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Thursday, June 28, 2012

Blog Stats

Chuck Shoopman likes to say, we have a lot of data in IPS, but not much information. I've been making blog posts for more than two years, and occasionally I check the blog statistics page to see which posts are useful (as in read the most). As I expected, most of the page views come from the U.S. - I imagine most of those are from IPS employees. I was surprised to learn that individuals from around the globe have stumbled on the IPS blog, mostly by referal from Google searches. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case with the vast resources available on our web sites as well.

When was the last time you checked to see if anyone was using the data you produce?


Institute for Public Service - The Blog · StatsAudience
Jun 21, 2012 9:00 AM – Jun 28, 2012 8:00 AM
 
Pageviews by Countries
United States
56
India
5
Indonesia
4
Philippines
3
Russia
3
Georgia
2
Guatemala
2
Peru
2
Brunei
1
United Kingdom
1
Pageviews by Browsers
Internet Explorer
46 (57%)
Chrome
23 (28%)
Firefox
7 (8%)
Safari
4 (5%)
Pageviews by Operating Systems
Windows
75 (93%)
Macintosh
3 (3%)
Linux
1 (1%)
iPhone
1 (1%)
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Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Religion in the Workplace

Our annual all-staff diversity training initiative this year was an interesting one. I hope you learned more about the issues surrounding this subject as they relate to food, networks, space, practices, holidays, dress and policies.  The HR/Diversity committee is working hard to ensure that we raise our awareness of a wide range of topics and it was good to learn from one of UTK's faculty members.

The "World Religions Fact Sheet" from Tanenbaum is an interesting reference document about religions and belief systems. I certainly learned more about Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and a wide range of others that are different from my own. Who knew there are 22 major world religions?

We will post all the learning material on our Intranet site so that it will be available for future reference and study.

Monday, June 18, 2012

LEIC Visit to Washington D.C.

Don Green, Chuck Shoopman and I recently traveled to Washington D.C at the request of Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Burch. We met Jim about a decade ago when he was a program manager in the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance. Jim has risen through the ranks of the Justice Department to a very influential position. LEIC has received significant funding through the years to support its training efforts across the U.S.

Jim accompanied us on a briefing with the "Law Enforcement Working Group" of the Department of Defense.  Every branch of the military was represented as well as the Defense Logistics Agency, Capitol Police, Homeland Security and the National Guard. I was impressed by the stars and stripes in the room! Within hours of our briefing, Don had already received two email inquiries about possible training opportunities between LEIC and DoD.

That afternoon we briefed the U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division, International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program. The mission of this program is to work with foreign governments to develop effective, professional and transparent law enforcement capacity. We are excited about the possibility of expanding our training to an international arena and have already committed to a follow up visit to discuss specifics.

We wrapped up the day with a briefing of our two visits with senior staff from Senator Lamar Alexander's office. All in all, it was a day well worth the visit to D.C.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Legislative Briefings

Last week I had the opportunity to provide a briefing on IPS to State Senators Becky Massey http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/senate/members/s6.html
and Jim Summerville http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/senate/members/s25.html.

Both are serving on a summer study committee on higher education and we wanted to make sure they understand the impact of our statewide mission and give them a taste of the breadth and depth of services we provide.  They spent two half days on the Knoxville campus and heard a variety of presentations on many aspects of the university. I appreciated the opportunity to brag on the work of our great staff. If you want to see the briefing, please visit our web site at:

http://www.ips.tennessee.edu/?news=1611

Monday, June 11, 2012

Writing Awards from UNC Chapel Hill

Dean Mike Smith, my colleague from the UNC Chapel Hill School of Government, recently announced two writing awards. I thought these publications, particularly the one related to hiring a manager, might be of interest to IPS staff. Please see his blog.  http://mrs.sog.unc.edu/?p=3793

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

New Leadership Academy Class

Congratulations to the 12 members of the second class of the IPS Leadership Academy. We received nearly 25 nominations for this session of the academy, and chose these employees following discussions with each agency director.



Stephanie Allen – MTAS

Doug Bodary – CTAS

Rhonda Campbell – Central Office

John Chlarson – MTAS


Misty DePriest – CIS

Keith Groves – CIS

Warren Nevad – MTAS

Justin O’Hara – MTAS


Beth Phillips – CIS

Kim Raia – CTAS

PJ Snodgrass – MTAS

Lori Ungurait – LEIC

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Institute for Public Service
105 Student Services Building
Knoxville, TN 37996
Phone: (865) 974-6621