part of its energy to one of the almost-free electrons, in the form of kinetic energy, as expected in a particle collision. We know that total energy and linear momentum must be conserved. Analyzing these energy and momentum relationships for the photon and electron, you end up with three equations: energyx-component momentumy-component momentum ... in four variables: phi, the scattering angle of the electrontheta, the scattering angle of the photonEe, the final energy of the electronE, the final energy of the photon If we care only about the energy and direction of the photon, then the electron variables can be treated as constants, meaning that its possible to solve the system of equations. By combining these equations and using some algebraic tricks to eliminate variables, Compton arrived at the following equations (which are obviously related, since energy and wavelength are related to photons): 1 / E - 1 / E 1/( me c 2) * (1 - cos theta)lambda - lambda h/(me c) * (1 - cos theta) The value h/(me c) is called the Compton wavelength of the electron and has a value of 0.002426 nm (or 2.426 x 10-12 m). This isnt, of course, an actual wavelength, but really a proportionality constant for the wavelength shift. Why Does This Support Photons? This analysis and derivation are based on a particle perspective and the results are easy to test. Looking at the equation, it becomes clear that the entire shift can be measured purely in terms of the angle at which the photon gets scattered. Everything else on the right side of the equation is a constant. Experiments show that this is the case, giving great support to the photon interpretation of light. Edited by Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D.

Heart of Darkness (ANALYTICAL ESSAY ) Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Heart of Darkness (ANALYTICAL ) - Essay Example A team of men is on the Thames waiting for the wind to take proper direction. Marlow whose profession is not clearly defined becomes the narrator in the story and hence represents the voice of the author. He then moves on to talk of Europe having some of the darkest places on earth. He talks of his expedition to Africa, which opened his eyes to the evils of colonization. Illness has been discussed explicitly in the story at different points of time. The Russian companion of Kurtz who went through subsequent illnesses narrates the above lines to Marlow during their meet. The illnesses are very symbolic of the dark environment of colonization where Kurtz was more feared for his whims than respected by the natives who therefore followed his orders like that of God. Sickness has been elaborately discussed throughout the novella; not just physical but mental sickness as well. In this context the passage â€Å"On the contrary. It appears their intercourse had been very much broken by vari ous causes. †¦. smiling continuously at some endless and jocose dream of that eternal slumber† (Conrad, 153-159) could be analyzed. Sometimes they resulted from obsession as it did in case of Kurtz (obsessed with possession of ivory) who once tried to shoot his manager who has been giving him company through all times in order to acquire some ivory from him. When the Russian says, â€Å"they [natives] adored him† (Conrad, 154), the tone implies something more that the words reveal. This was later revealed further as the manager told him about his experiences with Kurtz. The man saw no reason for things, which came, in the way of his demands. When he asked for the ivory he placed his most loyal companion, the Russian, under his gun’s point, which surely surprised Marlow, who has been observing the devotion of the Russian towards Kurtz for quite some time – â€Å"The man filled his life, occupied his thoughts, swayed his emotions† (Conrad, 154). The Russian went on to tell Marlow that he had requested Mr. Kurtz to go back from this life which he himself did not quite like, but despite agreeing to him initially he stayed on and the Russian was determined to stick to him. What is notable in the concerned passage is the strong devotion of the Russian despite facing all odds with his companion. In fact when Marlow called him mad, the Russian strongly protested. This reflect once again the psychological state of the Russian who was an enthusiastic young man but wasted his years quite gladly in the woods merely out of devotion towards Mr. Kurtz. The author brings in the silence and unperturbed nature around the men, which was rather suffocating, to Marlow –â€Å"The woods were unmoved, like a mask -- heavy, like the closed door of a prison -- they looked with their air of hidden knowledge, of patient expectation, of unapproachable silence† (Conrad, 157). On one hand the woods had a lot of give but lay quite some str ess and absorbed a lot from life. Staying alone in such a land perhaps took the toll on Mr. Kurtz and his companion. As â€Å"the appetite for more ivory had got the better of the†¦less material aspirations† Kurtz gathered more natives who apparently adored him but Marlow by now knew better (Conrad, 157). Another evidence of mental sickness arising out of the wild surroundings is the heads that surrounded Kurtz’s house, perhaps to fill the gaps in his life. The Russian must have had a strong influence on his mind especially

Production Efficiency under the impact of Employee Training Research Proposal

Production Efficiency under the impact of Employee Training - Research Proposal Example Researches reveal that production efficiency (referred to as efficiency further on in this assignment), is significantly influenced by the variation in employee training, attitudes, and wages that employees receive. Conveniently concluding the discussion, as analyzed from the various literatures, it will not be wrong to suggest that: Over the years, researches reveal that these variables though are effective in enhancing the production efficiency, but each has a particular threshold level, beyond which, the concepts of diminishing returns start taking over. As this literature review moves on, it can be seen how valid this argument is prior to proceeding with the primary research about the same. It is worth mentioning here that the three impacts under consideration have been title of various human resource management books, which goes to show the depth of matter available on these; however, this research, due to constraints of time and other resources, has tried to gather a crux of these literatures.   2.2 Impact of Employee Training on Production Efficiency abc   2.3 Impact of Employee Attitude on Production Efficiencyabc 2.4 Impact of Employee Wages on Production Efficiencyabc   

Impact of sea ice loss on Arctic ecosystem(Indigenous people, marine Essay

Impact of sea ice loss on Arctic ecosystem(Indigenous people, marine birds) - Essay Example This paper explains the effects that will cause problems and obstacles for the indigenous people living in these areas along with them the wildlife ecosystems such as the marine birds. This paper will also look into the possible environment that the Arctic community will eventually live through. The Impact of the Warming Arctic The change in the climate and the effects it has caused in the Arctic region may possibly be one of, if not the most critical ecological concern threatening and endangering the Arctic ecosystem.  This region, the northernmost part of the Earth, is home to various native communities whose way of life and daily activities is shaped, influenced and based on the environment and the surroundings. This area is also home to the abundant wildlife that thrives there. The Arctic region is naturally and ethnically very special and delicate. However, their sensitivity can be a problem. Because a slight change in the overall climate and weather in this zone, even as litt le as half a degree, the gradual global warming could risk the life of an entire society and culture. The rapid rise in the temperature is currently becoming more and more evident, resulting in the intensification of the loss of sea ice in the Arctic ecosystem. Now, it is a fact that the Arctic inhabitants were challenged in the past as they needed to adapt to the extreme cold and freezing weather with sub-zero temperatures. In time, they were able to adjust and for a time, were thriving in this Arctic community. However, the recent gradual changes in the climate could mean that the wildlife biodiversity and the communities who are living in this area will have to be faced with new obstacles and challenges. The several groups of indigenous people such as the Inuit are currently dealing with a number of problems and difficulties in their everyday lives. The drastic negative effects are now becoming a serious issue and concern for these people, as they fear that soon, if no proper cou rse of action will be taken, then their entire society and the whole entire community will no longer thrive and exist and will be gone forever. During the last decade, the people in the region have noticed different environmental changes. One of these is the loss of a great amount of ice sheets and when ice melts, what remains is the dry harsh desert. Another environmental problem is the thinning of the ice, which has resulted to difficulty in traveling and stranded hunters. Arctic hunters are having a harder time building igloos, which are impermanent or emergency shelters due to the change in the snow conditions. They are also starting to be more careful when chasing and going for animals. These animals have also changed. Caribou and other animals have decreased greatly in population. They also appear to be unhealthier, looking much skinnier than they used to. In addition, because of the increasing temperatures and the fact that Arctic people are not used to this as they are accus tomed to the cold, reports of sunburns and rashes have increased. The melting permafrost, or the permanently frozen land, has damaged and destroyed a couple of houses and roads, and have also caused erosion, unsteadiness and landslides. Moreover, since rain is less occurring, water from a few rivers and ponds are not anymore

Propose a New Policy - same bill Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Propose a New Policy - same bill - Essay Example Therefore, in order to reduce this disparity a policy to monitor the nursing staffing standards for patient safety and quality care will be significant. The introduction of this bill will enhance the working conditions of the nurses. This is through protecting them from being overworked or exploted by the employers. On the other hand, the quality of health care delivery will improve significant as the concentration of a nurse towards the patient will improve significantly. This aspect will play a significant role in enhancing the safety of the patients. This is through compelling the healthcare centers to employ adequate number of nursing to serve the patients (Croskerry, 2009). Lastly, through the new bill, the health consumers will improve their trust towards the heathcare centers. The increase in the number of nurses in order to offer high quality care will have significant impact on the cost of health care in the country. This is likely to exclude many low income earners from accessing the services as the healthcare centers are likely to shift the burden of the extra costs to the

Sleep health Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Sleep health - Research Paper Example planned sleep is associated with various health deficiencies, which include loss of memory, distorted learning abilities and mood problems (Bonnet, 2011). Additionally, without enough sleep, it is naturally difficult for an individual to concentrate or focus. According to a research published in the Southern Medical Journal, sleep deprivation is one of the causes of the cardiovascular diseases, because sleep is essential for giving the heart and the vascular system the much needed rest (Brannon, Feist, & Updegraff, 2013). Sufficient sleep is especially important for adults, considering that they form the bulk of the productive workforce, thus requires being healthy and free of such sleep disorders that may hamper their productivity and effective duty performance. Therefore, increasing the percentage of adults who are able to get sufficient sleep on a daily basis is an important aspect of improving the general health and welfare of the society. Thus, the objective of this discussion is to seek ‘increasing the proportion of adults who get sufficient sleep’. The discussion will focus on female college students as the target community population. The proposed health promotion and disease prevention program is the combination of a wellness support program with prophylactic naps. According to the data from the National Institute of Health (NHI) that has been published in the Journal of Sleep medicine, 29% of the adult American population sleeps for less than 7 hours in a day (Schoenberg& Adams, 2009). Additionally, a study by the institute of medicine has indicated that between 50 and 70 million adults within the USA are suffering from diverse sleep and wakefulness disorders (Institute of medicine, 2006). Another data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has indicated that 10.1% of the whole adult population in the USA has reported having insufficient sleep annually (CDC, 2008). The study by the CDC indicated that among the 403,981 respondents that were

Economic Development Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Economic Development - Essay Example It is only by setting up and effectively executing proper economic development plans that these are achieved. New Jersey State employs a complex economic development plan. This encompasses both government initiatives and private sector initiatives. They all work in tandem towards the realization of a common goal which is uplifting the economy of the state. It is an intricate development plan that has so far worked out perfectly well. One of the arms of the intricate development plan of New Jersey State is the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). This is machinery for protecting and enhancing the environment of the state. The environment is a very key aspect of the economy. Economic development would come to a halt if the environment is not protected. Industries would pollute the air with toxic gases; the water bodies with lethal effluents; there would be unbearable noise; there would be uncontrolled deforestation among others. All these have dire consequences for the develop ment of the state. The state would lose its work force due to the death or ailment of its citizens. All sectors of the economy would thus be poorly managed. There would be poor schools, poor hospitals, and poor transport systems just among others. In short, there would be no development. In order to guard against this the state employs the use of a principal development plan, the Department of Environmental Protection. The BEDI program is seen as possible way to spur the return of brownfields to productive economic use through financial assistance to public entities in the redevelopment of brownfields. It as well enhances the security and improvement of the viability of a project which has the financing of section 108 guaranteed loan authorities. Hence, due to this, the BEDI grants must be used in conjunction with a new section 108 guaranteed loan commitment. Section 108 is the loan guarantee provision of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. Another key economic dev elopment plan that the state of New Jersey uses is the Voluntary Cleanup Program (VCP). The private sector contributes to the environmental development of the state through this program. It is an initiative that allows any interested parties to take part in a cleanup program of the state. This helps to alleviate filthy spots in the state. Any interested party that feels they are in a position to foot the challenges that come with cleaning up an identified site are welcome. They should have the will and the ability to conduct the exercise. There is a cleanup Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) for the state. The interested party enters into a cleanup Memorandum of Agreement with the state. This works out the modalities of the exercise. Through these cleanup programs, the state is capable of enhancing the hygiene of its ambience. By so doing, a stimulus to economic development is inevitable. It is a proper economic development plan. The Brownfields Economic Development Initiative is another major economic development plan from which the state of New Jersey benefits. This could very well be the most outstanding of them all. It is used for the sake of promoting and stimulating economic developm

Sleep health Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Sleep health - Research Paper Example planned sleep is associated with various health deficiencies, which include loss of memory, distorted learning abilities and mood problems (Bonnet, 2011). Additionally, without enough sleep, it is naturally difficult for an individual to concentrate or focus. According to a research published in the Southern Medical Journal, sleep deprivation is one of the causes of the cardiovascular diseases, because sleep is essential for giving the heart and the vascular system the much needed rest (Brannon, Feist, & Updegraff, 2013). Sufficient sleep is especially important for adults, considering that they form the bulk of the productive workforce, thus requires being healthy and free of such sleep disorders that may hamper their productivity and effective duty performance. Therefore, increasing the percentage of adults who are able to get sufficient sleep on a daily basis is an important aspect of improving the general health and welfare of the society. Thus, the objective of this discussion is to seek ‘increasing the proportion of adults who get sufficient sleep’. The discussion will focus on female college students as the target community population. The proposed health promotion and disease prevention program is the combination of a wellness support program with prophylactic naps. According to the data from the National Institute of Health (NHI) that has been published in the Journal of Sleep medicine, 29% of the adult American population sleeps for less than 7 hours in a day (Schoenberg& Adams, 2009). Additionally, a study by the institute of medicine has indicated that between 50 and 70 million adults within the USA are suffering from diverse sleep and wakefulness disorders (Institute of medicine, 2006). Another data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has indicated that 10.1% of the whole adult population in the USA has reported having insufficient sleep annually (CDC, 2008). The study by the CDC indicated that among the 403,981 respondents that were

EasyJet plc (airline strategy report) Assignment - 1

EasyJet plc (airline strategy report) - Assignment Example Its technology is at a strong point though there is need for improvement with constant growth of new technology (Simister 2011). Threat of entry is very low compared to heavy budget connected to airline demands. Globalization is providing the company with new opportunities for new markets allowing the company expands through different nations. EasyJet has a great potential of growth within the airline industry because of its ability to operate in small airports where other airlines in these airports is very low (Bamber et al. 2009). The diagram above indicates that EasyJet is in a favorable position giving it the ability to take up a growth strategy which is aggressive. It is evident that the airline is operating in a stable and attractive industry giving it competitive advantages coupled with significant financial strength. From the above analysis, it is quite evident that EasyJet strategy is adequate in relation to the airline industry market demand. However, there are several issues that the company needs to address to strengthen its strategies. The following recommendations are necessary; There is need for EasyJet to expand its geographical market to other market apart from its concentration in Europe and countries near Europe. By so doing the company will be able to capture low cost airline demand especially in developing countries. In order to increase its competition in the low cost airlines, it is important for EasyJet to improve its facilities of operating the flights. Improving its facilities will provide the airline with opportunities to operate better in markets. Even in establishment of low cost flights, EasyJet need to create different boarding classes to fit a wide segment of its target market. For instance, businessmen prefer business class while travelling which cannot be the same case for other individuals. The company can engage its customer through offering group discounts for customer travelling as group. For

Gainesboro Machine Tools Corporation Essay Example for Free

Gainesboro Machine Tools Corporation Essay Kendle International Inc. We looked at the competitive landscape and, based on what was happening, knew we were either going to sell Kendle, grow or disappear. It was May 1997, and Candace Kendle, the chairman and chief executive officer of Kendle International Inc. (Kendle), and her husband Christopher C. Bergen, the president and chief operating officer, were reviewing the strategic options for their Cincinnati, Ohio based company. Kendle, a business they had founded over 15 years previously, conducted clinical trials for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to test the safety and efficacy of their new drugs. The company had grown successfully to $13 million of sales and had attracted significant business from major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Kendle was competing, however, with several larger contract research organizations (CRO), many of which had an international presence that allowed them to do clinical studies outside the United States and gave them an advantage when competing for major projects. To compete more effectively, Candace and Chris had embarked on a plan to grow through acquisition, particularly internationally, and to finance this growth through a public offering of equity. Toward this end, by the spring of 1997 Kendle had lined up two potential European acquisitions—U-Gene, a CRO in the Netherlands with 1996 sales of $12.5 million, and gmi, a Germanbased CRO with $7 million in sales. To finance these acquisitions, Kendle had worked out possible debt financing with Nationsbank and was working with two investment banks on an Initial Public Offering (IPO) that would repay the bank debt if successful and provide the equity base for future acquisitions. It was now time to decide whether to go ahead with the full program of two acquisitions, a large debt financing and an equity issue. Kendle History Candace and Chris met in 1979 while working at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Candace had received her doctorate in pharmacy from the University of Cincinnati, then taught in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Her scientific specialty was virology. At the Children’s Hospital, Candace was serving as the director of pharmacy, working as an investigator on a study of an antiviral drug for the pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome. Chris, a Wharton MBA, was a senior administrator at the hospital. Research Associate Indra A. Reinbergs prepared this case under the supervision of Professors Dwight B. Crane and Paul W. Marshall as the basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. Copyright  © 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-7685, write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of Harvard Business School. 1 Looking for something new, Candace and Chris began to discuss the idea of going into business together. One day in early 1981 Candace received an unexpected visit from a new physician, replacing the usual medical monitor for her project with Burroughs Wellcome. This physician was a pioneer in the  contract clinical research business. As he described how his business worked, Candace became more and more intrigued. When he left that day, she immediately called Chris and said, â€Å"I’ve got a business idea!† The concept was to set up a small research consulting firm that would take on outsourced research and development (RD) work on a contract basis from large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Based on the positive response she received from potential clients, Candace left her job at the hospital in June 1981 and Chris left his job in December 1981. Kendle International Inc. was incorporated in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1981, with Candace taking 55% of the shares, and Chris 45%. Candace had strong ties to the Cincinnati area. Her grandfather, a coal miner, had moved there from Appalachia, and the clan had grown to about 140 members, including Candace’s two sons from a previous marriage. By January 1982, Candace and Chris were working from Candace’s parents’ home. Kendle started as a small company with a few contracts, and business grew slowly through referrals from professional colleagues. Kendle suffered the usual bumps of a start-up business, particularly in the late 1980s when it suffered a loss for two years and ran up $1 million in bank debt on a $250,000 line of credit. Afraid that its bank would call the loan, the company went through a bankruptcy scare. Fortunately, Kendle succeeded in attracting business from a new client, the pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle Co. (Searle). By the early 1990s, the company was turned around and it generated annual sales of about $2.5 million. Candace and Chris were married in 1991. The Pharmaceutical Lifecycle The clinical research process was influenced by government regulations that required drugs to pass through a series of steps before they could be marketed for public use. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulated pharmaceuticals. To receive FDA approval, a drug had to meet safety and efficacy standards for a specific indication (medical diagnosis). A drug for hypertension, for example, would have to lower blood pressure by a certain statistically significant amount without  producing unacceptable side effects. The entire FDA approval process could take from 8 to 15 years and involve several thousand patients.1 After a pharmaceutical company discovered a new drug and completed pre-clinical testing on animals in the laboratory, an Investigational New Drug application was filed with the FDA. The drug then passed through three phases of clinical testing on humans. Before beginning each subsequent phase, the drug company had to submit additional regulatory information to the FDA. Phase I Phase I studies were primarily concerned with assessing the drugs safety. This initial phase of testing in humans was done in a small number of healthy volunteers (20 to 100), such as students, who were usually paid for participation. Phase II Once Phase I testing had proven the drug’s safety, Phase II tested its efficacy in a small number of patients (100 to 300) with the medical diagnosis. It was specifically designed to determine the likely effective dose in patients. Phase III In a Phase III study, the drug was tested on a larger patient population (1,000 to 3,000) at multiple clinical sites. The purpose was to provide a more thorough understanding of the drugs effectiveness, benefits, and the range of possible adverse reactions. Most Phase II and Phase III studies were blinded studies in which some patients received the experimental drug, while control groups received a placebo or an already approved drug. Once a Phase III study was successfully completed, a pharmaceutical company requested FDA approval for marketing the drug by filing a New Drug Application, which averaged about 100,000 pages. †¢ 200-033 Phase IV Post-marketing testing (of at least 300 patients per trial) was sometimes conducted for high-risk drugs to catch serious side effects (liver toxicity) and monitor them for long-term effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. The pharmaceutical companies traditionally designed and conducted their own clinical trials. They selected the research sites and recruited investigators to conduct the trials of the new drug. Investigators were often medical school professors at teaching hospitals, but they could also be professional investigators who conducted clinical trials at dedicated centers or occasionally regular physicians who ran trials, particularly Phase IV trials, out of their private practices. These investigators then recruited patients, sometimes with the help of the pharmaceutical company, to participate in the study. After patients were recruited, there was a considerable amount of data collection by the investigators, monitoring of the process and data retrieval by the pharmaceutical company, and analysis of the data to determine whether the statistical criteria for safety and efficacy were met. Finally, there was the complicated process of compiling the data and preparing the long report for the FDA. The Contract Research Business In the 1970s, large pharmaceutical concerns in the United States began to look for ways to outsource their clinical testing work as their RD budgets grew. At the beginning, contract research was a small cottage industry and the work was awarded on a piecemeal basis. As Chris recalled, â€Å"For years, there had been companies conducting animal testing and Phase I, but there was no one managing the entire research and development process. The acronym ‘CRO’ (contract research organization) did not exist, pharmaceutical companies gave out only small contracts, and did not have much confidence in for-profit research managers.† The growth of the CRO industry was stimulated by pricing pressures on drug companies that led them to try to transfer the fixed costs of clinical research into a variable cost through outsourcing. As Chris described, The general problem that drug companies face is balancing a variable workload with a fixed workforce. The problem is that you don’t know when the guy in the white lab coat will come running down the hall, beaker in hand, shouting, ‘Eureka, I’ve got it, it’s going to cure disease X’. When he does that, you know your workload is going to spike. Your workload is impacted by the rate of discovery, the number of projects killed in vitro and, subsequent to that, how many studies get cancelled due to safety or efficacy problems in human testing. Pure CROs like Kendle derived their income solely from the outsourced portion of the RD budget of pharmaceutical clients. In theory, any part of the clinical testing process could be outsourced. While most pre-clinical discovery was conducted in-house by drug companies, the trend in the 1990s was for CROs to receive contracts to manage the entire clinical research piece, especially 3 Phases II and III. The whole process was an incredible race against time, as every day for which FDA approval was delayed could cost the pharmaceutical client over $1 million in lost revenues. Pharmaceutical contracts ranged in duration from a few months to several years. For multi-year contracts involving clinical trials, a portion of the contract fee was paid at the time the trial was initiated, with the balance of the contract fee payable in installments over the trial duration, as performance-based milestones (investigator recruitment, patient enrollment, delivery of databases) were completed. Contracts were bid by CROs on a fixed-price basis, and the research was a labor-intensive business. The contract bids depended on careful estimation of the hourly labor rates and the number of hours each activity would take. The estimation process involved statistical algorithms, which took into account the length of the study, frequency and length of site visits, the number of sites involved, the number of patients involved, and the number of pages per report form. A premium would be added for more complicated therapeutic testing. As the chief financial officer Tim Mooney described the business, The way that Kendle makes money is like any professional service firm—We focus on maximizing labor utilization, especially at the operational level. We assume a 65% to 70% utilization rate, so profit margins are higher if we have a higher utilization rate of personnel. We have the same assumed profit margin on all levels of people, but we can charge higher rates for contracts where we have specific therapeutic expertise that is in demand. Margins can also be higher on some large projects when we can share overhead costs across more sites. The business of contract research entailed several types of business risk. With contracts running at an average of $1 million for companies of Kendle’s size, client dependence was a major risk. Project cancellation by the client and â€Å"change orders† to reduce project costs were also increasingly frequent in the CRO industry, as healthcare cost pressures intensified. On the other hand, product liability for medical risks was borne by the pharmaceutical company. Competition in the 1990s By the mid-1990s, contract research had evolved into a full-service industry, recognized by both the pharmaceutical/biotech industries and the financial community. In 1995, worldwide spending on RD by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies was estimated at $35 billion, with $22 billion spent on the type of drug development work that CROs could do. Of the $22 billion, only $4.6 billion was outsourced to CROs in 1995. While RD spending by pharmaceutical companies was growing at 10% a year, CROs were growing at twice that rate.2 Specialized CROs could manage increasingly complex drug trials—in the previous decade, the number of procedures per trial and average number of patients per trial had doubled—far more efficiently than their pharmaceutical clients.3 Kendle participated in this growth in clinical research. Its net revenues grew 425% from $2.5 million in 1992 to $13 million in 1996. From a loss of $495,000 in 1992, its net income rose to $1.1 million by 1996. By 1996, Kendle had conducted clinical trials for 12 of the world’s 20 largest pharmaceutical companies. Kendle’s three largest clients were G.D. Searle, Procter Gamble, and Amgen, which generated 48%, 19%, and 13% of Kendles 1996 revenues, respectively. (See Exhibits 1 and 2 for Kendle’s income statements and balance sheets.) 2 J.C. Bradford Co., analyst report, January 15, 1998, pp. 5-6. 3 The Economist, â€Å"Survey of the Pharmaceutical Industry,† February 21, 1998, p. 4.200-033 The contract research industry was very fragmented, with hundreds of CROs worldwide. In the 1990s, in response to the increased outsourcing of pharmaceutical RD, and a demand for global trials, consolidation among the CROs began. A few key players emerged and went public, creating a new industry for Wall Street to watch. Many CRO start-ups were founded by former drug company executives who decided to form their own operations. After a period of internal growth, some of the start-ups began growing through a financial â€Å"roll-up† strategy. An industry publication listed 18 top players in North America, with total contract research revenues of $1.7 billion. The top five public companies, ranked by 1996 revenues, were Quintiles Transnational Corp. ($537.6 million), Covance Inc. ($494.8 million), Pharmaceutical Product Development Inc ($152.3 million), ClinTrials Research Inc. ($93.5 million), and Parexel International Corp. ($88 million).4 (See Exhibit 3 for recent sales and pr ofit data on CROs.) With its talent pool of scientists at the Research Triangle and U.S. headquarters of the pharmaceutical giants Glaxo and Burroughs Wellcome (later merged as Glaxo Wellcome), the state of North Carolina quickly became the center of the burgeoning CRO industry. Two of the â€Å"big five† companies, Quintiles and Pharmaceutical Product Development, were started there by academic colleagues of Candace’s. Quintiles Transnational was considered to be the †gold standard of the industry.† Quintiles was founded in 1982 by Dennis Gillings, a British biostatistician who had worked at Hoechst and was a professor at the University of North Carolina, where Candace completed her postdoctoral work. After raising $39 million in a 1994 IPO, Quintiles went on an acquisition spree, adding other professional service businesses. For example, the firm provided sales and marketing services to support the launch of new drug products. By the end of 1996, Quintiles was the worldâ€⠄¢s largest CRO, with 7,000 employees in 56 offices in 20 countries. A typical clinical study managed by Quintiles was conducted at 160 sites in 12 countries, involving 10,000 patients. Quintiles was more diversified than many of its CRO competitors, with about 65% of revenues derived from the  core CRO business and 35% from other services.5 Pharmaceutical Product Development (PPD) was founded in 1989 by Fred Eshelman, a colleague of Candace’s from the postdoctoral program in pharmacy. Like the founder of Quintiles, Eshelman had worked in drug research for several pharmaceutical firms, including Glaxo and Beecham. PPD’s revenues jumped 500% between 1990 and 1994, based on such work as multi-year contracts for AIDS research for the National Institutes of Health. PPD conducted a successful IPO in March 1996, with its stock jumping from $18 per share to $25.50 per share on the first day of trading. PPD bought a U.K. Phase I facility in November 1995, and in September 19 96 merged with another leading CRO. Their combined net revenues exceeded $200 million. Kendle at the Crossroads To Candace and Chris, it was clear that certain competitive capabilities were necessary for companies of Kendle’s size to compete successfully with the major CROs: therapeutic expertise (in specific medical areas) broad range of services (pharmaceutical companies wanted to work with fewer CROs, with each offering a wide range of services across multiple phases of the RD process); integrated clinical data management (the ability to efficiently collect, edit and analyze data from thousands of patients with various clinical conditions from many geographically dispersed sites); 4 â€Å"Annual Report: Leading CROs,† RD Directions, September 1997, pp. 28+. 5 William Blair Co. LLC analyst report, Quintiles Transnational Corp., June 20, 1997, p. 3. international, multi-jurisdictional presence (to speed up drug approval, tests were being launched in several countries at once); With the exception of international presence, Candace and Chris felt comfortable with their ability to meet these criteria. Kendle’s staff had scientific expertise in multiple therapeutic areas, including cardiovascular, central nervous system, gastrointestinal, immunology, oncology, respiratory, skeletal disease and inflammation. The company also had broad capabilities, including management of studies in Phases II through Phase IV. It did not consider the absence of Phase I capabilities to be an issue, since this activity was quite separate. (See Exhibit 4 for a comparison of CRO geographical locations.) To build an integrated clinical data management capability, Chris had directed the development of TrialWare ®, a proprietary software system that allowed global data collection and processing and the integration of clinical data with clients’ in-house data management systems. TrialWare ® consisted of several modules including a database management system that greatly reduced study start-up costs and time by standardizing database design and utilizing scanned image technology to facilitate the design of data entry screens, the point-and-click application of edits from a pre-programmed library, and workflow management (parallel processing). Other modules included a system that coded medical history, medication and adverse event data and a touch-tone telephone system that was used for patient  randomization, just-in-time drug supply and collection of real-time enrollment data. Against the backdrop of a changing industry, Candace and Chris felt the need to develop additional business skills and focus Kendle’s strategy. To clarify their management roles, Candace and Chris switched their existing responsibilities. Chris pointed out, â€Å"Candace became CEO as we realized that her focus was long-range and I took over as Chief Operating Officer to focus on the short-range. In addition, the marketing strength of our competitors was propelling them further and further ahead of Kendle. Candace brought her science background and entrepreneurial skills, while I brought my management. The problem was that we were relatively weak in sales and marketing.† To broaden their skills, Candace went off in 1991 to the Owner/President Management Program (OPM), an executive education program run by Harvard Business School for three weeks a year over three years. Chris followed her to OPM in 1994. After completing the OPM program, Candace assessed the situation, We have to be big enough relative to our competitors to take on large, international projects. When Searle was looking for CROs for international work, all we could do was possibly subcontract it out to small shops. In contrast, Quintiles had six overseas offices of its own. Furthermore, when Searle calls and says, ‘I just got off the phone, Quintiles will cut their price by a million dollars,’ if you’re too small, you’re not going to be able to respond to that. Candace and Chris realized that Kendle could not grow fast enough internally to keep up with its peers and did not have the cash for acquisitions. They entertained the thought of selling Kendle, and were approached several times about a sale. But by nature, they were a competitive, athletic couple. Chris got up to play squash every morning at 7 AM, and Candace was an avid rower, recently winning a gold medal in a Cincinnati regatta. Perhaps not surprisingly, Candace and Chris decided to grow the firm and take it public rather than sell. As Candace described their motivation, â€Å"We were not driven to be a public company as such, but primarily to be bigger, and for this, we  needed public financing to succeed in the new competitive landscape. The whole target was not to let the big guys get too far out ahead of us.† Preparations for Growth By 1994, Kendle had grown to $4.4 million in revenues. Candace, the driving force throughout the IPO process, sought advice from an old college friend, a well-known Cincinnati businessman. He advised her, â€Å"before you go public, practice being a public company.† Candace therefore formulated a plan for Kendle to go public in 1999. Kendle began hiring key managers to build up functional units. Between 1994 and February 1997, new directors of clinical data management, information technology, biostatistics, finance, mergers and acquisitions, regulatory affairs, and human resources were hired. As Chris described, â€Å"the plan was to put this infrastructure in place to look and act like a public company— communications, IT, finance. The idea was hire at the top and they’ll fill in their organization.† Many of these new managers had previously worked together at other companies. To prepare for Wall Street scrutiny, Kendle began issuing internal quarterly fi nancial statements and sharing them with employees in an open-book management style. Candace and Chris tried to make the growing number of employees feel like â€Å"part of the family† in other ways, too. The Kendle â€Å"photo gallery† displayed professional portraits of employees with their favorite hobbies. In 1995 Chris led the development of a corporate mission statement and a document on strategic plans that was shared with all employees. Kendle was organized in a matrix fashion (see Exhibit 5 for organizational chart). Each department was treated as a strategic business unit (SBU) with a director who established standards and carried profit responsibility. At the same time, each research contract was managed by a project manager who assembled a team from across the various SBUs. Clinical trials involved five functional SBUs at Kendle: 1. Regulatory Affairs recruited investigators, helped them with FDA registration forms, and obtained approval from ethics boards. Regulatory Affairs maintained a database of 5,000 investigators. 2. Clinical Monitoring sent clinical research associates (CRA) out to the testing sites (every 4 to 6 weeks) to enforce Good Clinical Practice regulations. The CRAs were typically young, single health care professionals who spent a significant amount of their time on the road. The CRA would collect data from investigators, resolve queries generated by Clinical Data Management, and promote patient enrollment. 3. Clinical Data Management produced a â€Å"locked† database that could be submitted to the FDA. Data from case report forms were input into a computer system and â€Å"cleaned† through a manual review of the forms and an automated check of the databases. The challenge was to lock a database quickly while maintaining data quality. 4. Biostatistics would â€Å"unblind† the locked database and analyze it to determine if the data confirmed that the test results met the criteria for safety and efficacy. Biostatistics also defined the scope of new studies. 5. Medical Writing generated â€Å"the truckload of paper submitted to the FDA† for a New Drug Application, including a statistical analysis, a clinical assessment, preclinical and clinical data, a description of the manufacturing process, and the supporting patient documentation. 1996: The Celebrexâ„ ¢ Study, Filing Preparations, and European acquisitions 1996 was a busy year for Candace, Chris, and Kendle’s new management team. They simultaneously began conducting a major drug study, working with underwriters on IPO preparations, and looking for overseas acquisition targets. In 1996 Kendle managed 62 clinical studies at 4,100 sites involving approximately 20,000 patients. Celebrexâ„ ¢ Study In January 1996, Kendle began working on a major drug called Celebrexâ„ ¢ (celecoxib). Its client Searle was engaged in a neck-and-neck race with Merck, the largest U.S. drug company, to be the first to market a COX-2 inhibitor. A COX-2 inhibitor was a new type of anti-inflammatory drug that promised low incidence of bleeding ulcers in long-term, high-dosage users such as arthritis patients. The Searle-Merck race was closely followed in the business press. Searle awarded the international portion of the Celebrexâ„ ¢ contract to another CRO, since Kendle only had facilities for testing in the United States. However, Kendle did win the contract to conduct all the U.S. Phase II and III trials. The Celebrexâ„ ¢ contract was a â€Å"huge feather in our cap,† recalled the chief financial officer. â€Å"In order to beat Merck, we worked very hard and kept compressing the timelines.† To head the Celebrexâ„ ¢ project, Kendle hired Bill Sietsema, PhD, as assistant director of clinical research. A therapeutic expert in skeletal diseases and inflammation, Sietsema had worked at Proctor Gamble for 12 years. While Sietsema served as overall program director, Chris acted as the operational project manager, meeting with his Searle counterpart in Chicago on a monthly basis. In early 1997, Kendle also set up a new regional office in Chicago, close to Searle headquarters. For Kendle, the Celebrexâ„ ¢ project was a chance to â€Å"show what we could do and to develop a reputation as a leader in the field of skeletal disease and inflammation.† Kendle actively helped investigators recruit arthritis patients, running television advertisements, directing interested volunteers to a call center. Three hundred  investigators enrolled over 10,000 patients, producing over one million pages of case report forms. Most importantly, through close integration of information systems with Searle, Kendle was able to beat an industry standard. Instead of taking the typical six months to one year, the time span between the last patient in Phase II and the first in Phase III, which began in June 1996, was only 22 days. Preparation for SEC Filing By the time the Celebrexâ„ ¢ program rolled around, Candace and Chris felt that they might have to go public earlier than intended because of the competitive landscape. The new chief financial officer, Tim Mooney, took a leading role in the preparations. Prior to joining Kendle in May 1996, Mooney had worked as CFO at The Future Now, Inc., a computer reseller and Hook-SupeRx, a retail drugstore chain. At Kendle, Mooney replaced the controller with an audit manager from Coopers Lybrand to beef up his staff. Mooney also led the building of many of the other financially related departments at Kendle. To act as the lead underwriters on the IPO, in August 1996 Mooney chose two regional investment banks, Chicago-based William Blair Company, L.L.C., which had handled the 1995 IPO of Kendle’s competitor Parexel, and Wessels, Arnold Henderson from Minneapolis. William Blair began putting Kendle through the paces of preparing to file a preliminary prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The process of going public generally took from 60 to 180 days. One of the key steps in the process was the conversion of Kendle from a subchapter corporation to a C corporation at the time of the IPO. (Subchapter S corporations were entities with 35 or fewer shareholders that were treated like partnerships for tax purposes. Corporate income tax was passed through tax-free to the owners who then paid personal income taxes due.) U-Gene In October 1996 Mooney hired Tony Forcellini, a former colleague, as director of mergers and acquisitions (MA). Tony had worked at Arthur Andersen in the tax department, and then as a treasurer at Hook-SupeRx with Mooney. The search for European acquisition targets was mainly conducted by Candace and Tony Forcellini, with back-up support by Tim Mooney and Chris. All the while, Chris and Bill Sietsema were working away on the Celebrexâ„ ¢ program. Forcellini’s first decision was easy—whether to pursue an offering memorandum that landed on his desk shortly after he arrived. The company for sale was U-Gene Research B.V. (U-Gene), a CRO based in Utrecht, the Netherlands. U-Gene was represented by Technomark Consulting Services Ltd. (Technomark), a London-based consulting firm uniquely specializing in the healthcare industry. Technomark had an extensive database on European CROs and was primarily in the business of matching its pharmaceutical company clients’ trial s with appropriate European CROs, but it also had a small investment banking division. U-Gene, a full-service CRO, was an attractive target for Kendle. The venture capitalist owners were actively looking for buyers. With a 38-bed Phase I facility in Utrecht and regional offices in the United Kingdom and Italy, U-Gene could increase both Kendle’s service offering and geographic presence. Since its founding in 1986, U-Gene had served more than 100 clients, including 19 of the worlds largest pharmaceutical companies. In 1996, U-Gene participated in 115 studies at approximately 500 sites involving approximately 4,700 patients and recorded net revenues of $12.5 million, a 37% increase over the prior year, and operating profit of $1.3 million, a 47% increase over the prior year. Because of its U.K. and Italian offices, U-Gene viewed itself as on the way to becoming a pan-European CRO.  (See Exhibit 6 for U-Gene financial statements.) With momentum building, in November 1996, Forcellini seized upon U-Gene as Kendle’s possible entry into Europe and submitted a bid, offering cash and private stock. Unfortunately, Kendle lost out on this bid to a competitor, Collaborative Clinical Research, Inc, as U-Gene’s owners either wanted a full cash deal or stock from a public company. Collaborative was a competitor slightly larger than Kendle ($25.7 million in revenues) that had gone public in June 1996 and had established a software partnership with IBM. Although it had access to investigators outside the United States, Collaborative also viewed U-Gene as the establishment of a European presence. On February 12, 1997 Collaborative announced that it had signed a letter of intent to acquire U-Gene in exchange for 1.75 million newly issued shares. While this put Kendle out of the picture, the prospects of a deal were not completely killed. On the same day, February 12, 1997, Collaborative also announced that its first-quarter 1997 earnings would be significantly below expectations. On the next day, on analyst speculation that a major client contract had been lost, their stock fell by 27.3%, closing at $9.00.6 This put Collaborative’s UGene deal in jeopardy. Underwriter Concerns About two weeks after Collaborative’s announcement, on February 25, 1997, another CRO, ClinTrials, also suffered a drop in stock price. ClinTrials’ stock lost more than half its market value,  dropping 59%, to $9.50 per share. The fall began when an analyst from Wessels Arnold downgraded the ClinTrials stock to â€Å"hold† from â€Å"buy,† citing a number of key management departures, and continued after ClinTrials announced that its first-quarter earnings would be half its year-earlier profit. The reason for the unexpected earnings decline was the cancellation of five projects totaling $37 million, with the possibility of even lower earnings due to an unresolved project dispute with a client.7 ClinTrials’ negative performance began to affect other CRO stocks, including that of Quintiles.8 With client concentration an issue in ClinTrials’ stock performance, William Blair developed doubts about the timing of Kendle’s IPO. Although Kendle was close to filing its preliminary prospectus, on the day after ClinTrial’s stock dropped, William Blair analysts had a meeting with Kendle’s management and told them that they had decided to withdraw as lead underwriters in the IPO. Candace was resolved to keep going. She said, â€Å"There’s no way out of the concentration issue. We can’t buy our way out of it, because we can’t do MA deals until we have a public currency, and every day Searle is bringing us more work, we won’t tell them no.† She then asked Mooney to find new investment bankers, and he thought, â€Å"what am I going to do now?† Hoping for a lead, Mooney called up a former security analyst from Wessels Arnold who had gone to work at Lehman Bros. Although Kendle was smaller than Lehman’s usual clients, Lehman agreed to underwrite Kendle’s IPO, with the reassurance that â€Å"we think we can sell through the client concentration issue.† After an agreement with New York-based Lehman was reached, Mooney searched for a regional firm because, as he decided, â€Å"I didn’t want two New York-size egos. J.C. Bradford, based in Nashville, Tennessee, had a good reputation in the industry, and struck us as a nice regional bank. They were more retail-oriented than institutional-oriented, so they wouldn’t directly be competing with Lehman in types of clientele.† Bradford had managed the IPO of the first large CRO to go public (ClinTrials, in 1993) and Lehman had led the IPO of PPD in January 1996. Gmi and U-Gene revisited At the same time, Forcellini was moving ahead on the acquisition search. In January 1997 he tasked Technomark with using its CRO database to generate a list of possible European acquisition targets that met the following criteria: â€Å"ideally a CRO with United Kingdom headquarters; $5 million to $7 million in revenues; no Searle business; certain types of therapeutic expertise; strong in phases II through IV; and certain country locations.† The initial list had 50 European CROs, which Kendle narrowed down to 14 prospects. Technomark then contacted these 14 prospects to sound out their willingness to sell, bringing the number down to five candidates: three CROs in Germany, two in the United Kingdom, and one in the Netherlands (not U-Gene). To assess the prospects, Kendle used information from Technomark on comparable MA deals. Candace and Tony Forcellini then traveled around Europe for a week visiting the five companies. They decided to further pursue two companies: a small, 15-person monitoring organization in the United Kingdom and one in Germany. The U.K. prospect was quickly discarded because of an aggressive asking price and accounting problems. Kendle then moved on to the German target, a company named gmi. Its full name was GMI Gesellschaft fur Angewandte Mathematik und Informatik mbH. Founded in 1983, gmi provided a full range of Phase II to IV services. gmi had conducted trials in Austria, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and France, among other countries, and had experience in health economic studies and 7 â€Å"ClinTrials Predicts Sharply Lower Profit: Shares Plunge 59%†, The Wall Street Journal, February 26, 1997, p. B3. 8 David Ranii, â€Å"Investors avoiding Quintiles,† The News Observer, Raleigh, NC, February 27, 1997, p. C8. professional training programs. In 1996, gmi participated in 119 studies at multiple sites and recorded net revenues of $7 million, a 32% increase over the prior year, and operating profit of $1.4 million, a 16% increase over the prior year. At March 31, 1997, gmis backlog was approximately $9.6 million. gmi considered itself to be especially good at Phase III trials. (See Exhibit 7 for gmi financial statements.) While Candace and Forcellini were narrowing down European targets, Mooney was hunting for cash. In February 1997 Kendle met at a special lunch with its existing bankers, Star Bank (later renamed Firstar), in Cincinnati. Mooney recalled the conversation vividly: â€Å"After Candace and Chris described their plans, Star Bank’s CEO made a proposal, ‘If you keep Kendle a private company and avoid the hassles of being public, we’ll lend you the money you need for acquisitions.’† With the financing in hand, Candace and Forcellini visited gmi in Munich. While gmi’s owners were willing to talk, they did not have much interest in selling. As Mooney described it, â€Å"gmi was a classic case of having grown to a certain size, had a comfortable level of income, but weren’t interested in putting in the professional systems to grow beyond that level.† After several conversations in March, it was not clear that Kendle and gmi’s owners w ould be able to reach a mutually agreeable price. At this point in early April 1997, the possibility of U-Gene as an acquisition candidate heated up. After the U-Gene deal with Collaborative Research began to collapse, Kendle had initiated a carefully structured inquiry about U-Gene’s interest in renewed discussions. This inquiry led to further discussions and a request in April for Kendle to meet in Frankfurt to try to reach an agreement. With the gmi deal in doubt, Kendle agreed to try to reach closure with U-Gene. After some discussion, both sides agreed on a price of 30 million Dutch guilders, or about US$15.6 million, $14 million of which would be paid in cash, and the remaining $1.6 million would be in the form of a promissory note payable to the selling shareholders.  U-Gene wanted to complete the transaction within the next several weeks, so it would have to be financed at least initially by borrowings. Even if Kendle went ahead with an IPO, the equity financing would not be completed until the end of the summer. Discussions with gmi continued through this period since Kendle was confident about its ability to obtain financing from Star Bank. Ultimately, Kendle’s team was able to agree upon a price with gmi. The owners were willing to accept a price of 19.5 million Deutsche marks, or about US$12.3 million, with at least $9.5 million in cash. They would accept shares for the remaining $2.8 million, if Kendle successfully completed an IPO. The owners were willing to hold off the deal until the IPO issue was resolved. Closing the Deals and IPO Decision To complete both the U-Gene and gmi deals, Kendle would need to borrow about $25 million to $28 million, so financing became critical. Mooney went back to Star Bank to take the bankers up on their promise. He described their reaction: â€Å"Star Bank said they couldn’t lend $28 million to a company that only has $1 million in equity. Nobody did that. They might be willing to finance one acquisition, with the help of other banks, but there was no way that they would provide $28 million.† Mooney was quite angry, but had no choice but to look for other sources of financing. He first tried to get bridge financing from Lehman and Bradford, but they refused, saying that they had â€Å"gotten killed on such deals in the 1980s.† There was also a possibility of financing from First Chicago Bank, but this did not materialize. Finally, in late April 1997, Mooney contacted NationsBank, N.A., which was headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina and provided banking services to the CRO industry. Nationsbank expressed interest, but only in a large deal. Even $28 million was a small amount to Nationsbank. In 11  a few short weeks, Nationsbank ended up structuring a $30 million credit for Kendle, consisting of a $20 million, three-year revolving credit line and $10 million in five-year, subordinated notes. The interest rate on the credit line was tied to a money market base rate plus 0.50% (currently totaling 6.2%), and the subordinated debt carried a 12% rate. †So NationsBank stepped up in a pretty big way. They could have ended up with Kendle as a private company, with $30 million in debt.† Because of the risk, Nationsbank would also take warrants giving the bank the right to purchase 4% of Kendle’s equity, or up to 10% if the IPO was delayed and Kendle had to borrow the full amount to do both acquisitions. Lehman Brothers was confident about an IPO. The underwriters felt Kendle could raise $39 million to $40 million at a price between $12 and $14 per share, and that Candace and Chris could sell some of their shares as well. Premier Research Worldwide Ltd., a CRO with $15.2 million in 1996 revenues, had raised $46.75 million from its recent IPO in February 1997. Kendle felt they had a much better track record than Premier. Kendle now faced some difficult decisions. It could do the full program, including both acquisitions, taking the $30 million Nationsbank deal, and planning for an IPO in late summer. The successful acquisitions of gmi and U-Gene would establish Kendle as the sixth largest CRO in Europe, based on total revenues, and one of only four large CROs able to offer clients the full range of Phase I through Phase IV clinical trials in Europe. The pricing on the two acquisitions of 8 to 10 times EBITDA seemed in line with recent CRO deals (see Exhibit 8). And, once the IPO was completed, Kendle would have both a cash cushion and stock as a currency to help finance future growth and acquisitions. Assuming an IPO of 3 million new shares at a price of $13.00, Kendle would have a cash position of about $14 million and no debt in the capital structure. (See Exhibits 9 and 10 for pro forma  income statements and balance sheets showing the impact of the acquisitions and the IPO.) A related issue was how many of their shares Candace and Chris should sell if an IPO were done. Their current thinking was to sell 600,000 shares. Thus, a total of 3.6 million shares would be for sale at the time of the IPO, including a primary offering of 3 million shares and a secondary offering of 600,000 shares. This sale would reduce holdings controlled by Candace and Chris from 3.65 million shares (83.1% of the shares currently outstanding) to 3.05 million shares (43.4% of the new total outstanding). Doing the full IPO and acquisition program, however, was unprecedented among Kendle’s peers. â€Å"Nobody does this combination all at once—an IPO, senior- and sub-debt financing, and MA deals,† as Mooney described the situation. Furthermore, the stock prices of public CROs had been falling since last February (see Exhibits 11 and 12 for stock market valuation and price information). If Kendle bought into the full program and the market crashed or the IPO was unsuccessful, the company would have almost $30 million of debt on its books with a very modest equity base. Perhaps it would be better to do just the U-Gene acquisition and use Star Bank to finance it. After completing this acquisition, it could then pursue the IPO. This approach was safer, but of course Kendle might miss the IPO window and miss the opportunity to acquire the second company. Indeed, instead of discouraging Kendle from doing an IPO, the fall in CRO stock prices might be taken as a signal tha t Kendle should forge ahead before the window closed completely.