The Baby Animal Effect in Wildlife Conservation Advertising

This study examines how baby animal appeals influence wildlife conservation intentions and donation behavior. Participants shown a baby animal demonstrated more empathy and stronger conservation intentions than those shown an adult animal. Furthermore, promotion-focused participants responded with higher conservation intentions and donation amounts after viewing baby (vs. adult) animals, while prevention-focused participants showed no preference. By demonstrating how baby animal appeals interact with self-regulatory focus, these findings shed light on the boundary conditions of the baby animal effect and identify empathy as the key mechanism driving conservation behaviors

Savannah Bananas: Growing the Greatest Show in Baseball

Co-founded by Jesse and Emily Cole, the Savannah Bananas delighted fans with their unique brand of baseball. The barnstorming team delivered its high-octane entertainment in sold-out ballparks across the country, including Major League Baseball (MLB) stadiums. The team played Banana Ball, a derivative of conventional baseball that offered a faster-paced, more surprising game filled with trick plays, wild stunts, crazy contests, and unlikely dancing. The Bananas accumulated more TikTok followers than any MLB team, and sold merchandise to fans around the world. While the Savannah Bananas thrived, MLB experienced declining attendance and television viewership, particularly among young people, until several significant rule changes were introduced in 2023. These modifications shortened the length of games and increased the amount of exciting action. Attendance rose, though not yet to previous peak levels. MLB owners began to discuss further radical changes, including one new rule that bore a striking resemblance to a distinctive feature of Banana Ball. Baseball traditionalists reacted quite negatively to some of these ideas. Fans First Entertainment, the parent company of the Savannah Bananas, had bold ambitions. The organization planned to launch its fourth barnstorming team in 2025. The coming season included games at seventeen MLB ballparks and four football stadiums. Fans First aimed to operate a six-team league the following year. Would people embrace the idea of an entire league of teams playing Banana Ball? Could the teams fill larger ballparks and stadiums around the world year after year? Perhaps most interestingly, would the Bananas influence the evolution of the MLB game, or would the MLB owner and fans resist bold changes, such as the Golden At-Bat Rule, to attract new fans

Baccalaureate Service 2025

An interfaith Thanksgiving ceremony for graduates, their families, and their friends. Bryant chaplains lead the ceremony, which features music, readings, and reflection. Graduating seniors do not wear caps and gowns to this event and may sit with their families

Entrepreneurial Emancipation and Autonomy Through a Freirean Lens: Case of Bar Hostesses in Kenya

This study explores the transformative potential of entrepreneurship through the lens of Paulo Freire’s critical consciousness (conscientização). Using an in-depth, multi-method qualitative approach, we investigate how bar hostesses (i.e., sex workers) in Nairobi, Kenya exercise entrepreneurial autonomy (at the individual level) and emancipatory entrepreneuring (at the collective level) after engaging with a targeted virtual business incubator in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings reveal how the virtual incubator became a platform for the bar hostesses to exercise critical reflection and collective action by identifying structural constraints (limit-situations), envisioning alternative futures (untested feasibility), and enacting transformative change (limit-acts). Participants developed entrepreneurial ventures that transcended stigmatized identities, enhanced agency, and created informal support networks, working collectively to build institutions rooted in mutual support and trust. By reframing entrepreneurship education through the Freirean lens of critical consciousness, we highlight how collective, community-driven approaches can transcend individualistic, market-centric narratives in entrepreneurship education

What Does the American Presidency Mean? The Need for Interpretation of Presidency Studies

What Does the American Presidency Mean? The Need for Interpretation in Presidency Studies makes a compelling case for how interpretivism contributes to our understanding of the American presidency. This brief book is accessible and inviting, regardless of a reader’s background in presidency studies or interpretivism. Part I explores several dimensions of interpretivist and positivist methodologies. Chapters discuss the characteristics of interpretivism, genealogically trace positivism’s dominance in presidency studies, and identify how attributes of the presidency that raise methodological challenges for positivism are the same that make it fertile ground for interpretivism. Part II explores a wide range of interpretive scholarship on the American presidency, including studies of presidential meaning making, the institution’s historical-political development, presidential symbolism, the construction of the presidency, and the presidential spectacle. It concludes with an interpretation of recent developments emphasizing the timeliness, relevance, and importance of methodological pluralism in presidency studies. The book is written for anyone interested in the meaning of the presidency, whether scholars or graduate students in American political science, or those from other disciplines within and outside the United States. It is appropriate for courses on the American Presidency, Executive Politics, Political Communication, Rhetoric, and Social Science Methods, among others