This report provides a detailed account of an internship with the Greater New Orleans Educational Television Foundation’s development department. For the purposes of this paper, I will be referring to the non-profit as WYES-TV. The internship began in January of 2016 and continued through April of 2016. Throughout this paper, I will provide an overview of the organization’s history, mission, budget, special events and program services, as well as a description of my internship and experience. This report will also include an analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the organization. It will discuss best practices for addressing current challenges and opportunities. Lastly, it will provide a section for recommendations and suggestions for improvements.

This report presents a reflection and analysis of my internship with the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, where I completed 480 hours of work in pursuit of the M.A. in Arts Administration. I worked primarily with Tracy Ferrington Cunningham, Director of Communications & Special Events, in preparing and organizing the 2016 Festival, which represented the organization’s 30th anniversary. In this report, I will deliver an organizational overview of the Festival, describe my internship duties and responsibilities, analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the organization, and provide best practices and recommendations in festival management.

M.Comm. (Business Management) / Project failures worldwide are still significantly high, despite the availability of project management frameworks, standards, techniques and methodologies. A project’s success is, in part, contingent on effectively managing the constraints of time, costs and performance, and in order to achieve this, it is essential for the project manager to possess and display appropriate competencies. The problem addressed in this study is to gain understanding of the project management competencies needed for the successful implementation of South African Built Environment industry projects. South Africa is faced with the challenge of reducing the huge backlog of infrastructure delivery. Given the delivery prioritisation by the government, the construction industry is the preferred vehicle of delivery. However, the industry lacks the requisite project management expertise and experience to make good on this objective. This study investigates the project management competencies required to improve the performance of the industry in delivering the much-needed infrastructure. The study also identifies those competencies that are instrumental to the effective implementation of project management techniques and examines the contributory issues of project management leadership and project success. Given the aforementioned, a survey was conducted among members of Project Management South Africa (PMSA). The data were collected using a structured questionnaire and analysed using descriptive statistics. Overall, respondents agreed that project management requires much more than just knowing how to manage the constraints of time, costs and performance. Of particular note, respondents indicated that, in addition to the more commonly emphasised project administration expertise (i.e. setting and managing scope, timelines and budgets), a project manager must be competent in structuring the project task and clarifying scope, communicating effectively, developing the project objectives, showing reliability and planning the project economy. ii This study contributes to research and practice in two ways. Firstly, we identify and report on core project management competencies. The identified competencies also contribute to the available literature. Secondly, the study proposes a framework that would provide an organisation with a system for recruitment, measuring performance, identifying training and development needs of individual employees and rewarding effective performance for superior performers. The study is significant because by gaining a greater understanding of what key competencies are needed to effectively manage a Built Environment industry project, more effective education and training methods, as well as procedures, can be developed to facilitate the instruction of the defined key competencies and improve the effectiveness of future project managers in the South African Built Environment industry. It furthermore adds to the existing body of project management competency research.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-01

A literature review of vehicle routing problems (VRPs) in general, and specifically airline scheduling problems and the airline taxi problem, is provided. A real-world airline taxi scheduling problem is described as experienced by a tourist airline oper- ating in the Okavango Delta, Botswana. In this problem, a daily schedule is drawn up manually by a team of experienced schedulers a few days before the day in ques- tion. In this research, a slightly relaxed version of the problem is considered in order to develop heuristics and modelling methods which will be useful for general cases. Various methods and heuristics are proposed for the problem and tested on a small version of the problem as well as the full-sized version. The most promising methods are demonstrated and solutions provided. One of the methods was applied to the actual problem to demonstrate the practical usefulness. In this case a schedule with a cost 12% lower than the manual schedule cost was achieved. All the heuristics and methods are applicable to certain other VRPs, particularly real-world or highly- constrained VRPs. An example is provided of a solution method for a real-world instance of the multi-vehicle capacitated vehicle routing problem (MVCVRP). An- other example is provided of a standard, benchmark instance from the internet of a capacitated vehicle routing problem with time windows (CVRPTW).

ABSTRACT The Society for Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes of South Africa (SEMDSA) estimates the prevalence of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in South Africa to be approximately 13% in the Indian, 3% in the European and 4.8-8% in the African population group. Morbidity from diabetes is a consequence of both macrovascular and microvascular disease. Over the last decade, a fundamental transformation of the principles of management of type 2 diabetes has occurred. This was driven by a large number of multicentre randomized clinical trials documenting improved outcomes associated not only with glycaemic control, but also with use of antihypertensive, lipid lowering and anti-platelet therapy. The objective of this research report was to ‘revisit’ our diabetes clinics to ascertain how many diabetic patients are reaching the lipid, blood pressure, body mass index, waist circumference and glucose targets as recommended by the SEMDSA guidelines and to ascertain if there has been any improvement since a previous study conducted a decade ago. Study design included a sample of 150 patients. Body mass indices (BMI), fasting lipograms, glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c), waist measurements and blood pressure were determined in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus who were on oral agents or insulin (Protaphane), or a combination thereof, and who were age 35 years or older. Results showed that, out of the 150 patients, 98 were females and 52 were males. Black patients constituted 68%, White 12,7%, Indian 10,7% and Coloured 8,7%. The mean age was 59 years. The mean HbA1c was 8,7% with HbA1c being more than 8% in 83 patients (55%). Obesity was present in 37,3% of the patients; it was class I (BMI 30-34,9 kg/m2) in 22%, class II (BMI 35-39,9) in 10% and class III (BMI >40) in 5,3%. Hypercholesterolaemia (total cholesterol > 5,0 mmol/l) was present in 29,3%, hypertriglyceridaemia (total triglycerides > 1,5 mmol/l) in 45,3% of the patients. Waist circumference was greater or equal than 80cm in 98% of the females and greater or equal than 94cm in 69% of males. In the whole cohort of 150 patients, 127 were hypertensive (84,67%). 78,74% of patients with hypertension had systolic blood pressure above or equal to 130 mmHg and 59,84% had diastolic blood pressure above or equal to 80 mmHg. Out of the 150 patients, 43% did not engage in regular exercise, 6% smoked cigarettes and 51% were on aspirin. In conclusion these findings are similar to those from a previous study conducted in 1996 and show little improvement in the holistic care of patients with type 2 diabetes.

Knowledge management is concerned with the development and exploitation of the knowledge assets of an organisation with a view to furthering the organisations’ objectives. The vital role that knowledge management processes plays in the performance of business organisations has been the basis of several studies - a number of companies, operating in various other industries, have proven the need for, and performance enhancing benefits of, adopting knowledge management processes in one form or the other. Taking these accounts into consideration, this research study attempts to test the hypothesis that effective knowledge management use would constitute a performance enhancing tool in construction project management enterprise in South Africa. The research survey is thus carried out among construction project management professionals in South Africa. The levels of awareness and use of knowledge management systems among construction project management professionals in South Africa is researched into; this revealed a mostly “medium to high” level of awareness and use. The Project Efficiency Review approach to performance measurement is primarily adopted for this study. This showed limited correlation between knowledge management use and enhanced performance in construction project performance. Other performance measurement approaches (Metrics, Economic and Market Value approaches) also showed limited correlation. Two causative factors for this situation are construction project scope changes and schedule delays, which are seemingly pervasive in contemporary South Africa. As such, further research is recommended to establish more appropriate “objective” performance measurement approaches that would be able to accommodate these complexities. This would facilitate the making of a business case for knowledge management use in construction project management.

Strategists at the largest financial institutions have, for years, offered asset allocation advice to their clients. Given the size of these firms and the trillions of investment dollars they influence, the value of this active asset allocation advice (if any) should be of great interest to researchers and investors alike. Using unique survey data beginning in November 1996 with nearly 6,000 observed asset allocation recommendations, I examine strategic and tactical asset allocation advice as emanated from a set of the largest financial institutions. First, to establish a general perspective and allow for strategic comparison, I create and present passive portfolio benchmarks. Two arrays of performance statistics gauged both with raw returns and with Sharpe measures to account for risk characterize such performance over a period matching that of the survey data, as well as over a 50 year period. I next address the active asset allocation advice. By forming pairwise comparisons of measures of portfolio return performance for each individual revision in asset allocation and its previously advised asset allocation, I execute an aggregate analysis both in terms of a raw return competition as well as adjusting for risk. In this manner, I determine whether institutional strategists add value to the portfolios they influence with their advice. Next, I compare the return performance of different firms and strategists to each other, wherever continuous data is available. Finally, again using the continuous data, I contrast the performance of the firms and strategists to the buy-and-hold approaches, or the fixed asset allocation benchmarks. I do this both over the bulk of the survey period, and also with the period split into halves, approximately separating the bull market of the late 1990s and the bear market of the early 21st century. Overall, I conclude that the powerful influence of these, the largest financial institutions and their chief strategists, in directing the flow of assets among asset classes is without merit. As such, my results generally provide counter-evidence of the potential to derive excess returns from market-timing by those most likely to possess such an ability. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Finance in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2004. / Date of Defense: July 12, 2004. / Asset Allocation Recommendations, Strategic Asset Allocation, Active Asset Allocation, Strategists, Institutional Strategists, Strategist Advice, Strategist Recommendations, Strategist Survey, Institutional Strategist Survey, Asset Allocation Advice, Asset Allocation, Bloomberg Survey, Bloomberg Institutional Survey / Includes bibliographical references. / David R. Peterson, Professor Directing Dissertation; Thomas W. Zuehlke, Outside Committee Member; Gary A. Benesh, Committee Member; William A. Christiansen, Committee Member.

This dissertation seeks to better understand the concept of community engagement through the application of the arts to address social concerns. This case study focused on The Tallahassee Community Chorus and its performance of “Sing for the Cure: A Proclamation of Hope.” The research questions dealt with aspects related to the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the concert, in an attempt to determine if the effort could be considered community engagement based on the applied methodological framework: Borwick’s (2012) eightfold path of community engagement and Rendón’s (2009) notion of sentipensante. The research study relied on data collected through observations of board meetings, rehearsal sessions, and the concert itself. Additional data came from interviews of board members, executive staff persons, audience members, and a representative of the partnering organization, Tallahassee Memorial Hospital’s Cancer Center. Also, concert ushers distributed survey cards to audience members, who returned the cards upon exiting the concert. I analyzed the collected data through NVivo and Excel software, and determined prominent themes related to the study, which were then applied to the framework and, ultimately, to the research questions. Time constraints, low attendance, organizational role related to input and goal formulation, varied performer support for the topic of breast cancer, aspects of the performance, addressing a social issue, and applying the concert to cancer generally, were the prominent themes of this study. The Tallahassee Community Chorus presented an example of community outreach, but not engagement, as determined by failure to solicit an external partner and build a relationship with them before deciding on the piece to perform. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Art Education in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2017. / May 2, 2017. / Administration, Arts, Community, Engagement, Management, Outreach / Includes bibliographical references. / Pat Villeneuve, Professor Directing Dissertation; Wanda Brister-Rachwal, University Representative; David Gussak, Committee Member; Anne Hodges, Committee Member; Antonio Cuyler, Committee Member.

Photocopy of typescript. / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries