Monday, February 18. 1976
University Daily Kansan
2
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Grad students get the business from writing skills
By FRED JOHNSON
Success in the business world doesn't depend entirely upon knowledge of business, mathematics and economics. Graduate students in the University of Kansas School of Business are learning that you need to communicate clearly through written documents, reports and memoranda is an important part of a business executive's job.
After learning last summer that some companies were concerned about a decline in writing and presentation skills of some graduates in recent years, the business department helped to help the students in its master's degree program improve their writing.
Joseph Pichler, dean of the School of Business, said Friday that he had received a call last summer from an executive of a company on the business school's board of management, complaining of a nationwide decline in faculty quality of graduates during the last 10 years.
The company executive complained that the graduates didn't clearly state their conclusions or recommendations in their case studies or reports, he said.
PICHLER SAID after being told by the executive that some KU graduates had the same problem and after consulting four students at the school, the visers, the school's graduate assistance
committee met with James Gowen, director of freshman-sophomore English, and asked
The business school can't solve the problem nationwide, he said, "but we can certainly give our graduates an advantage over MBAs from other schools."
Gowen recommended hiring a teacher to supervise the writing students did in their classes.
Michael Valk, Lawrence graduate student and former assistant instructor in English, was hired last fall to supervise the students' writing.
DAVE SHULENBURGER, assistant professor and coordinator of the program, and he coordinated it informal. A student would write a term paper on memoranda and term papers during the course, he said, and if a professor thought a work to be difficult, he would have Valk screen the student's work.
Most of the problems are carelessness, Shulenburger said.
"The students weren't aware that writing ability was as essential as a knowledge of business, economics and mathematics to a business graduate," he said.
Valk said that of the estimated 140 students whose papers he had read during the semester, about 30 students had problems that required individual conferences with him before their work improved.
HE HAD TRIED to write at least one-half page of comments, both positive and negative, on each student's paper, Valk said, and most of the students were able to correct their mistakes by reading the comments and didn't require additional help.
"Although some students demonstrated a whole range of errors from structure to punctuation," he said, "none of them had more than four conferences to work out."
"All the students that I worked with individually showed improvement from one group to another."
"The students' problems weren't that they didn't know how to write or didn't have the basic tools that a good writer needs. It was that they had forgotten or were being careless about."
"When a student takes freshman or sophomore English he doesn't yet have a real interest in writing, he wants to write about. When the students find a topic that they are interested in, they have the basic tools to be a good writer. They just need to know what they learn and be more careful."
Valk said his experience in the business school had showed him that the English department was doing a good job of teaching freshman and sophomore English. The problem, he said, is that freshman and sophomores don't always understand that
Valk said he had been surprised by the professors' participation in the program.
what they learn in their English courses will benefit them in the future.
"WHEN THE PROGRAM started," he said, "I thought I would be working with about three professors, but during the course of the semester, I reviewed papers and professors. I'll probably be working with about the same number this semester."
Gordon Fitch, associate professor of business, said he gave a student's first paper to Valk to review and after that it was up to the student to decide if he wanted Valk to continue reviewing his papers. Most of them asked Valk to continue, be said.
Fitch said he had used the program as a self-improvement program. Most of his students were working on writing more concisely, he said.
CHARLES SAUNDERS, professor of business, said he had graded papers on their business content and then made copies of the papers for Valk to review. He said he knew the students' writing had improved when the teacher would be reviewed by an English teacher
Sulburer筷席 he said planned to poll the students who participated in the program to get the answer.
work. The professors were about evenly divided, he said.
Gerald Harris, Topeka graduate student,
has made the opportunity to have
hands-on experience with the
Sulenburger said he had polled the professors to find out if they thought the course was improved because the help Valk gave them is not known an English teacher would be reviewing their
"I knew I was weak in composition and sketches," he thought, "think his comment is highly helped."
TOM DEUBEL, Lawrence graduate student, said be initially had been hesitant about having an English teacher review his work.
"I didn't know how well I wrote, and I should it be quite an ordeal because he would an English major," he said. "I thought he would really chop up my papers."
Deubel said that Valk's favorable comments had proved that his fears were unmerged.
founded. He was really encouraged when Valk told him what he was doing right well. He did it very hard.
"Most of my mistakes were with punctuation. Now I am more conscious of punctuation when writing."
John Mayo, New York college student, said he was given a benzant at the beginning of the program.
"I WASWORKING hard to do a good job on the papers, and it bothered me when I knew an English teacher would be looking at them," he said. "But he was quite good about telling us what our problems were and how to improve our writing."
Pichler said whether the program was continued would depend on the business success.
"I would like to continue the program he said, "All the professors teaching a two-semester MBA program who used Valk last semester plan to use him this semester."
New particle taxes physical laws
By KAREN LEONARD
Staff Writer
The discovery of a new elementary particle called upsilon is causing some physicists to doubt the basic laws of atomic physics.
The particle behaves in a manner contrary to established laws and raises the possibility that there may not be any fundamental particles of matter, according to Douglas McKay, associate professor of physics and astronomy. The discovery of particles there is an infinite, rather than finite, set of particles within the nucleus of the atom.
McKay said Friday that upson was a surprisingly massive particle. It has three times the mass of the protom, and a very lifetime for a particle that heavy, he said.
"THE GENERAL RULE for nuclear elements is—the greater the mass (weight) of the particle, the shorter the lifetime. So if you want to control the counter to that expectation," McKay said.
Conceptually, McKay said, uplosion and other newly discovered elementary paradoxes indicate that the idea of fundamental particles to the nucleus of the atom is no longer valid.
If it is no longer valid, he said, the atomic theory itself becomes questionable.
McKay said that, according to the atomic
theory, there were a small number of fundamental objects and all matter could be considered constructed of those fundamental objects.
“If there is no limit to the number of fundamental objects, they lose their meaning. There's no way to use that notion anymore,” he said.
UPSILON WAS first observed five months ago at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Ill.
Scientists from Columbia University, the Fermilab and the State University of New York at Stony Brook discovered upsilon in the debris of particles created when a beam of protons was accelerated and aimed at a target of beryllium.
Each collision producing an electron-positron pair was then examined to discover whether some of those electron-positron pairs had decay of some new article, McKay said.
The answer was yes, he said, and the new particle was named usilion.
This is speculation, McKay said, but the implication of the existence of upsilon is that there is evidence for a new type of quark.
All nuclear particles are made up of quarks, he explained, and to understand the particles we observe the quarks must be assigned very definite properties. Each
quark must have the properties of a certain mass, electric charge and strangeness. With the discovery of new electrical particles, a new property of the quark has been assigned. This new property is called 'charm', Mickay said.
HE EXPLAINED THAT at the beginning of a collision of two particles, the charm assigned at the beginning of the collision must be the same as the charm at the end of the collision. The property must be a constant.
McKay said that with the discovery of upsilon, still another property of these letters is the word *punc*-.
"Where does it all end?" he asked. "You can't invent a new property of nature every time a new particle is discovered. You're making it, you're only giving it a new label.
"This indicates to physicists that they don't really know that much about the inertia."
There have been a number of puzzling discoveries made in the last year-and-a half, he said. Another elementary particle called J(psi) was discovered about a year ago and another particle was discovered before that.
THE UPSETTING PART of these discoveries is, according to McKay, that understanding the first particle may not help in understanding the J(pi) particle.
"They might be entirely different types of phenomena," he said.
One particle was found to have a mass of 3 billion electron volts, another was found to have a mass of 3.8 billion electron volts and a mass of 6 billion electron volts, he said.
The equivalent mass of the proton, also a nuclear particle, is 94 billion electron volts
Electron volts are used to describe the location energy of atomic particles, McKay said. The electrons in a nucleus particle and convert it to pure energy, that's how much energy it would release.
THE INCREASINGLY HIGHER masses of these new elementary particles has led physicists to speculate that increase in the mass of increasingly higher weight, be said
This type of speculation is leading scientists to question the validity of the concept of a finite set of fundamental particles, he said.
Although the existence of upsilon has not yet been positively established, McKay said, experiments are being conducted to verify its existence.
"Maybe we'll never find out what's going on," he commented. "But it's possible that a different way of viewing time and space may be important to understand these very high energy collisions."
TODAY: CHANCELLOR ARCHIE R. DYKES and Del Shanker, executive vice chancellor, will hold an open meeting from 1 to 2 in the Forum Room of the Kansas University Research Faculty on the Freer Gallery of Art, Berkeley, Calif., will speak on the Art of Reishoki (d. 1823) at 4 in the Lecture Room of SpoonArt Museum.
TONIGHT: The KU SCIENCE FICTION CLUB will meet at 7 in Parlor A of the Kansas Union. OPERATION FRIENDSHIP will meet at 7 at the Baptist Student Center, 1629 W. 19th. HOWARD BOYAJIAN, chairman of the department of stringed instruments, will present a piano recital at 8 in Swarthout Recital Hall. There will be a play reading in German, "DER ZERBROCHENE KRUG" by Violet at B in the home of J. Wootton, 2422 National Lane.
The KU WOMEN'S TENNIS TEAM will hold open tryouts for the Spring squad, which will be held Wednesday from 9:30 to 11:30 p.m. at the Alvamra Acquaviva Club on M. W. 32rd.
Announcements . . .
THE DEPARTMENT OF PAINTING AND SCIULPTURE will open an art show at 2:30 to 10:30 in the Kansas University Gallery. Works by members of the department will be on display until March 5 from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, and 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday.
The Continuing Education departments of STUDENT SERVICES AND REFERENCE SERVICES will begin a series of lunch time mini-workshops on life and career planning at the Continuing Education Annex A. 13th and Oread. Discussions will be from noon to 1 p.m.
MARILYN STOKSTAD, professor of the history of art, was elected to a two-year term as vice president of the College Art Association of America. The 7000-member association is the national professional society for artists, art historians, museum curators and administrators.
Applications for the UNIVERSITY'S MINORITY AFFAIRS ADVISORY BOARD may be picked up at the Student Senate officer level three on the Kansas Union
Entries for the KU INTRAMURALS INDOOR TRACK TEAMS should be turned in no later than 4 p.m. Wednesday in 268 Robinson. Preliminary events begin at 10 a.m. Wednesday in 268 Robinson.
A new exhibit on the importance of the buffalo to the North American Indians is now on permanent display on the fifth floor of the MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY.
THE OFFICE OF REVENUE SHARING has asked that anyone having difficulty in completing place of residence to call (812) 948-2111 collect between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Lawrence citizens can contact the Lawrence Douglas County Planning Office at 843-4600.
Entries for the University's co-op swim teams are due at 4 p.m. at Robinson in the Recreational Services Office. Practice 7 at 3:03 p.m. March 4 and the meet is on Friday, March 5.
Correction...
Tedde Tasheff, candidate for student body stressed Wednesday that she said had in Tuesday's debate with opponent Dave Shapiro that the Lawrence Gay Liberation Inc. would have to get its recognition from the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and not from the Student Senate. The Kansas reported her as saying that the Senate would consider giving recognition after the vice chanceller's office did.
Isadora and Her Avocado Plant.
©1976 California Avocado Advisory Board Newport Beach, California
We'll send you a free booklet on Avocado Seed Growing if you'll send us 25$ for handling and postage. Address It Seed Growing, P.O. Box 2162, Costa Mesa, CA 92626. Allow 4-8 kws for delivery. Offer expires Dec. 31, 1975.
TIRE SALE MICHELIN X
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