The Columbia disaster

It seems as if the author of this article wants to side with the MMT and sort of point his finger at others for the  Columbia accident.The MMT were not able to catch any footage of the accident since the on board cameras did not capture any of the damage. Therefor the Debris Assessment Team (DAT) had been called in. The team had first requested for in orbit pictures of shuttle but were denied. The DAT then tried to use special algorithms to predict how bad the damage was but came out with no valid results. Then the DAT decided to use past occurrences as examples to try to predict what might happen. The Columbia had been hit five years earlier by similar debris and had suffered "significant damage."  The team however decided this was enough evidence to raise concern. 

The MMT held a teleconference with Don McCormack from DAT where they were to discuss the damage the debris had made on impact. The information was only brought up towards the end of the conference. Linda Ham, the MMT leader, had asked Don for an update on the damage. Don explained about the occurrence five years prior, and Linda simply replied with "And I really don't think there is much we can do so it's not really a factor during the flight because there is not much we can do about it." I think that was completely outrageous of her. The results weren't completely outright with the possibility of danger but the passengers lives were at stake and she completely blew it of like nothing. 

The article then goes on to discuss how it may be "too easy" to fault the MMT and that maybe there was somebody else at fault. The author writes it as if trying to push the blame from the MMT to somebody else. I think the MMT should be held completely liable, largely Linda Ham. If it were up to me she wouldn't have a job anymore. Men died because of her negligence. That is just unbelievable.

Carter Racing

Originally my group had decided unanimously to still race. We decided that the benefits of winning outweighed the costs of not winning, or even the engine failing. The temperatures did show that the engine had a good chance of failing below 60 degrees. The time was 9:23 and the team had to make a decision at 10:23, only an hour later. The temperature at 9:23 AM was 40 degrees. There would be almost no chance that the temperature would raise over 20 degrees in an hour. Therefore our team decided that we should change our original decision to not race. We decided the team should just cut their losses and get ready for next year.


One problem our group discovered in the article was that it did not explicitly say that the race was exactly at 10:23 AM. The race could have been later in the day which would give the weather more time to heat up. the article also did not say anything about looking at a weather forecast for the day which in my opinion would have been very helpful. 


Then at the end of class we were informed that the article was actually about the Challenger space exploration and not racing. The Challenger team had to go through a similar group decision process to decide whether or not to launch the space shuttle.In the end the team decided to launch the shuttle and one of the rubber gaskets did fail causing catastrophic failure.

Multicultural Teams

After reading the article "Managing Multi-Cultural Teams" I found myself thinking about the part the author wrote about communication and how that could apply to me. All of us in this class are in the college of business so one day it is very possible that we will be working with people from other cultures and we might run into a conflict similar to the one in the reading.

The line "communication in western cultures is typically direct and explicit" keeps reciting itself in my head. My uncle works for a company that does a lot of work overseas and after talking to him just a little I can see that even he has this problem. He says that he gets emails from overseas that are pages and pages long when they only needed to be a paragraph or two.

I just find it surprising to think that western cultures "communicate" completely different than other cultures. It's just the way we do things and its "weird" to think that a difference in communications styles can disrupt an entire project.

Anybody agree with me?

Spaghetti and gumdrops

In class on Monday September 19th we were given the assignment to make structures out of spaghetti and gumdrops. We were going to be graded on 3 criteria; height, strength, and aesthetic value. This was the first time we worked with our groups project groups, the groups that we are going to be in for the entire semester.

I would say the project went well within our group. We all had no trouble communicating and we all got along just fine. Everybody came in with their own ideas and we all collectively chose which ones to do, and the split up the work.


I think the purpose of this assignment was not just to build the structures, but to see how well the group members meshed as a team. In class Dr. Goates talked about Tuckman's stages of group development. As we talked about these stages I realized that our group went through all or at least most of them. When we first got together we were very polite and went through the forming stage. The storming was next which is where group members tend to take a role in the group, leader, follow, etc. Then comes the norming stage where the group realizes as a whole what needs to be accomplished. Performing is next which is where the group does what is expected, in our case building the structure. Adjourning is last, it is where the group dissolves because the goal was met. I do not think this stage applies to our groups for this class since we will be working in them the entire semester.

"Can You Handle Failure?"

Ben Dattner and Robert Hogan write an article titled "Can You Handle Failure?” In this article the authors explain how every person sees a situation in the workplace differently. If a project multiple employees are working on fails, everybody has their own opinion on whose fault it was.

At one point in the article Dattner and Hogan choose to include a list of 11 personalities and how each individual personality describes how the person will react to failure in the workplace. Dattner and Hogan then even chatagorize the 11 types into 3 groups. They are labeled as such; Extrapunitive (Blames Others), Intropunitive (Blames Oneself), and Impunitive (Denies Blame).

I chose to look into this further and I tried to side with one of the 3 types first and I decided that I am impunitive, I tend to deny blame. I have noticed this when working in group projects. I have an attitude that illustrates, "It's not my fault, I'm not going to point the finger at anyone, but it's definitely not my fault."

Furthermore I decided which one of the 5 types of impunitive personality I possessed. I figured I was what the authors called "imaginative: assertive 'daydreamer'". This means that I tend to come up with complex explanations as to why the group effort failed.  I have definitely done that in my life. I know for a fact that I don't like to take the blame for anything and I try not to blame others. "It's nobody's fault" is my thinking in those situations.

"Those Low Grades in College May Haunt Your Job Search"

In his article, "Those Low Grades in College May Haunt Your Job Search" David Koeppel tells us that employers are now more than ever, factoring in college graduates' G.P.A. in the employment process. He writes that future employees with the highest G.P.A. demonstrate "a strong work ethic and smarts", and companies want the smartest workers possible. In my opinion, this should not be going on.

In a 2007 survey done by the National Association of Colleges and Employers it was found that 66 percent of employers screen candidates by G.P.A., and 58 percent of those said they would be much less likely to hire graduates averaging less than a 3.0. So what does this mean? If you have a low G.P.A. you're screwed? No.

Tory Johnson, the chief executive of Women for Hire in New York, advises students with a G.P.A.lower than 3.0 should not list it on their resume. Instead they should try to talk it up in an actual interview. She says to explain the G.P.A., for example if there were some personal problems or even to talk about improvement in Junior and Senior year.

In my opinion, I think it's ridiculous to judge an applicant solely on G.P.A.There are plenty of other things that play into an effective employee, like social and communication skills. In a lot of fields employees require special problem-solving skills, these may not be found in the employee with the highest G.P.A. This method of filtering applicants based on G.P.A.is just a way for employers to sort through the mass amounts of applicants that apply for their jobs, even though it may not be the most effective.