ask-mark.com

One of the things I love about being a grad student at Northwestern McCormick’s MSIT program is that I receive a regular newsletter from the engineering school (although it is apparently available as an RSS feed). In the most recent newsletter was a an article titled Study: Engineering Stereotypes Drive Counterproductive Practices, by Emily Ayshford.

The study was done by Paul Leonardi, the Breed Junior Chair in Design at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, and colleagues at the University of Colorado. What they found was that engineering students would fall into stereotypical behavior they have observed in media or in older students, such as procrastination, working individually on a group project, or bragging about having done a problem without following directions. These behaviors are what students feel they need to do to prove their engineering prowess, but hiring managers are finding that they are counterproductive for the real world workplace.

"There’s a stereotype that engineers do things by themselves," Leonardi says. "So when students are asked to work in teams, they think, am I going to be disadvantaged? When I go to the workplace am I not going to be as valuable?"

In other words, students believed that if they weren’t able to do a project alone, they couldn’t consider themselves an expert engineer. Leonardi and his colleagues often saw groups splitting up group work, even if they were specifically asked to work on it together at the same time.

These findings fascinate me. At least since high school, I have been guilty of such behavior. In grad school, however, I have taken a slightly different approach. I’m still a bit of a procrastinator, but that has little to do with bragging and more to do with some occasionally poor time management. I like to do some of the coursework alone, but the huge amount of group work has been extremely beneficial to me. The chance to interact with others about the topics we’re learning in class has been invaluable, both from a personal learning experience perspective and from a professional networking perspective.

I have definitely found it is important to learn how to work well on a team, and even better to learn how to work well on a team where everyone has different strengths, weaknesses, and personalities. The guy who prefers to work alone or do everything himself only serves to bring the entire team down.

Are there any other stereotypical behaviors you’ve seen in school or in the workplace? Were they in engineering or in another field?

In recent years I have started following major political news. I just read that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was taken into custody this morning by federal authorities. According to both the Chicago Tribune and WLS ABC-7 Chicago, the arrest of Blagojevich and his chief of staff John Harris comes from a probe involving pay-to-play politics surrounding the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

From the ABC-7 report:

The affidavit was unsealed around 8:30 a.m. That affidavit accused Gov. Blagojevich of, among other things, trying to obtain campaign contributions up front in consideration of an appointment to the Senate seat left open by Pres.- Elect Barack Obama. From the affidavit:

Later on November 3, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH spoke with Advisor A.

By this time, media reports indicated that Senate Candidate 1, an advisor to the President-elect, was interested in the Senate seat if it became vacant, and was likely to be supported by the President-elect. During the call, ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated, "unless I get something real good for [Senate Candidate 1], shit, I’ll just send myself, you know what I’m saying." ROD BLAGOJEVICH later stated, "I’m going to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and therefore I can drive a hard bargain. You hear what I’m saying. And if I don’t get what I want and I’m not satisfied with it, then I’ll just take the Senate seat myself." Later, ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated that the Senate seat "is a f-ing valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing."

This is the culmination of a three-year probe in Illinois regarding the hiring for state jobs. I’m not sure what all this means for the state government and how it will be conducting business in the near future, but I am sure that Rich and/or Brad might have something to say about that later today.

Here is my miniscule contribution to the 2008 Election coverage — other services’ maps of the election results.

This past weekend, Sen. James Meeks (D-Chicago), a pastor at Salem Baptist Church on Chicago’s South Side, brought more attention school funding in Illinois. Meeks’ has called on Chicago parents to boycott the Chicago Public Schools, keeping children out of school until the funding issues are resolved. To make things worse, nearly 50 other Chicago ministers yesterday announced their support for Meeks’ boycott.

There has been a bunch of celebrity news that I have heard this weekend. Here’s a quick wrap up of what I have heard:

• Morgan Freeman is alive, but getting a divorce from his wife of 24 years.
• John Edwards admits to having an affair while his wife is sick with cancer.
• Clay Aiken is the father of a newborn baby boy.
• Bernie Mac died from complications with pneumonia.
• Isaac Hayes died after collapsing at home.

In other news, Russia and Georgia entered into war with each other at the start of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. At least the two countries’ Olympic shooters are friendly.

I kid you not! A 9-year-old girl went to the hospital in Greece with stomach pains. Doctors found a growth next to her stomach. Inside the 6-centimeter growth, doctors found a head, hair and eyes, but no brain. The growth contained the girl’s embryonic twin!