On writing for publication.

Every action people take has a ripple effect on others. Whether they work at the bench, as a manager, as an educator, or in some other position, laboratorians make a difference in the lives of patients, colleagues, students, and the general public. We need to talk with others about professional issues, inside and outside our profession. One way to connect with others is through writing articles. This article streamlines writing processes for laboratorians (regardless of whether they are experienced writers, writing novices, or have never written anything for publication before) by presenting useful checklists and suggestions that can ease the way to writing for publication.

EXCEL gradebooks: an EXCELlent strategy for saving teacher time.

Time ultimately is the most precious commodity across professions. In the teaching profession, educators put in pre-class development time, class contact time, and post-class grading and grade calculation time (as well as other administrative time). End-of-term grade calculation can be a massive, time-wasting headache. If teachers develop electronic spreadsheets that track attendance and use formulas to do the final calculations automatically as data is entered into the spreadsheets, then teachers can nearly eliminate end-of-term number crunching and use that time for other endeavors.

Retention and the competitive edge.

I believe that retaining effective, seasoned employees enhances an organization's ability to compete in the marketplace. Though these seasoned employees seem to be more explicitly expensive, a detailed analysis of the costs involved in hiring and orienting replacement personnel may prove this assumption false. In addition, seasoned employees' intimate job knowledge actually constitutes the organization's competitive edge. Therefore, retaining seasoned personnel seems to become an important, mission- and vision-imperative institutional objective.