Katy Dickinson

SEED Applications Now Being Accepted

The email just went out from CTO Greg Papadopoulos to Sun world-wide Engineering announcing the start of the application period for the 18th SEED Engineering mentoring term. This will be a six month term (January through June 2007) for Established Staff.

SEED's four basic General Selection Criteria are:

1. All Participants are in Engineering.
2. Only regular Sun employees may participate.
3. Superior annual performance ratings are preferred.
4. Manager support is required.

In addition, there are two specific selection criteria for Established Staff:

1. Must hold a senior position with a title such as Member of the Technical Staff-4, Staff Engineer, Hardware or Software Manager, Senior Staff Engineer, Engineering Director, Distinguished Engineer, etc. That is, they must be at a Principal Engineer level or above.
2. Must have been with Sun for two or more years as of the term start month.

SEED Preferred Accomplishment Areas for Established Staff
(applicants are expected to excel in many but not all of these areas):

Earning more than one "1" (Superior) annual performance rating in the last 3 years	Papers, patents, presentations, publications	Experience in open source, industry standards development, architectural review (ARC membership), mentoring	Demonstrated leadership	Demonstrated technical excellence
Enthusiasm shown in SEED application (by both applicant and their manager)	Demonstrated creative ability	Work history	Ability to communicate	Earning the excellent opinion of senior staff or executives (who submit recommendation letters in support)

Tanya Jankot and I had everything ready for the announcement to go out on Tuesday but with one thing and another, it took a while to get the email actually sent. We have received two applications already! All application materials and recommendation letters are due the day after Thanksgiving (24 November). Between now and then Tanya and I will hold three phone-in information meetings and be answering hundreds of questions... Greg's email going out is like the starting gate opening on a horse race.

Posted at 03:57PM Nov 09, 2006 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  | 

U.S. Music Conservatories

Since my daughter has decided to apply to music conservatories as well as to colleges for school next year, we are reviewing the options to be sure that we have looked at all institutions of interest. She wants a conservatory with a very strong vocal performance program (not just theory, or just instrumental, or just composition) and prefers the Mid-West and East in the U.S. As a second generation native Californian, she feels she would benefit from living in another part of America during her college years.

Although there are at least a dozen large annually-updated guides to colleges (Fiske Guide to Colleges, Insider's Guide to the Colleges, The Best 361 Colleges, etc.), we have not yet found one just for music conservatories. There are several like Creative Colleges: A Guide for Student Actors, Artists, Dancers, Musicians, and Writers by Elaina Loveland, which cover a variety of related programs but do not provide in-depth, comparative, current information like Fiske. Fiske lists conservatories but does not profile them. The list in U.S. News & World Report just refers to the Elaina Loveland book for more information. There is a Wikipedia entry on Music schools in the United States but it just lists web links for the schools.

My daughter is also checking in with her High School college counsellor, her voice teacher, and her choir director and we hope we will know what ground to cover by checking all of those sources.

Posted at 09:44AM Nov 09, 2006 by katysblog in Home & Family  |  Comments[2]