TEDxMonterey Student Speaker Contest

February 8, 2010 | | Comments Off

MIIS Students: Do you have an idea worth spreading?

On April 16th, MIIS will host TEDx Monterey, an independently organized TED event, in Irvine Auditorium. Innovative minds from a wide range of fields – including environmental sustainability, nuclear non-proliferation, and technological magic – will explore how we can “be the solution.” We’re also hoping to find one or two creative, passionate students to give a five to ten minute talk. Your talk will be live-streamed through our website and featured on the TEDx YouTube channel.
If you’re interested, please submit a one-page proposal that captures the “big idea” of your talk by March 1st to tedxmonterey@gmail.com. Tell us how we can “be the solution,” and don’t be afraid to show off your creative chops. And remember, TED Global is always looking for fresh ideas and voices, so you’ll never know who will be watching on April 16th!

Flickr photo by TEDxVancouver

In line with our commitment to align basic employee benefits with those of Middlebury, the Board of Trustees has endorsed the adoption of a new approach to time of for MIIS staff.  A full description of the new policies will be forthcoming later in the spring as we work through the operational details, but the essential elements are:

* Combined time off, instead of separate banks of sick and vacation time, to give the employee greater  discretion and responsibility for the use of time off.
* Ability to transfer excess CTO hours into an unlimited Sick Leave Reserve
* A medical leave assistance policy, which will allow staff to share some of their time off with colleagues in need.

Because of changes in the schedule of accruals, a  small number of people will lose up to one day, but will realize that loss only if they routinely use up all their sick time.  Most staff members will see an absolute increase in time off, in addition to the greater flexibility.

Stay tuned for further details.

At its January meeting, the MIIS board of trustees approved a Carbon Neutrality proposal that sets a goal of carbon neutrality for the Monterey Institute by 2016. As stated in the proposal, the Institute will “employ a combination of energy efficiency, materials conservation efforts, incentives to limit air travel, and carbon offsets to reach the neutrality goal.”  The proposal was developed by Ryan Bigelow, MAIEP, Clayton Snyder, MAIEP and MBA, and Jason Scorse, Associate Professor and Program Chair, MAIEP.

GSTILE student Simone Bonneville (MACI 2011, En, Ru, Fr) is interning as an escort interpreter at the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games. Assigned to interpret for the team of athletes from Tajikistan, Simone is putting to her consecutive interpreting training during her first year at MIIS to good use. Follow her adventures as a National Olympic Committee Assistant on her blog.

Yesterday President Ramaswamy announced that Robert Gallucci, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, will be the speaker at our Spring 2010 Commencement ceremony. He will also be awarded an honorary degree during the ceremony, which is scheduled for Saturday, May 22nd at 1PM, on the front lawn of historic Colton Hall. I hope you will all be able to attend this important event. 

Robert Gallucci became president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation on July 1, 2009. Previously, he served as Dean of Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, for 13 years. He completed 21 years of government service, serving since August 1994 with the U.S. Department of State as Ambassador at Large. In March 1998, the Department of State announced his appointment as Special Envoy to deal with the threat posed by the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction. He held this position, concurrent with his appointment as Dean, until January 2001.

Dr. Gallucci began his foreign affairs career at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in 1974. In 1978, he became a division chief in the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. From 1979 to 1981, he was a member of the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff. He then served as an office director in both the Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs (1982-83) and in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs (1983-84). In 1984, he left Washington to serve as the Deputy Director General of the Multinational Force and Observers, the Sinai peacekeeping force headquartered in Rome, Italy. Returning in 1988, he joined the faculty of the National War College where he taught until 1991. In April of that year he moved to United Nations Headquarters in New York to take up an appointment as the Deputy Executive Chairman of the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) overseeing the disarmament of Iraq. He returned toWashington in February 1992 to be the Senior Coordinator responsible for nonproliferation and nuclear safety initiatives in the former Soviet Union in the Office of the Deputy Secretary. In July 1992, Dr. Gallucci was confirmed as the Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs.

Dr. Gallucci was born in Brooklyn on February 11, 1946. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, followed by a master’s and doctorate in Politics from Brandeis University. Before joining the State Department, he taught at Swarthmore College, Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies and Georgetown University. He has received fellowships from the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Harvard University, and the Brookings Institution.

He has authored a number of publications on political-military issues, including Neither Peace Nor Honor: The Politics of American Military Policy in Vietnam (Johns Hopkins University Press 1975) and Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis with Joel S. Wit and Daniel Poneman (Brookings Press, April 2004). For Going Critical, he is the recipient of the 2005 Douglas Dillon Award given by the American Academy of Diplomacy for a book of distinction in the practice of diplomacy. He received the Department of the Army’s Outstanding Civilian Service Award in 1991, the Pi Sigma Alpha Award from the National Capital Area Political Science Association in 2000, and the Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary) from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in May 2002.

He is married to Jennifer Sims; they have a daughter and a son.

Kelley Calvert has  been awarded a Kevin Smokler Scholarship to attend the San Francisco Writer’s Conference the weekend of Feb 12-14. While there, she will be working with agents to sell her (nearly finished) book about her fossil fuel free journey around the states last summer.

Uwe Muegge, Chair of the Translation and Localization Management Program, is currently one of three authors featured on the home page of the German professional association for technical communication and information development (tekom). tekom is Europe’s largest professional association for technical communication.

Muegge’s article is titled “Controlled language – does my company need it?” and provides an introduction to this relatively new approach to standardized writing for improving the readability – and translatability! – of technical documents.

Professor Peter Grothe recently gave guest lectures at two of the leading universities in Thailand, Thammasat and Mahidol universites, on “President Obama–how is he doing?” He was also recruiting in Thailand and Bhutan.

Creative & Technology Cluster

January 29, 2010 | | Comments Off

The TEDxMonterey team last night went to a meeting with the Creative & Technology Cluster sponsored by the Monterey County Business Council.  This meeting was hosted by Access Monterey Peninsula (AMP) and brought together creative technology professionals with the mission of sharing ideas and resources to leverage existing and potential talent and expertise with a focus on film and video production, gaming and simulation, and interactive training and education.  This group was filled with amazing people who are all interested in the TEDx experience.

The enthusiasm for our project in the room was exciting and we are really looking forward to what this collaboration might create.  The Monterey County Business Council and AMP have already pledged to be strategic sponsors and partners in this process.  We want to extend a big thank you to the cluster.  The next cluster meeting with be a more social sharing event that is open to everyone on February 25th at CSUMB – more info at a later date.

Flickr photo by detritus

Flickr photo by detritus

Uwe Muegge, Chair of the Translation and Localization Management Program, was invited to present at the 9th Leipzig International Conference on Translation & Interpretation Studies (LICTRA), hosted by the Institute of Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies (IALT) at the University of Leipzig.

The theme for the 2010 LICTRA conference, held from May 19-21, 2010, is “T&I Research”, and Muegge will be presenting a paper on how TermWiki, a new wiki-based terminology management tool he helped develop, lowers the technology barrier in the teaching of college-level terminology management courses.