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I-House showcases Turkish folk dance during Cultural Expressions night
Erin Exum’s weekly practice report
Friday, November 6, 2009
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Issue 54
E D I T O R I A L L Y
PUBLISHED SINCE 1906
I N D E P E N D E N T
S T U D E N T
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Vol. 112
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Hardship to persist despite recession’s end Robbie Hargett Staff Writer According to a report issued by UT’s Center for Business and Economic Research, the nation is out of the recession but not the woods. The report, “The Tennessee Business and Economic Outlook: Fall 2009,” was financed in part by the state Department of Finance and Administration, the state Department of Economic and Community Development, the state Department of Revenue, the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development, and the Appalachian Regional Commission. “The national economy is now out of the recession, but this means the economy has found a trough from the beginning of the recession in December 2007,” Matt Murray, associate director of the Center for Business and Economic Research and author of the report, said. The report examines Tennessee’s econ-
omy as well, and the state looks worse than the nation as a whole. “Growth is not likely to be very vibrant in the quarters ahead, and the labor market will be slow to recover,” Murray said. “So unemployment rates will remain very high into 2011.” Because the impacts of “The Great Recession” are so extensive, many are affected within the state and across the country. “Young people will find jobs harder to find,” Murray said. “Homeowners have lost some of the value of their home. Anyone with stocks is worse off today than last year. Unemployment rates are up for all groups of society, especially those with little formal education.” Overspending on housing by consumers and the collapse of financial markets has caused the short-term downturn in growth. The report states that a turnaround is expected in the third quarter “as monetary policy, a second fiscal stimulus
package and improved housing market conditions lift the economy from the bottom.” However, according to the report, “… there are concerns that the economy’s rebound will be delayed until the end of the year or early 2010.” “Ultimately we will need stronger consumer spending to maintain growth,” Murray said. There are concerns that the consumer will not be able to pick up the slack in the economy when fiscal stimulus winds down in two years. “Some economists are calling this the ‘new normal,’ which means we really don’t know what the world will look like in another two years,” Murray said. The state and country’s long-term economic situation is even harder to predict. It is significantly impacted by short-term growth, as well as investments in human capital, such as education; machinery, equipment and software; and population
growth. The report addresses the advantage education gives. “Education is especially important to economic well-being,” the report reads. “Tennessee counties with well-educated adult populations enjoy lower rates of unemployment, higher rates of job creation and higher levels of per capita income than their more poorly educated counterparts.” The report emphasizes the fact that each recession of the 20th and 21st centuries has been unique. Each has arisen and been resolved through particular sets of circumstances and actions: “As we move forward, attempting to resolve the current credit crisis and accompanying recession, unique tools will once again be required to engineer an economic turnaround,” the report reads. To view the entire report, visit the Center for Business and Economic Research, http://cber.utk.edu/tefslist.htm.
THE CROSS Ellen Larson Staff Writer
time period.” The discovery indicates a highly engaged faculty at UT, who actively participate in the advancement of their field. This engagement is clearly highly advantageous to UT students. Notably, Professor YounKyung Kim, who specializes in ethnic marketing and tourism, ranked eighth nationally for producing research. Professor Ann Fairhurst was ranked as well, garnering the 17th position. Kim has authored “Experiential Retailing: Concepts and Strategies That Sell” and is also a recognized name in the study of experiential retail. Fairhurst has also authored a work exposing new factors in the process of internationalization for retailers.
While many UT students look forward to Fall Break as a time for themselves, a group of Volunteers spent the break serving other communities. The Cross, a Greek life Christian ministry, that has service trips every fall and spring break, and TeamVOLS Alternative Fall Break traveled outside Tennessee to help others this year. "The Cross takes two mission trips each year, one on Fall Break and one on Spring Break," Ann Wallace, women’s coordinator for The Cross, said. Wallace said, over the past three years, The Cross has gone to Pineville, Ky., during Fall Break, and there have been seven trips to the Mississippi and Louisiana coast rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The Cross volunteers to perform light-construction duties on these service trips. Wallace said projects vary from building porches, handicapped ramps and minor, exterior home repairs. Occasionally, there are more challenging tasks for volunteers. Wallace described a project building a ramp, which required an over 100-foot ramp to be built on a slope to secure the foundations, but the problem was there was little lateral space. "This enabled an elderly woman in her 80s and her daughter, in her 50s, to be able to be wheeled out of the house to their doctor appointments without having to be carried out by the emergency medical technicians, which had to be done prior to us building this colossal ramp.” Wallace said this ramp was built over the last Fall Break trip, when The Cross took 85 UT students and volunteer construction crew chiefs to Pineville. Another UT organization, TeamVOLS, is making five service trips this year: three during the fall and two during the spring. "Typically, people who come on the trips are those that want to do something meaningful over a school break," Beth Garner, senior in logistics who went with TeamVOLS on an alternative break trip, said. Garner said TeamVOLS worked with Safe Place, a YMCA program for children with problems at home; Active Day, a day facility for adults with mental and physical disabilities; Dare to Care, a food bank where they moved over 15,000 pounds of food; and Catholic Charities of Louisville to provide coats and compile Christmas wish lists for refugee families. Emily Berry, junior in lower division, said The Cross worked with Lagniappe Presbyterian Church to help victims of Hurricane Katrina during the past several Spring Break trips to Bay St. Louis, Miss. Berry recounted her service trip with The Cross. "From my experience with the trips, and as many other people who have gone on them can witness, the people who we help touch our lives as much, if not more, than we touch theirs."
See RETAIL on Page 7
See THE CROSS on Page 3
Katie Hogin • The Daily Beacon
Debi Campbell and Amanda Wall purchase pottery for Christmas gifts at the Pots and Prints Holiday Sale Thursday at the Art and Architecture building. Proceeds from this sale go towards the UT Potters Club, print club and scholarships.
UT retail studies make top ranks Blair Kuykendall Staff Writer New findings indicate UT faculty in retail studies rank among the world’s highest in research productivity. A study conducted by assistant professor Rodney Runyan and doctoral candidate Jonghan Hyun in the Department of Retail, Hospitality and Tourism Management demonstrated that the retail faculty produce a quantity of research in the top five nationally and top 20 internationally. Only seven other U.S. universities rank on the international level. “The study may motivate more talented students to include UT in their set of considerations,” Hyun said. “It goes without saying that this will lead the program to have an even more supe-
rior pool of grad students.” The work exposes outsiders to the UT retail department. “Our faculty tend to do research in three areas: consumer behavior, including e-commerce/m-commerce, small retailer entrepreneurship (and) international retailing,” Runyan said. Consequently, Runyan and Hyun decided to evaluate the volume of research UT retail faculty were generating. Their study of the faculty’s production involved analysis of four
prominent retail journals. They specifically examined the editions created over the last 15 years. “Jonghan Hyun and I reviewed over 1,800 articles from the past 15 years, which appeared in the top four journals for retailing research,” Runyan said. “We recorded the authors of each article, including the university at which they worked. From these data, we were able to analyze the top authors and universities in terms of scholarly articles published over that