Cobra Women Top Ranked Team

The Cobra women had a great game on Tuesday afternoon and topped regionally ranked Clayton State 3-1. The story of the game, produced by one of Coker's graduate assistants, follows.  In addition, the Coker women's golf team had one of their best finishes in their young history coming in third in a tourney in Anderson, SC.


September 11, 2012


HARTSVILLE, S.C. – The Coker women's soccer team captured the first win of the season after defeating No. 7 regionally ranked Clayton State 3-1 on Tuesday (Sept. 11). 
The Cobras wasted little time, scoring quickly and swiftly in the first half.  Katie Copper set a perfectly directed cross to the streaking Jalynn Fort, who navigated a head shot around Laker goal keeper Laoise O'Driscoll.  With not even 15 minutes off the game clock the Cobras struck and took a 1-0 lead.
Not only did this date mark a day of remembrance for America, but it also marked a special game for sophomore Kelley Godbout.  The forward from Mathews, N.C. had two goals on three shots for the Cobras.  The first goal for Goudbout came in the 50^th minute of the second half, when she took a cross from Fortt and headed it into the back of the Laker net.  Her second goal came in the 77^th minute when she blasted a shot to hit nylon in the corner of the net, and set the Cobras up with a comfortable 3-0 lead.
The Coker defense was relentless for the entire 90-minutes of the game.  Goalkeeper Lizz Morris had 11 saves, and only let one through out-of-23 Laker shots.
Coker will looking to start a win streak as they hit the road for the next three competitions.  The first of the three comes on Thursday (Sept. 13) as they travel to face Newberry College.  That game is set to kick-off at 4 p.m.
McDonalds Player of the game: Kelley Godbout

Following is a story about the Cobra's golf team:

September 11, 2012


ANDERSON, S.C. -- It was a record setting day for the Coker women's golf team, as they finished third in competition, and shot a team total of 651 after a two-day tournament. 
Coker women's golf set a new team record on the first day of the event after they shot a team total of 330.  However, the Cobras were not satisfied.  The team finished strong in the second round shooting 321 and setting a new Coker women's golf record for tournament play.
Krista Thorpe shot a 78 (+6) for the Cobras, which was the best individual score on the day as well as her career.  Right behind Thorpe was Sara Allen and Taylor Demby, who shot scores of 80 (+8) and 81 (+9).  Completing the pentagon for the Coker team was Mallory Thompkins who shot an 82 (+10) and Jessi Mackenzie who shot a 90.  Thompkins and Thorpe sunk three birdies for the Cobras, while Demby and Allen contributed 2 birdies and 18 pars each.
The next competition for the Cobras will come on September 29 when they participate at the Lady Bearcat Invitational in Hilton Head Island, S.C.
 

Starting with the end in mind

Teaching a class in Coker College 101 this semester. It is a class whose objective is to help new students get off on the right track in their college lives.

Deanne Frye of the Coker Career Services center gives Coker 101 students the overview of services they can take advantage to get a jump start on life after four years in college.

 SERENDIPITY
We got very lucky for our first class as Devin Jennings, a May grad, was on campus and she agreed to come in and talk with the new Coker students about her college career and her life after Coker. She is a busy person and was a busy person as a student. I know her observations hit home with at least a couple of students in the class. Devin spent a busy summer dancing in Los Angeles and in Richmond and she is now heading for NYC for more dance study with the Joffrey Ballet.  The students heard from one like them what it takes to succeed. Devin's thoughts are helping them start with the end in mind. Again, thank you Devin.

 
CAREER CENTER
Keeping with the theme of starting with the end in mind, Deanne Frye of the Coker College Career Center is talking with my group today about the assessments and tools that her department has to help students find their focus. I have not doubt they are going to both enjoy and learn from this presentation. This past summer I read a book, "The Unemployed Grad and What Parents Can Do about it", which is about helping students connect their thinking to the work place they will be entering in four years. A basic premise of the author's message was that students NEED to know and USE the career center. After today the students will have a solid ideas about the services offered. (Way back when I took some of the assessments provided by the career center at SUNY Cortland. The assessment said I should look toward a job in public relations. Turned out to be a place I spent a great deal of my work life.)

College is about a lot more than the first real-world job, but that is often a good place to begin the focus on you might use your next four years -- if you are a first-year college student.  Thank you Deanne!

I enjoyed the interview assignment in Mass Communication

"Interview an older person, maybe a parent and most especially a grandparent, if you can," was the basic assignment. The subject of the interview was to be the changes in mass media the interviewee had noticed over the years and also what that person thought of these changes.

PEDAGOGICAL VIEW
From a pedagogical view, this was one of my attempts to take the spotlight from the class instructor and put some of the learning on the class. One of my reasons for enjoying the assignment was that the pedagogy worked in this case. Most of the students got into the assignment and they came in with lots of material on the changes in mass media over the years.

Certainly, I could have lectured on these changes from my point of view. I am older. I have seen a lot of decades of change in mass communication. I might have even kept them awake with my recitation of the first Rome, NY - Healy Avenue phone number I remember 3-0-1-7-J. That was the party line in our house before we got the 7-0-4-8 phone number for the private line -- meaning others in the neighborhood could not pick up the phone and listen in on the conversation. (Note, you could not keep your same numbers as technology or service providers changed.)  And, while I might have kept them awake, I think they got a lot more out of hearing these experiences from their grand parents and maybe even a parent or friend.  Those interviewed did have some keen memories and interesting ideas.

Further, this way of approaching a quick bit of media history also helped us focus again on culture, a major part of this course. One interviewee, for example, talked of the importance of radio weather in Iceland and then we heard from a S. C. farmer who also mentioned the key role weather news from the radio played in their early years of farming. And, we got to hear of growing up in a small village of Mexico as well as a life in a big city in the North.

LOTS OF KEY LEARNING HAPPENED
A major reason I enjoyed the assignment was that it is a great introduction to the history of specific mediums that we will be getting into. For example, the idea of only one or three television channels was mentioned in several interviews. The idea that people actually wrote each other REAL letters was also a common theme.

HUMAN CONNECTION
I am hoping that the students also remember one of the refrains that came from many of the papers. The regret in the words of the interviewees that in the old days they interacted face to face a lot more than they see or feel happening today. One of our BIG questions as we continue exploring mass communication and media over the next several months will be this question of connection and the question of how you get people engaged.

I got to read all the papers and enjoyed the approaches the interviewers and interviewees took with this assignment. (We used small groups so everyone's paper got read but we only used about six of the papers in the full class.) I will be hoping that seeing and feeling the connection with their own past will give them a feeling of the significance of studying the history of the media so they will be better prepared to mange the future of the media.

Should be a really interesting semester because the students are deeply involved!

Cobra women opened Sept. 2 vs Young Harris

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The Coker College Women's Soccer team under second-year coach Dan Muns opened the home season on Sunday morning with a 4-2 loss to the Young Harris.

The Cobras are a young team that is coming together. They lost their opening last Thursday 1-nil to Valdosta. These two close openers are showing a much improved squad from last year.  The heat on the field this day was intense yet the Cobras came back aggressively in the second half to make a strong contest.

This is the Labor Day holiday and there were not quite as many students in the stands but the bleachers were pretty full of parents and friends from both teams -- enjoying some soccer on this long weekend.

Coker Soccer Ranked in Pre Season

The activity on the Coker campus is picking up at an amazing speed this week. The student leaders came in over the weekend for training. Today, the resident assistants are coming in and later in the week the Commissioners will be here. The Fall athletes come in on Saturday. This last, prompts the copying of a news release this morning by Coker College's sports information:

August 8, 2012 HARTSVILLE, S.C. – The National Soccer Coaches Association of America and Continental Tire recently announced the NCAA Division II Men's Preseason Rankings, and the Coker College Cobras come in at No. 18. "This is the first year in the history of the program that we have been ranked nationally in preseason, and it is a testament to the effort of the players," Coker head coach Paul Leese said. "I am proud of what we have achieved in such a short period of time, but it is vital that we do not ease off and think we have reached a set goal. "There are many deserving teams in the top 25 and it will take a tremendous effort to still be there by the end of the season. That's our challenge this year, and I know that we will have the support of everyone at Coker as well as the Hartsville community." Coker had a historic season in 2011, reaching the Division II regional tournament. The team lost in the second round, 2-1, to Mars Hill College. The Cobras finished the regular season ranked No. 5 in the nation, won the Conference Carolinas regular season and tournament titles, and ended with a record of 18-3. The success of the season led to a laundry list of postseason awards. Seven Cobras received all-conference honors. Juniors Carlos Recinos, Rommel Fondin and James Sweeney, along with sophomore Atticus Lum and freshman Fernando Bedoya, were named first team all-conference. Sophomore Stephen Scrivens was a second team all-conference selection and Recinos was named conference player of the year and head coach Paul Leese was named coach of the year. Juniors Alan Cuevas and Noah Lascell, along with sophomores Niko Tirkkonen, Tyler Staub and Brendan McCarron, were named to the Conference Carolinas All-Tournament Team, with Lascell taking home tournament MVP honors. In addition, Recinos, Bedoya and Sweeney were named to the Daktronics All-Southeast Region first team. Recinos, Bedoya, Sweeney, along with Fondin and Lum, were named to the NSCAA All-Southeast Region first team. Bedoya was also selected as an NSCAA/Continental Tire Third Team All-American. In addition to their on the field accolades, these athletes were scholars in the classroom. Sweeney, Staub, Lascell and David Pent were academic all-conference selections. Sweeney and Staub were also named to the Capital One Academic All-District Team, and Sweeney was named to the Capital One Academic All-American First Team and was named the Conference Carolinas men's soccer scholar athlete of the year. The NSCAA/Continental Tire College Rankings are an indicator of week-to-week status of qualified programs. The first regular-season poll will be released Sept. 4. For more information about the NSCAA College Rankings, visit www.nscaa.com/rankings/college. Based in Kansas City, Kan., the National Soccer Coaches Associatoin of America is the largest soccer coaches' organization in the world. Since its founding in 1941, the NSCAA has grown to include more than 30,000 members who coach both genders at all levels of the sport. In addition to a national rankings program for colleges and high schools, NSCAA offers an extensive recognition program that presents nearly 10,000 individual awards every year. The NSCAA fulfills its mission of coaching education through a nationwide program of clinics and week-long courses, teaching more than 7,000 soccer coaches each year. For more information, contact Chris Dougherty, manager of athletics media relations, at 843-383-8018 or cdougherty@coker.edu.                                                                          ------------------------------------------------- Coker College readies undergraduates for personal and professional success through a distinctive four-year program that emphasizes a practical application of the liberal arts as well as hands-on and discussion-based learning within and beyond the classroom. Coker is ranked among the "Best Colleges" in the South by U.S. News & World Report as well as The Princeton Review. Located in Hartsville, S.C., Coker is within two hours of the cultural, financial and recreational resources of Charlotte, Columbia, Charleston and Myrtle Beach.

What are some "soft skills" employers seek?

THE UNEMPLOYED GRAD AND WHAT PARENTS CAN DO ABOUT IT is a book that is hot off the press toward the end of June. The author, Don Philabaum, has a lot of recommendations on how parents can help their college students become more prepared for the job search with the goal of having a job in the right field upon college graduation.

A previous blog has recommended this book to job seekers, parents of job seekers and anyone interested in knowing more about being competitive in today's TIGHT job market. This book is about planning and it does not have quick fixes or magic but it is replete with good information.

One of the lists that Philabaum provides is that of soft skills that managers and supervisors feel are lacking in new hires.  He encourages students to get these skills and has a lot of advice for how to develop the skills. One of the things I like about the list is that at Coker College we have programs in place for students to develop these skills. We do, however, probably have to a better job of telling students that the reason for some of the requirements is to help them become more job competitive even while tell them that learning for the sake of learning is also a valid strategy.

So what are these soft skills that are identified in the book. On pages 197 and 198 the author identifies 15:
1 -- Good communication skills        2 -- Interpersonal Skills           3 -- Creative problem solving
4 -- Working within a team               5 -- Integrity and ethics           6 -- Self-confidence
7 -- Motivated and committed          8 -- Leadership skills              9 -- Adaptability to change
10 - Good listening skills                  11 - Commitment to lifetime learning
12 - Commitment to excellence        13 - Willingness to take risks
14 - Willingness to face assessment   15 - Commitment to run in reports

So, it doesn't take too much critical thinking to understand that many of the skills listed here are highly valued in the "The Academy." Our students get practice in many if not most of these areas. Some on campus remind them all the time these are skills valued in the job market, maybe we just have to be aware that it does taking pretty constant reminding.

In my public speaking classes, for example, I stress in our very first class and through the semester that getting better at speaking in groups will be one of the skills that will have a direct impact on the student's personal bottom line. That also gives me the opportunity to talk with students about jargon, because few of them have any idea what the business term 'bottom line' means. It is not something that has been part of their environment to this point in their lives but they learn and most learn quickly.

Coker Career Center is place for Good Career Advice For Students

In several of my Coker College Communication classes we discuss the types of jobs students might do with the knowledge we are developing in the course. Sometimes we even start the class by finding jobs the students might want some day and seeing how the skills required might relate to course content. While I am a believer in the value of learning for the sake of learning, I do understand that a very real reason for a college degree is a job and a life style that is satisfying. In the Communication classes, we try to emphasize both sides of this education coin.

Don Philabaum, an entrepreneur, writer, thinker and father, just published a new book called THE UNEMPLOYED GRAD AND WHAT PARENTS CAN DO ABOUT IT. 2012. If you are interested in obtaining a copy, you might try the web site: www.theunemployedgrad.com. The author is targeting parents whose vested interest in their child's education is acute. He is also targeting parents because he knows students are not at the mindset to be focusing on a career or job that is, at best, four years away -- though parents want students earning their own just as quickly as possible. While he continues to refer to parents as you in this book, the material about the changing job market and the tools that job seekers should employ appear to be relevant to anyone looking for a job or a new job.

The major rule that Philabaum provides for parents is to URGE your student to utilize the services of the college's career center from the time they set feet on the campus. He provides detailed strategies for this use and that checklist is one of the coaching tools available from the book. Deanne Tyner  Frye, who heads up Coker's Career Center, would be ecstatic if students took this advice -- it would mean she could spend more time doing career thinking with students and less time making students aware of the services offered.

Philabaum makes a good case for starting the job and career search early. His first major statement is that every year graduating students join about two million other graduating students in the USA entering the work force -- and, by the way, that does not include the rest of the world.

The book, which is more than 250 pages, is replete with lists and checklists, etc. For this blog I am going to highlight the author's Seven Building Blocks of a career or job-search strategy:

1 -- Use the career center to explore career options
2 -- Explore options that are compatible with interests
3 -- Create a personal career profile
4 -- Develop a written job-search strategy
5 -- Create a written career plan  (my least favorite of the building blocks)
6 -- Develop fundamental job search skills
7 -- Build a professional network

Now, a lot of those terms may be abstract for many people but the author does do a good job of making them much more concrete for the reader. The book provided me with additional material that I will be sharing with students and could be of interest if you are wondering about career planning for yourself or for a new college student.