Kem Wilson Jr., Principal and Executive Vice President of the Kemmons Wilson Companies and son of Holiday Inns founder Kemmons Wilson, spoke to the MTR on June 14th. Kem shared with us his father's life story and the influence of Holiday...
(Urban Context 1.1)Hope VI Revitalization Program is a federal housing redevelopment initiative that began in 1993. The goal is to use federal money to incentivize urban areas to redevelop low-income housing projects into more attractive and sustainable communities. Memphis has just won its fifth...
Urban Context (1.0)Recently, I posted a blog describing the forces impacting large urban cities, like Memphis. Most significantly, technology and outsourcing have significantly reduced the number of mid-level jobs in American cities. Mid-level jobs are those jobs that required mid-level skills and paid...
For important urban context (1.1) see "As jobs fade away" in the May 8th Economist.This is an excellent overview of what is significantly impacting our lower-educated urban population. In summary, over the past 30 years or so, technology has drastically improved efficiencies and therefore drastically...
See Minding the Education Gap, from Miller-McCune on May 18.(http://www.miller-mccune.com/business-economics/minding-the-education-gap-16074/)He points out what we already know...
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/04/19/college.anti.hookup.culture/index.html?hpt=C2My nephew, John, sent me the above link to a CNN article about the culture of "hook ups" on the Vanderbilt (and most any) college campus.Briefly, it describes the pervasive (estimated 75%+) experience of college students getting drunk and hooking up with strangers on most...
I read an interesting article in the Economist last night, "Social mobility and inequality, Upper Bound", http://www.economist.com/world/united-states/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15908469. (MTR Language Arts Wall: Yes. You underline titles of magazines, newspapers, books, and movies. The titles of parts inside them, such as...
I recently talked with a college student who was considering either the MTR (urban education) or medical school (medicine) as his first steps toward a career. After several weeks of consideration, he emailed me to let me know he...
So my wife and I have a 2010 Book Reading list. Book One was Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. We picked this book because our third daughter, Ruthie, was reading it in her 5th grade English class. This provided...
Recently, I read a fascinating article from the December 12th issue of The Economist entitled Lessons from "The Leopard" (http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15065405).The article explained the concept of "genteel decline" from the book The Leopard. This is a fictional novel that tells the story of a rich...