Latest news with #Carnegie
Chicago Tribune
12 hours ago
- General
- Chicago Tribune
Principal Livingston moves up to middle school with his Winnetka D36 students
Luke Livingston, who served as principal for four years at Crow Island School, an elementary in Winnetka School District 36, is moving up along with many of his former students to the district's Washburne Middle School. As Washburne principal, Livingston said, 'I will know about a third of the kids and families,' he said. 'It will be a nice transition. I know a lot of the staff. And Winnetka has an outstanding history in education and commitment to teaching and learning.' School starts with a half-day on Sept. 2 this year, according to the District 36 website. The coming school year will mark Livingston's 17th in education. Before heading Crow Island, he served as a principal of Cherokee School in Lake Forest District 67 for two years, worked in Chicago Public Schools for eight years, and served as an assistant principal at Indian Trail Elementary School in Highland Park for three years. Livingston said his most important goals at Washburne are building relationships with staff and students and achieving instructional leadership goals, including the implementation of new literacy and math curricula. 'We'll be going through a math pilot curriculum,' he said. 'It will be interesting, exciting work.' Kate Hughes, spokeswoman for District 36, said the new curricula were approved by the Board of Education in a new strategic plan in June. 'The goals at Washburne will be tied to that plan,' Hughes said. Livingston said Washburne, which feeds students into New Trier High School, already has a very strong history. 'The eighth-graders are all going to New Trier,' he said. 'They are competitive and ready for high school.' Nonetheless, Livingston said he will continue to find ways to improve educational outcomes at Washburne, in particular by focusing on District 36's longtime style of progressive education. 'We're always looking for ways to prioritize learning outcomes and make learning more experiential for students, so they're learning by doing,' he said. Washburne tested CommonLit, the new literacy curriculum, last year and will do the same with Carnegie, a new math curriculum this year, he said. When District 36 examined literacy several years ago, Livingston addressed the issue at the elementary level, based on the performance of students at the middle school level, he said. 'We looked at science or reading and building in more fundamental reading skills around phonics and writing to make sure we close the gaps at middle school,' Livingston said. 'From the middle school lens, we're focused on making sure we have a robust knowledge-building curriculum that grows from year to year, so students comprehend what they're reading and can synthesize and write about what they're reading.' Washburne is fully staffed for the coming school year with about 65 employees, Livingston said. He plans to rotate staff and team meetings every Monday, when students get an early release. Assistant Principal Ben Horowitz, who has worked with Livingston on the district's administrative team, will continue serving at Washburne. Livingston said the vast majority of his job centers around teaching and learning, making sure instructional leaders are available throughout the building for all students. 'I'm concerned with, 'Do we have a clear scope and sequence in the curriculum? Do we have clear assessments and are kids moving in the right direction?'' he said. 'Outside of that, there is a managerial component, managing communications or logistics in different parts of the building, making sure students are OK socially and emotionally.' Livingston said the district is examining the many technological tools, including AI, available today, determining where and how to set boundaries around each particular tool. 'AI is useful for research, accessing information, editing or communicating more efficiently,' he said. Officials are still spending a great deal of time examining how those tools might be used best by students, Livingston said. Livinston said he originally became a principal 'because of the impact we can have on the school year, both on culture and outcomes for kids.'
CNN
2 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
On GPS: Did Putin win the US-Russia summit?
Fareed speaks with Russia observer Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, about what Russia gained from the summit.
CNBC
4 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
His boss said his talents were 'wasted' at work—so he co-founded a company that sold for $29 billion
Growing up around his family's jewelry business in Sydney, Australia gave Nick Molnar an early interest in entrepreneurship. "My parents being retail entrepreneurs always taught me the intricacies of how to trade, how to run in retail," 35-year-old tells CNBC Make It. "So I do really feel retail is in my blood." As a teenager, he started selling jewelry from his family's company on eBay and eventually on a standalone website for the business. But after college, Molnar wasn't sold on entrepreneurship as his career path. "The universe told me that I should get a finance job given my commerce degree, my business degree, and so I really tried to make that a reality," he says. His jewelry business became something of an obstacle in that pursuit, however. Molnar says he would apply for investment banking jobs and companies would see his jewelry business listed on his CV and ask why he would bother doing anything else. "They'd say, 'Well, but why are you coming to get a job? You have a great business,'" he says. "It's like this weird paradigm that the world told me to get a job. But actually the truth was, I should have been an entrepreneur, but I got the job." After he started working at Australian venture capital firm, M.H. Carnegie & Co. in 2011, his boss became an outspoken champion for Molnar's entrepreneurial pursuits. Mark Carnegie, the firm's founder, would come in "every morning" and ask Molnar how much jewelry he had sold that day, he says. The website was bringing in around 2 million Australian dollars, or just over 2 million USD in annual revenue at the time, Molnar says. As a thought exercise, Carnegie asked Molnar what he would do if he gave him a million dollars to grow his jewelry business, Molnar says. "He really pushed me to be an entrepreneur," he says. "He basically said to me, 'Look, I think you're wasted right now being at my company. I will save your job for a year to give you the confidence to go and be an entrepreneur, but you will never come back.'" So he left the firm in 2012 and Carnegie was right — Molnar didn't return to working in venture capital. Instead, he continued running his online jewelry business and started working on a new venture with his neighbor, Anthony Eisen. Together they launched Afterpay, a buy now, pay later company, in 2014. Just seven years later in August 2021, their company was acquired by Jack Dorsey's fintech services company, Square, which would soon rebrand to Block. The firm purchased Afterpay for $29 billion. Though he had early entrepreneurial inclinations, Molnar chose the regular job route at first because he wanted the stability, regular income and "security of knowing that you're going to be able to take care of your family" a full-time job can provide. Early in his entrepreneurial journey, founders he tapped for advice told him the success rate for new businesses is "really low," he says. Buy now, pay later lenders are fairly ubiquitous in retail now, but back in 2014 they were rare, and virtually nonexistent in Australia. Afterpay would have to sell consumers on a new way to shop and spend. "I knew millennials needed another option," Molnar says. "Credit cards were not going to be the way they wanted to manage their spending and each time I shared the vision and opportunity with people, I was more and more convinced that we had to bring the idea to life." Still, it took Carnegie's challenge — and assurance — for Molnar to take the leap. "Even though I feel like an entrepreneur through and took the right people to give me the confidence," he says. He wouldn't go back and change his trajectory if he could, he says. He learned a lot working at the venture capital firm and says the trial-and-error period of many early entrepreneurs may have discouraged him or held him back. On top of the confidence Carnegie helped instill in him, this lack of hindsight was a "superpower," he says. "I had nothing telling me no, I had no past that was giving me muscle memory to say that like this shouldn't work," Molnar says. "I think you make the wrong decision sometimes when you stop trusting your intuition — when you're swayed by moments in your life and your journey, that probably wouldn't have swayed you before."
Scoop
5 days ago
- Business
- Scoop
New RMA Amendment To Speed Up Consenting Of Much-Needed New Generation
Energy Resources Aotearoa is celebrating a significant win for New Zealand's energy sector, with Parliament today passing the Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Bill at its third reading. The new Act amends the RMA to open up a consenting pathway for specified energy activities, which is intended to reduce costs for operators and unlock much-needed investment in renewable energy infrastructure. Energy Resources Aotearoa is pleased the Act adopts its key recommendation to extend the same streamlined settings to thermal electricity generation. Projects such as gas-fired peaking plants - essential for meeting demand when wind generation is low, hydro storage is depleted, and solar output is unavailable - will now benefit from faster consenting, with decisions required within 12 months. Chief Executive of Energy Resources Aotearoa, John Carnegie, says this change is a big win for the energy sector and New Zealand households and businesses. "Renewables will power more and more of New Zealand's future energy needs, but we need firming capacity to step in when the weather doesn't co-operate. This decision means we can plan and build the backup generation that keeps the grid stable and the country's economy and industrial base humming." Carnegie says that in adopting this change, the Government has agreed with Energy Resources Aotearoa's call for a broader, fuel-agnostic consenting framework that includes all activities improving New Zealand's energy security. "We've long argued for a fuel-agnostic approach where projects are judged on their merits, not their fuel or technology type. Parliament has recognised that reality today, and it's a vital step toward a more secure system that provides the energy abundance New Zealand needs to thrive." Energy Resources Aotearoa commends the Government for taking a whole-of-system approach to resource management reform that recognises the interdependence of renewable and thermal generation in maintaining a secure and reliable electricity supply for New Zealand's future.
Forbes
6 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Degrees Of Opportunity: Rethinking Value In Higher Ed
Colleges and universities are doing a better job lately explaining the value of their degrees, and increasingly they're getting important help in making that case. The challenge has been that while on average, a bachelor's degree is worth more than $1.2 million in lifetime earnings, the value for any individual graduate depends on multiple factors, including majors, where a person lives, and the cost of those degrees. How can students and families find the best deals in higher education? College rankings of every type have been around for years, and for our money the best include those from Washington Monthly, created two decades ago. The Monthly avoids focusing just on elite schools, but instead prioritizes graduation rates, earnings after graduation compared with the price of degrees, and social mobility. And in a nod to today's chief concerns for families, the magazine includes a "Best Bang for the Buck" category. Opportunity By Design And as the value question becomes more urgent, we're interested in a new take—the idea of "Opportunity Colleges" as recently identified by the American Council on Education (ACE) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Opportunity Colleges were identified as part of a substantial update to the Carnegie Classification system begun in 1973, focusing on whether schools are creating opportunities for students and helping them earn competitive wages. According to ACE and Carnegie, the 479 Opportunity Colleges:'Better Together' at Ball State One example is Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, known for its Late Night alumnus David Letterman, but also for highly regarded programs in teaching, architecture, and journalism. It is the only public university in Indiana to receive the classification. When he arrived in 2017, Ball State President Geoffrey Mearns brought a 'better together' mantra to campus and began working with local stakeholders, making connections and forging partnerships. 'What's insightful from the Carnegie report and methodology is they're analyzing salary and post-graduate earnings by discipline,' Mearns said in a recent conversation with Lumina Foundation. 'It gives context to why a Ball State graduate's median salary is X and a Purdue graduate's median salary is Y. It's because we're graduating teachers and journalists, and Purdue is graduating engineers.' Career Connections at CMU Another of the schools is Central Michigan University, 60 miles north of the state capital at Lansing. It offers one of Michigan's lowest tuition rates, and nine out of 10 graduates are either employed, pursuing further education, or engaged in volunteer service within six months of graduating. The Opportunity College designation is a nod to its partnerships that over time have nurtured career readiness. 'Workforce is in our DNA,' says CMU President Neil MacKinnon. 'It's always been our mission to produce workforce our region needs.' The Michigan-based W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research found that 67 percent of CMU graduates remain in the state after completing their degree, compared with about 40 percent from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Just over 89 percent of students at CMU are Michigan residents. Hometown Value That idea of retaining talent after graduation is a theme for Opportunity Colleges. At Ball State, Indiana residents account for 85 percent of the student body, and 'student ambassadors' work to encourage students to work in the state after they graduate. The County Ambassador Program allows each of Indiana's 92 counties to designate a student to represent the area and promote its quality of life and job opportunities to others. Ball State is also innovating how to prepare students across Indiana for active citizenship after graduation. For example, through Third Way Civics: Indiana Advances, Ball State will engage with at least a dozen colleges across Indiana in implementing a flexible curriculum that combines historical inquiry, peer discussion, and interdisciplinary learning to promote civic understanding and engagement. Faculty members from any discipline can use Third Way Civics to help foster student learning in a new way—one that relies on students forming their own points of view and considering those of others, not just listening to lectures. These skills will be invaluable once students graduate and build their lives in communities across Indiana. In short, the Opportunity College model reframes what success in higher education should look like: access, affordability, mobility, and meaningful community connection. As more families seek degrees that open real doors without closing others through debt, schools like Ball State and CMU are charting a path forward—showing that the best return on investment isn't always measured in rankings, but in lives transformed.
