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  • Rubin Supports the Family and Consumer Sciences Industry

    Rubin Supports the Family and Consumer Sciences Industry

    At Rubin, we are proud to support Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS) and its vital role assisting individuals, families, and communities to live healthy and successful lives through the provision of education, research, and technology.

    FCS programs provide individuals and families with essential life skills, including financial literacy, nutrition and wellness, human development, and consumer resource management. These competencies are crucial for fostering well-rounded, capable, and resilient individuals who can thrive in today’s dynamic world.

    And the research conducted by FCS professionals and their work with local municipalities, counties, and states support the creation of healthy and resilient communities.

    We have witnessed the positive impact of FCS services including education, outreach, and research and development firsthand. Employees with a background in FCS bring a unique set of skills that enhance their ability to balance work and personal responsibilities, make informed decisions, and contribute to a positive workplace culture. Their preparedness and adaptability are invaluable assets to our company and the broader community.

    Investing in FCS education is an investment in our future. It equips individuals with the tools they need to lead healthy, productive lives and supports the development of a skilled and knowledgeable workforce. Whether those students enter the workforce as a nutritionist, financial advisor, early education assistant, or other areas, they are better prepared to be successful in their careers due to their knowledge in all areas of FCS. We believe that continued support for FCS programs will yield significant benefits for our society and economy.

    We stand with FCS students and professionals and are committed to advocating for the importance of these programs, services, and the FCS industry. Together, we can ensure that Family and Consumer Sciences education continues to thrive and make a lasting impact on our community.

    FCS matters now and into the future.

  • Rubin Team Hits the Road for Successful Summer 2024

    Rubin Team Hits the Road for Successful Summer 2024

    The Rubin team was on the move in summer 2024!

    Houston, Ft. Worth, Orlando, Northern Virginia and more…we attended conferences and teacher in-service days to both promote Rubin products and train teachers on our resources.

    In July, we had a busy and productive time in Houston at the 2024 International Leadership Conference for HOSA — Future Health Professionals. We spoke with dozens of health science educators about our resources for employability skills. And now we have several conversations in the works to implement our Propel email etiquette tool within CTE programs coast to coast. See Propel for yourself! www.rubineducation.com/explore

    conference for employability skills
    In Houston, Rubin founder Danny Rubin posed with Kyle Bashore, a CTE teacher who uses our Emerge curriculum, and several of his students.

    In Orlando at the 2024 National Leadership Conference for the Future Business Leaders of America, we had a wonderful time catching up with Holly Atha, president and CEO of MBA Research. The organization supports educators in the preparation of students for careers in the areas of business management, finance, marketing, hospitality and tourism management and entrepreneurship.

    conference for employability skills
    Standing with MBA Research CEO Holly Atha.

    In August, we hit the nation’s capital for in-person trainings in Loudoun County and Prince William County, two of the largest school districts in Virginia.

    In the photo below, Michael Grubbs, director of career, technical and adult education (CTAE) in Loudoun County, Virginia (near Washington, DC), proudly holds a Rubin poster. Loudoun County uses our Emerge curriculum for in-demand employability skills. Director Grubbs leans on Rubin to help students learn how to build meaningful relationships for college and career opportunities. Thank you, Loudoun County Public Schools, for all you do!

    training on employability skills
    Loudoun County CTE Director Michael Grubbs with a Rubin poster!

    The next day, we attended CTE Secondary Day for Prince William County Schools.

    We have worked with PWCS the past year on a content collaboration so teachers can access the Rubin Emerge employability skills curriculum and Aspire career exploration videos through Safari Montage and Canvas.

    Thank you, PWCS, for being a trusted partner as we help students learn to communicate professionally.

    In the photos below, PWCS teachers hold up Rubin posters.

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    Spreading the Rubin message in person.

  • Rubin Announces “Propel Partnership” with Nat’l Technical Honor Society

    Rubin Announces “Propel Partnership” with Nat’l Technical Honor Society

    Rubin, a leader in online resources for business communication skills, has partnered with the National Technical Honor Society (NTHS), a non-profit student organization that celebrates excellence in career & technical education (CTE).

    The partnership will provide NTHS chapters access to Propel, Rubin’s revolutionary email tool. Propel is an innovative product for Gmail/Outlook that teaches students how to write polished, professional emails. Propel promises no more student emails that look like casual text messages.

    “We are excited to partner with Rubin to offer our members access to their Propel email tool,” said NTHS Executive Director, Peyton Holland. “This partnership aligns strongly with our NTHS Core Four Objectives, particularly around career development and leadership development. This tool will help NTHS members sharpen and hone their communication skills as they prepare to transition into the workforce.”

    “The partnership with NTHS allows our team to impact student writing on a national level,” said Danny Rubin, founder of Rubin. “So many college and career opportunities begin with an introductory email. If we can help NTHS students write great emails, then all kinds of doors will open.”

    With over one million members served in both secondary and postsecondary chapters across the country, NTHS seeks to empower students through career development, leadership, and service opportunities so they can develop the skills needed to build their careers and our global workforce.

    Rubin is the leader in online instruction for employability skills. Founded in 2017, Rubin teaches students how to write, speak and lead with confidence through a variety of online teaching tools. From live webinars with top professionals to hands-on curricula and an etiquette tool for Gmail/Outlook, teachers and students nationwide rely on Rubin to prepare for the world of work.

    The brightest deserve the best.

  • Rubin Partners with School System in Tech Hot-Spot Mountain View, CA

    Rubin Partners with School System in Tech Hot-Spot Mountain View, CA

    Rubin has landed in Silicon Valley.

    No, the Virginia Beach-based company didn’t move its headquarters to the West Coast. The educational curriculum provider now works with teachers and students in Mountain View Los Altos Union High School District (MVLA).

    Mountain View is a hub for tech giants Google, LinkedIn, Intuit and Microsoft.

    MVLA now incorporates Rubin’s Emerge curriculum for employability skills like how to create a professional email address, shake hands in the business world and handle tricky ethical situations in the workplace.

    Emerge is a robust online library of 300+ instructional items to help students write, speak and lead with confidence. Rubin integrates Emerge to MVLA’s learning management system (Canvas) for single sign-on integration.

    In California, Rubin also works with school divisions in Irvine, Palm Springs, Coachella, Bakersfield and Lynwood outside of Los Angeles.

    “It means a great deal to have the trust of educators in Mountain View, a school system that produces students ready to tackle society’s toughest software challenges,” said Rubin founder Danny Rubin. “As always, we hope to give students a foundation in soft skills to complement the technical training.”

    Educators, students rave about Rubin’s new Propel email etiquette tool

    Rubin’s Emerge curriculum got the business off the ground, but the company now has three products designed to help students with business communication skills.

    Aspire: Online library of 250+ career exploration videos

    Propel: Email etiquette teaching tool that works as a Chrome extension and Outlook Add-In

    Propel is turning heads in secondary schools as students nationwide struggle to write emails formally. Too often, the emails resemble text messages with lowercase letters, no punctuation and slang.

    Without AI tools like ChatGPT, Propel guides a student to draft a high-quality email, and in the process, show respect to adults. See a one-minute demonstration of Rubin Propel.

    email etiquette tool

    Rubin found that 92% of surveyed students who used Propel said they would use the tool for future email writing. Further, 100% surveyed teachers said they noticed an improvement in student email writing because of Propel.

    The Rubin team offers free pilots of Propel for school systems. You can request your pilot here.

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    Rubin is the leader in online instruction for employability or work readiness skills. The company, based in Virginia Beach, Virginia, provides three high-quality resources — Aspire, a career exploration video platform, Emerge, a communication skills curriculum and Propel, a real-time email etiquette training tool for Gmail and Outlook.

    Founded in 2017 by Danny Rubin, a former CBS television news reporter and consultant to NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rubin teaches students nationwide important lessons for email/phone etiquette, networking, team communication, leadership communication and more. Our motto: “Write well, open doors!”

    Landing in the world of Google.

  • Rubin Holds Contracts with 3 Largest School Systems in VA, NC

    Rubin Holds Contracts with 3 Largest School Systems in VA, NC

    Rubin, the leader in online instruction for employability or work readiness skills, holds contracts with the three largest public school systems in Virginia and North Carolina.

    Virginia

    • Fairfax County Public Schools (Northern Virginia)
    • Prince William County Public Schools (Northern Virginia)
    • Loudoun County Public Schools (Northern Virginia)

     

    North Carolina

    • Wake County Public School System (Raleigh)
    • Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (Charlotte)
    • Guilford County Schools (Greensboro)

     

    The six school districts use a mix of Rubin’s Aspire career exploration video platform and Emerge communication skills curriculum. Depending on the district, the resources reach middle school students, high school students or both. The goal in these districts and the 125+ other school systems that use Rubin is to teach students how to write, speak and lead with confidence.

    On any given school day, a student in Prince William County or Wake County, for example, may learn life skills from Rubin Aspire or Emerge like how to write a professional email, shake hands, speak on the phone or communicate on a team.

    Across all Rubin customers, we deliver Aspire and Emerge via LTI Advantage into the school’s learning management system (LMS) like Canvas, Schoology, Blackboard or Moodle. We also provide a custom single sign-on experience with Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams.

    In Virginia, North Carolina and states around the country, there is renewed emphasis on employability or “soft” skills. Employers in rural and urban communities routinely ask schools to teach students skills like customer service, face-to-face interactions and email writing.

    As school divisions then set out to find partners to provide such curricula, Rubin is there with high-quality instruction that guides students to learn and demonstrate effective communication techniques.

    “It’s a great responsibility to work with school divisions, especially ones in our home state of Virginia and next-door neighbor North Carolina,” said Rubin Founder Danny Rubin. “The world of work needs students ready with critical employability skills. We strive to be the premier resource nationwide to help students engage with poise and maturity.”

    Schedule a free trial of our resources today!

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    Rubin is the leader in online instruction for employability or work readiness skills. The company, based in Virginia Beach, Virginia, provides three high-quality resources — Aspire, a career exploration video platform, Emerge, a communication skills curriculum and Propel, a real-time email etiquette training tool for Gmail and Outlook.

    Founded in 2017 by Danny Rubin, a former CBS television news reporter and consultant to NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rubin teaches students nationwide critical lessons for email/phone etiquette, networking, team communication, leadership communication and more. Our motto: “Write well, open doors!”

     

    Making an impact on both sides of the border.

  • Rubin Unveils Aspire, Career Exploration Platform with Focus on Employability Skills

    Rubin Unveils Aspire, Career Exploration Platform with Focus on Employability Skills

    Aspire, career exploration platform from Rubin

    It began as live webinars through Zoom.

    Nearly two years after the Rubin Dream Job Series (formerly Virtual Internship Series) launched in Zoom, the Rubin team has amassed 50+ conversations with professionals across fields like STEM, health care, marketing, sports, law and more. See all recordings here.

    What makes the Dream Job webinars unique is that we focus on the nature of the job (ex: sports agent) and the importance of employability skills on the job (ex: how to engage with clients and coworkers).

    Through a survey of teachers who regularly attend our webinars, one dominant theme surfaced. The webinars are excellent for career exploration, the teachers said, but the recordings (45 minutes, on average) are too long to replay in class.

    Enter: Aspire.

    We heard the feedback loud and clear, and we have delivered on it. Introducing Aspire, Rubin’s new career exploration library, available as an integrated, single sign-on resource for your LMS.

    We took the full-length Dream Job conversations and identified four clips (2-3 minutes in length) from each one that we believe are the most essential moments from the broader interview.

    Sample Aspire video from our conversation with a lab technician:

    Across our 50+ Dream Job conversations, we hand-selected more than 200 videos clips and support each clip with a set of discussion questions (over 500 discussion questions available).

    The result is a comprehensive archive that features “best of” moments from top professionals along with classroom materials to bring the conversations to life with your students. Each job (ex: E.R. nurse) comes with a certificate to allow students to show completion and an understanding of the job.

    “Aspire is a resource we didn’t know we were building all along,” said Alexis Kruemcke, an implementation specialist at Rubin and the project lead for Aspire. “We had already spoken live with so many business professionals and, from that content, we created high-quality, on-demand videos in 5, 10 and 15-minute time windows.”

    Aspire is available as modules in Canvas, folders in Schoology, a series of links in a Google Doc and any other way you need to pull the exploration videos in.

    What’s more, the Rubin team plans to add 1-2 new occupations each month at the conclusion of every new, free Dream Job webinar hosted in Zoom.

    “As soon as we conclude the Dream Job webinar, we will pluck out the top moments and add them to the Aspire library,” said Kruemcke. “Aspire will continue to grow and feature unique and innovative jobs across the CTE landscape.”

    Aspire is priced as a site or district-license tool. It’s appropriate for grades K-12, and the videos feature sign language and closed captions.

    Free trials of Aspire are available. Email Chelsea Caputo, national sales manager, at chelsea@rubineducation.com to schedule the trial and see Aspire for yourself!

    A resource whose time has come.

  • Rubin’s New Propel Tool Featured in ABC News Story

    Rubin’s New Propel Tool Featured in ABC News Story

    Our thanks to reporter Philip Townsend from WVEC, the ABC news affiliate in Norfolk/Va Beach, for coverage of our new Propel etiquette tool for writing emails in Gmail and Outlook.

    Watch the story here!

    We’re makin’ headlines.

  • Rubin Releases Propel, Innovative Etiquette Tool for Email Writing

    Rubin Releases Propel, Innovative Etiquette Tool for Email Writing

    VIRGINIA BEACH, VA (June 15, 2023) — Rubin, the leader in online resources for business communication skills, has launched Propel, an innovative etiquette tool for email writing.

    Propel analyzes a person’s emails and provides instant feedback designed to improve professionalism and soft skills. Unlike popular writing tools like Grammarly, Propel looks for etiquette and professionalism fixes instead of grammar, spelling and verb tense.

    Feedback from Propel includes:

    • How to write a short, concise subject line
    • How to provide a proper greeting
    • How to address the person with a formal title
    • And much more

    Propel is intended for the classroom and the workplace. Early adopters include public school systems where administrators often lament that students write emails like casual text messages. The tool is available as a Gmail extension and Outlook add-on.

    When a person drafts an email, Propel analyzes the text in real-time and provides a blinking “P” icon with etiquette recommendations. Once the person clicks the blinking “P,” the etiquette suggestions appear in the email message area as lightbulbs next to the problematic text. The user opens each lightbulb to find a suggestion as well as a chance to “Learn the Rule” with a deeper explanation.

    Propel does not write for the person but rather encourages the person to understand why it’s appropriate to start an email with, for example, “Good morning” or consider addressing the recipient with a title like “Mr” or “Ms.”

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    In the image, Propel encourages the person to start email with a common greeting like “Good morning.”

    “At Rubin, we have long heard the complaints from educators and business owners about poor etiquette in emails,” said Danny Rubin, founder of Rubin. “Propel is a direct solution to a widespread problem, and we hope Propel will catch etiquette mistakes before the person presses ‘Send.’”

    Watch Propel in action below and request a free trial here!

    The game has changed forever.

  • Rubin Launches America’s Next Great Intern Contest

    Rubin Launches America’s Next Great Intern Contest

    Virginia Beach, VA (January 10, 2023) – The nation will soon discover its “Next Great Intern” through a free contest sponsored by Rubin, the leader in online instruction for employability and work readiness skills.

    The first-ever America’s Next Great Intern contest highlights students who participate in career and technical education (CTE) or project-based (hands-on) classes and programs. All middle school, high school and post-secondary CTE students are eligible to participate.

    Demand for intern and job applicants with “soft skills” remains a top priority across all industry sectors. According to a 2022 survey of employers by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), 76% of respondents want to hire young people who can work on a team, 73% want people with strong written communication skills and 58% seek new hires with strong speaking skills.

    The submission period for the America’s Next Great Intern contest runs the month of February 2023, which is National CTE Month. Educators can register their class or school here. A panel of judges (Rubin team members, industry professionals and staff from the Association for Career and Technical Education) will assess the students across five areas.

    1. Greeting: Video recording of the student engaging in a professional handshake
    2. Phone Skills: Video recording of the student leaving a mock voicemail and answering the phone at a place of business
    3. Team Communication: Email in which the student updates a teacher or employer on the status of classwork or a project at an internship/job
    4. Resiliency & Determination: Written example of a time in which the student demonstrated resiliency in the face of a challenge on a class/club project, volunteer opportunity or task at an internship
    5. Research & Critical Thinking: Questions the student prepares to better explore a company where the student would like to intern

    The instructions are drawn from Rubin’s Emerge curriculum, a broad library of online exercises for employability skills like email/phone etiquette, job interview prep, LinkedIn communication and more. Rubin provides Emerge to CTE programs nationwide.

    Every student who participates in the contest will receive a certificate and e-portfolio of their submitted work.

    “Employers often lament that students today don’t possess the ‘soft skills’ necessary to engage in an office setting or on the job site,” said Danny Rubin, founder of Rubin. “We hope the contest shows that, yes, there are professional-grade young people coast to coast who will add value to any business or organization.”

    For more information or to set up an interview, please contact Janelle Burchfield, media relations with the Rubin team, at  hello@jbdigital.media.

    About Rubin

    Rubin is the leader in online instruction for employability and work readiness skills. The company provides Emerge, a digital curriculum that teaches effective writing and speaking skills, to thousands of students in middle school, high school and higher education. Rubin also has a real-time notification tool for soft skills called Propel.

    Founded in 2017 by Danny Rubin, a former CBS television news reporter and consultant to NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rubin teaches students nationwide critical lessons for email/phone etiquette, networking, team communication, leadership communication and more. Our motto: “Write well, open doors!”

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    Calling all stellar future interns!

  • Rubin Adds Software Developer, Business Development Rep

    Rubin Adds Software Developer, Business Development Rep

    Rubin, a leader in online instruction for business communication skills, has added two new team members to better capture demand in 2023.

    Chris Gerardi comes on board as a software engineer. He replaces Austin Makohon who departed in fall 2022 for a technical role within with the U.S. Navy. Gerardi, a New Jersey native, moved to Hampton Roads after working as a quality assurance analyst with Samsung Electronics America.

    Gerardi will manage the Rubin Emerge curriculum, a broad library of classroom resources for skills like email/phone etiquette, networking and more. Thousands of students nationwide use Emerge to learn in-demand soft skills for the workplace.

    Gerardi also leads the team to develop the Rubin company’s newest product, Propel. The tool provides real-time feedback on a person’s soft skills as the person drafts an email.

    Rubin’s second new hire, Chelsea Caputo, becomes the company’s first business development representative. Caputo joins Rubin after working at Tesla dealerships in Hawaii and Hampton Roads. Caputo will reach out to prospective customers and encourage use of Emerge, Propel and additional projects the company hopes to roll out in 2023.

    Visit the Rubin website to explore Emerge, Propel and the company’s free “Dream Job” live webinar series.

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    Chelsea Caputo, Rubin’s new business development representative

     

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    Chris Gerardi, Rubin’s new software engineer

     

    Growth in important areas.