| HCC Collaboration Opens Doors for Non-Traditional Students
Alan Jefferson, vice president of Wachovia Small Business Capital in Baltimore, has a new title: first guinea pig. Jefferson will be the first student to work toward a bachelor's degree through a new collaboration announced in September by Howard Community College (HCC) and Albany, N.Y.-based Excelsior College.
The collaboration will enable local students to earn bachelor's degrees in business, technology, liberal arts, nursing and health sciences. Through the agreement, students can transfer up to 90 credits (or three years of a four-year degree) to Excelsior, where they can complete the remaining 30 credits required for a bachelor's through Excelsior's online courses and for-credit examinations.
Jefferson joked about his earliest forays into college. "I've never hidden the fact that, when I did my first turn at the University of Maryland College Park, I was on the dean's list three times - but it was the wrong list," he said, with a laugh.
Coastal Post Online
In 2001, my longtime dream of owning a community-serving business was realized when, without any retail or bookselling experience, I purchased the Brown Study Bookshop, a sleepy used-book store in Point Reyes Station. I soon came to learn the realities of owning a small independent business in an age when consumers, seeking the best deal, are drawn to purchasing goods online and in big-box stores.
The last two decades have brought sweeping changes in many American communities as strip malls, big-box retailers, and e-commerce replace the locally owned shops on Main Street. Nationally, the number of independent bookstores alone has fallen from 4,700 in 1993 to 2,500 today, as revenues from Internet book sales climbed from $2.6 billion in 2002 to $4 billion in 2006. Describing the mega-corporate takeover in The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century, David Korten writes, "unlike the owners of locally based businesses, the absentee shareholder owners of these new businesses have little knowledge or concern for the consequences at the local level for action taken on behalf of the corporation."
In contrast, a growing movement of independent businesses is creating "local living economies" and seeking a "living return"-one partially paid by the benefits of living and working in healthy, vibrant communities.
Yahoo apologises for Black Monday fiasco
Yahoo is attempting to placate members of its Small Business Merchant programme after an outage left many sellers unable to process orders on the busiest online shopping day of the year. The programme allows users to set up and maintain online stores and process payments. But problems began at 6am US Pacific time when Yahoo said that systems which power the service went down. As a result, merchants were unable to process orders and users were unable to make purchases. Yahoo had restored the service by 1pm, but transactions remained slow to process. The service was not up to normal speed until 12 hours after the outage. Rich Riley, senior vice president of Yahoo's online channel division, apologised to merchants hit by the outage in a blog posting.
Palo Alto Online's Master Community Calendar
Group show of small works. Show runs Jan. 9-Feb. 10, Free. For more information, call Pixie Couch at 650-701-1018 or e-mail pixiec@mindspring.com or visit www.themaingallery.org. The Main Gallery, 1018 Main St., Redwood City "Searching for True North"
An exhibition of vertical panoramic landscapes culled from 30 years of Geir Jordahls black-and-white photographic work. Through March 4, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Free. Call 650-327-6325 or e-mail info@modernbook.com or visit www.modernbook.com. Modernbook Gallery, 494 University Ave., Palo Alto "The Art of Collage: Works by Sylvie A. Serex-Bonnet"
Opening reception (Fri, Dec 14, 6-8 p.m.) will feature a short concert by award-winning pianist Suzanna Perez. All proceeds from sale of artwork will benefit CSMA's financial-aid program.
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