a few more family pictures

This is not just a pose--this love and this bond is real! I feel it with my own siblings and count it one of my greatest blessings. It started way back when.

Our photographer told us to kiss if we wanted and we both started laughing, like hmmmmm--we really love each other but kissing for the camera??....didn't even do it for our wedding pictures.

Trying to cheer up Lucy again, she was freezing!

and.... another little tidbit for family history:

Action and Academics:

CAHRS Research Assistant Johnson Bridges Academia and the Marketplace

When Kurt Johnson MILR ’10 was an undergraduate business major at Brigham Young University, he heard about China in nearly every class. Realizing that China had become a powerful force in global commerce, Johnson and his wife made a bold decision.

“When I graduated with my business degree, I didn’t know what I wanted to do; I just knew that going to China and learning Chinese seemed like a smart thing,” says Johnson. “So a month after graduation, my wife and I moved to Beijing. We had no jobs! We just picked up and left.”

Johnson landed on his feet, finding a job in human resources at Beijing United Family Hospital and Clinics. It was a brave and strategic decision, one that exemplifies both his nature and the quality of students in the Master of Industrial and Labor Relations (MILR) degree program at the Cornell ILR School (Industrial and Labor Relations).

Doing Real Work for Real Companies

Johnson leapt into his graduate work as well, supplementing his book learning with a series of real projects for real companies. For an online research techniques course taught by Stuart Basefsky, ILR’s senior reference librarian, Johnson researched the Employee Free Choice Act, at the request of The Gap. He gave the company tips on how to prepare for its possible enactment. “This is a hot topic in HR right now,” says Johnson. “I picked it because I wanted to be a subject matter expert on it.”

For the same class, he also researched whether the phenomenon of baby boomers delaying retirement during the economic downturn will affect the future talent shortage for Archer Daniels Midland Company. In their research, Johnson and his team members found that “the shortage of talent may be on hiatus today, thanks to continued layoffs that feed an already large pool of available talent, but the talent crisis definitely isn’t over.”

Johnson has also found that his Chinese work and language experience are already very helpful for companies. In a course about leadership taught by HR Studies department chair Lee Dyer, he and other student team members worked on a project for Merck about attracting and retaining key talent in China and India.

“It was a meaty, hands-on experience which put me right in front of a company and a real issue,” says Johnson. “From working on this project, I learned more about the global complexities of HR. Although China and India now have massive educated populations, companies doing business there still find it hard to recruit key talent pools. Looking at Merck’s issues showed how difficult some of these human resources challenges are. There’s not necessarily a perfect answer out there. You’re just trying to develop something that’s better.”

Bringing Research to CAHRS Companies

Johnson has also done real world work through his research assistantship with the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies (CAHRS). Each semester, three CAHRS research assistants (RAs) focus on a specific question for all partner companies. In spring 2009, they studied employee engagement, a particularly important factor in companies weathering the recession.

In their report, Keeping the Workforce Engaged During Crisis, Johnson, along with fellow RAs Rex Fitzpatrick and Kelley Joy, discovered that “there was no one size fits all answer in terms of keeping employees engaged,” says Johnson. “Everybody has their own program, and it makes sense, because every company has different needs.”

Helping a Company in Transition

It seems like a lot of experience to pack into the academic year, and it is. But Johnson also spent summer 2009 using his Chinese connections while interning for Sun Microsystems in Ventura, California. The company, currently in a drawn-out acquisition by Oracle, gave him a lot of chances to see how workers in transition need support.

“It wasn’t so much of an intern experience as it was a real employee experience,” he says, because many human resource employees had already been laid off in anticipation of the acquisition.

While at Sun, he prepared documentation for worker layoffs, investigated employee relations complaints, and organized and conducted four focus groups of Sun employees in Beijing, China and St. Petersburg, Russia to survey their communication needs.

He enjoyed in particular the internal process of addressing employee complaints. “It was fun to resolve a case,” says Johnson, “to leave people in a situation where they’re satisfied with the outcome or at least they understand it. Meeting the needs of individuals—it’s human resources’ purpose and the core of business.”

“The thing that I think distinguished Kurt’s performance for me was that because he has had prior experience before going to Cornell he has a level of maturity,” says his internship mentor, Vivienne Nigro, senior human resources director at Sun Microsystems. “In the HR function it is almost impossible to be effective unless you project confidence and have good relationship and influencing skills. Because of Kurt’s level of maturity, he was able to approach vice presidents, directors, and managers equally well.”

“Kurt has distinguished himself as one of the top students in the MILR class of 2010 through both his strong academic performance and thoughtful participation in class discussions,” says Christopher Collins, CAHRS director and associate HR professor. “His international business experience has given him insight into a different business and cultural environment, but also taught him how to make tough decisions and work collaboratively to get tasks completed.”

Nigro, who has hosted previous ILR interns, notes that Johnson is carrying on the ILR high quality tradition. “The Cornell ILR School training is so appropriately focused to the kind of work that HR is doing in more leading-edge companies,” says Nigro.

Caring for People

While Johnson has had plenty of projects at Cornell, he also has had a little time away from the work world to reflect on and develop his philosophy of human resources.

“Ultimately, the purpose of life is to grow and develop as a person, to become better,” says Johnson. “HR’s responsibility is to take that on for people in a company. I want to help people achieve things that they didn’t think they could do. I believe that having happy, productive people is honestly the best way to get business results. I think it’s a win-win situation.”

For Johnson, his Cornell ILR and CAHRS experiences are also a win-win. While receiving a world-class education to further his HR career, he’s also providing real help to CAHRS partners by searching out the latest in HR research to help them survive and thrive. And one lucky CAHRS partner, Citi, will soon be the full-time beneficiary of that experience and education—when Johnson completes his degree next year, he'll begin a job with the company in their two-year HR associate rotation program.