Now and then I like to write about random thoughts that are too small or personal to make into a column. Summer is a good time for small bits, so here are a couple of things currently on my mind.
Master’s degrees
Two Ramsey County commissioners recently proposed dropping the word “master” from its Master Gardener volunteer program to avoid confusion with the concept of slavery.
The program is affiliated with University of Minnesota Extension.
I recognize the good intent here, but my English-major self is flummoxed by the linguistic misunderstanding. Indeed, many words can have more than one meaning — a master who wields power over someone is a different word usage than a learner who has mastered a skill or concept. The first one, we don’t want. The second one, we do.
Questioning whether to use the word “master” is not new. For example, computer techs have mostly dropped the terms “master and slave” when describing primary computers and the interface terminals that serve them. Good. That was hurtful and unnecessary, especially with equivalent terms readily at hand.
But when it comes to dropping Master Gardener, it’s a problem. It’s also personal. I’m currently pursuing a Master’s degree and when I’m done, I do expect my diploma to say Master’s. That’s all I’m going to say about that.
My friend Norb Berg
A friend of mine died recently, although it would be a type of stolen valor to say we were close. We weren’t the kind of buds who swap stories over drinks or experience adventures together. He had those pals and the stories were epic. Norb Berg and I were more like esprit-de-corps friends, sharing a common mission to help others find work.
For one thing, we came from different generations, with completely different life stories. Norb had been: A prep school valedictorian, then an Army officer during the Korean War, then a scholar earning an advanced degree in Industrial Relations, then a family man raising four sons with his wife Marilyn, and then the first personnel director for Minnesota-based Control Data Corp. Thirty years my senior, Norb accomplished most of those things before I was born.
For those who don’t remember, Control Data became a global leader in supercomputers, but was still a fledgling corporation with fewer than 200 employees when Norb signed on in 1959. By the time he retired as second-in-command decades later, their workforce had rocketed to 60,000 employees, stationed all over the world. Norb had had a role, direct or indirect, in hiring each one of them.
Norb wasn’t shy about his achievements with Control Data, but I didn’t realize the full extent of his contributions until reading Mark Jensen’s book, “HR Pioneers” (North Star Press of St. Cloud, 2013).
According to Jensen’s research, Norb’s HR team literally changed the face of the American workplace. He’s credited with developing or co-developing multiple groundbreaking initiatives, including what’s believed to be the first version of an employee assistance plan. Their internal EAP, in fact, became globally recognized Ceridian, one of Control Data’s most successful spinoffs when the supercomputer business sunsetted here in the early ’90s.
In his retirement, Norb let his imagination fly, pouring energy into such disparate interests as creating a food bank and starting a red deer ranch — and sending emails to a local careers columnist. It didn’t take long for Norb to progress from being my correspondent to being a lunch partner, and then to the surprising role of patron.
In the last two decades of his long and generous life, Norb took on a very personal mission: To directly sponsor unemployed and under-employed workers for individualized career counseling. I never asked if he had other counselors in his extensive Rolodex, but I know he paid my small company to help everyone from school administrators and athletic coaches to sales reps and bankers to home health aides and even restaurant servers he had met randomly. It pleased him enormously to have a resource on offer whenever he met someone he wanted to help.
There are a lot of things I’m going to miss with Norb’s passing, not the least of which are the occasional lunches and ridiculous jokes he liked to tell. But the lesson I’m keeping is the ingenious double-dip benefit of his patronage scheme. Norb could have selected a polished placement firm for his referrals. He chose instead to provide a vital boost to a small, woman-owned business while simultaneously lifting up job seekers, one individual at a time.
Heck of a lesson, Norb, and one I won’t forget.
Amy Lindgren owns a career consulting firm in St. Paul. She can be reached at [email protected].
