Plagiarism and the Flow of Ideas

By Dean Whittaker Our whole society is built upon the ideas of those who came before us. We are standing on their shoulders. To whom does an idea belong, and how do we gracefully, and sometimes with attribution, borrow the idea and apply it in a new way? We all are...

The Call Center Returns Home

By Patrick Cisler I’m sure you’ve been there. Stuck on the customer service line for longer than you anticipated, trying to resolve an issue you have with a product or service provider. You are either frustrated by the lack of a human on the other line, often being...

Webinar Recording: Shale Gas Revolution

On October 24, Trevor Smith, with the Gas Technology Institute, presented an informative webinar about the shale gas industry and how this “overnight success” thirty years in the making will transform our economy. We received positive feedback about the event! “It was...

How Do You See Yourself?

By Dean Whittaker What did I learn this month? Actually, I learned much more than I expected. I learned that I am not a staff member, but rather, I am a member of a team. We don’t have staff meeting any more but rather team meetings. More than just words, I now see...

Instilling Hope in a Community

By Jami Gibson This month, I started volunteering at a local community center. Baxter is an inner-city neighborhood in Grand Rapids that has a 33% poverty rate in addition to crime and drug issues. In order to help and restore hope to the residents of the...