I'm Jim Woodell, currently a Ph.D. candidate in Higher Education at Penn State University. I am interested in higher education's role in the innovation economy. Learn more about me by reading updates below and clicking on the tabs above. 
Please pardon my dust.
I’m just getting started with this new site. Thanks for bearing with me.
New Blog Entries
Slowly bringing my new blogs to life… Here are new entries from this week:
On Making Meaning:
On As In Knitting, So It Is In Life:
Enjoy! And remember that your comments will help encourage me to keep up the blogging.
New TRE Networks Site Launched
My part-time job is working for TRE Networks, an organization that is getting its start out of the Office of Public Partnerships and Engagement at Penn State. One of my responsibilities over the last few months has been to re-launch the TRE Networks web site, which we did this past Monday. Our two web interns, Jim and Andrew, did a great job getting the site together.
For the re-launch, we built in some social aspects, including a widget displaying our Twitter feed, and connections to a LinkedIn group, resources on Scribd and Diigo, videos at Vimeo, and Convene, a blog from TRE Networks. Over the coming months, we’re looking forward to testing out the use of the social tools to engage the TRE Networks community in conversation about regional development. Soon we’ll be launching a podcast series that we’ll publish through Convene.
Resources from our very successful TRE Networks Roundtable meeting in December 2010 are available on the site here.
We’ve still got some things to tweak on the site, and of course the social bits are ongoing. Check it out and let me know what you think!
At the Starting Gate
The last dissertation milestone I passed was successfully defending my proposal (in my program, this is the same as passing comprehensive exams), which I did on December 2, 2010. That was exciting, but then the big wait began…
I hurried up and completed my IRB proposal. Then I tried to light a fire under the folks at my prospective case study site to help me get all the necessary permissions. Then I waited.
And waited.
I know I wasn’t the only IRB application in the queue. And of course the folks at my case study site are super busy. So I don’t fault anyone. I was just sooo ready to get going with my data collection. I filled the time with some necessary work–planning for document and interview data management, learning how to use the qualitative research software (oh, and then there’s my job, and the other research projects I’m working on…). But all the while I was wishing I was really moving on the data collection.
As of this morning, I’m pleased to say, all the permissions are in place! I’m at the starting gate now, ready to recruit participants and get out there and do interviews. It’s exciting, but I also feel like someone who’s been slowly packing for a move for two months and now that the moving van is here, realizing that there are still three rooms to pack! So it turns out I really needed that wait time–maybe even could have used a little more.
Just gotta get these last few things in place, and I’m off and running.
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