Playing Multiple Positions: Student-Athlete Identity Salience and Conflict

Student-athletes enact dual roles, as students and athletes, and hold corresponding identities. The salience of these identities and conflict between them have implications for student-athlete wellness. The purpose of this study was to (a) gain insight into organizational and individual characteristics associated with identity salience, by examining student-athletes across universities; and (b) shed light on situations of identity salience and conflict for student-athletes. We conducted a survey study of student-athletes across 17 universities that captured both quantitative and qualitative data. Our results reveal a relationship between identity salience and individual performance (academic and athletic) and university ranking. Further, we found an interaction between athlete and student identity salience, such that identifying strongly as a student, athlete, both, or neither has implications for conflict. Finally, by unpacking situations of identity salience and conflict, we show similarities and differences across student-athletes’ experiences. This study has implications for universities and athletic departments

Constructing a Distant Future: Imaginaries in Geoengineering

We develop the concept of the distant future as a new way of seeing the future in collective efforts. While a near future is represented in practical terms and concerned with forming expectations and goals under conditions of uncertainty, a distant future is represented in stylized terms and concerned with imagining possibilities under conditions of ambiguity. Management research on future-oriented action has developed around problems of the near future. To explore distant futures, we analyze the case of geoengineering, a set of planetary-scale technologies that have been proposed as solutions to the threat of climate change. Geoengineering has increasingly been treated as if it were a reality, despite continued controversy and in the absence of any implementation. We find that societal-level imaginaries that were built on deeply-held moral bases and cosmologies underpinned the conception of geoengineering, and that a dialectic process of discursive attempts to reconcile oppositional imaginaries increased the concreteness and credibility of geoengineering so that it increasingly has been treated as an ‘as-if’ reality. We suggest that distant futures orient collective efforts in distinctive ways, not as concrete guides for action but by expressing critiques and alternatives, that can become treated as ‘as-if’ realities

Implementing an Engineering Teaching Development Program for Graduate Student Instructors

The Engineering Teaching Development Project (ETDP), a pilot program started by the student chapter of ASEE at the University of Michigan, is a multi-component program designed to improve the long-term teaching skills of graduate student instructors (GSIs) in the College of Engineering. The first component of the ETDP is college-wide pedagogical workshop series. These workshops are conducted by nationally recognized engineering educators invited by the ASEE student chapter. The topics of these workshops include cooperative learning, diversity in the classroom, and classroom assessment techniques. These workshops offer a means of continual improvement for all of the educators in the university, both faculty and GSIs. The second component is the Departmental Training Programs Workshop, which was held in July before the start of the Fall semester. During this workshop, trained members of University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) helped faculty and graduate coordinators from 8 of the 11 departments in the College develop a step-by-step GSI training program, which could then be implemented in their respective departments. There were also experienced GSIs from each department present at the session. This perspective was helpful for faculty and staff to identify specific need of the GSIs in their department. The final component is the Teaching Fellows Pilot Program. This is a program called for experienced GSIs to submit proposals for innovative approaches to team teaching a course with a faculty member. These proposals should have included a description of the teaching innovation, a description of the assessment techniques used, and identification of the role the mentoring faculty member would play. A selection committee awarded the fellowship to an experienced GSI from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering to implement computer-based laboratory exercises in an existing introductory hydraulics course. The primary objective for this three-tiered ETDP project is to provide training and mentoring programs for engineering GSIs that lead to a commitment to educational improvements in the classroom. As a secondary goal, the project seeks to promote an environment in the College of Engineering where continuous improvement of teaching techniques among educators is seen as a standard for those entering academia

Towards Strategic and Authentic Corporate Social Responsibility in Professional Sport

The rise and institutionalization of CSR in sport is captured in a growing body of work in sport management; however, this research tends to highlight trends across teams, obscuring the opportunity to learn from positive outliers. In particular, we need a better understanding of the evolution of CSR in sport towards more strategic approaches that are smart, thoughtful and genuine. The purpose of this paper is to present and analyze a case study of a professional sport team in the U.S. that has reinvented, and reorganized around, a significant component of their CSR – their community relations approach. We use qualitative data to explore the case of the Detroit Lions as they evolve their community relations approach from a broad philanthropic model to a more strategic and authentic partnership-focused model of economic development. We draw out themes around the Lions’ approach, process, and partnerships, and highlight best practices. In doing so, we hope to stimulate discussion and future research in the areas of CSR in sport, sport-community partnerships, and sport and city revitalization

Toward strategic and authentic corporate social responsibility in professional sport: a case study of the Detroit Lions

The rise and institutionalization of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in sport is captured in a growing body of work in sport management. This literature suggests professional teams should be strategic in their approaches—matching internal resources with external needs—but we lack an understanding of the processes and mechanisms in the evolution to more strategic CSR, as well as specific practices that characterize these approaches. Further, by focusing on broad trends in how and why teams are adopting CSR, we miss the opportunity to learn from teams with innovative and authentic CSR approaches. To address these gaps, this article uses a qualitative case-study approach to examine how one professional team in the U.S.—the Detroit Lions—evolved their CSR to a more strategic and authentic partnership-focused model. Our findings point to key process steps and mechanisms in the decision making around, and implementation of, this approach, including the role of organizational structure, leadership, and community partnerships. We draw out themes around these central partnerships and highlight best practices. In offering a more nuanced understanding of professional sport CSR process and practice, we contribute to the literature on CSR in sport, sport-community partnerships, and sport and city revitalization

The Effects of Soil/Sediment Organic Matter on Mineralization, Desorption, and Immobilization of Phenanthrene

The bioavailability, desorption profiles, and extent of immobilization of phenanthrene were assessed using three geosorbents that had been previously classified based on their relative sorption behaviors and the chemical characteristics of their associated organic matter. Contaminants sorbed to amorphous, geologically young sorbents were found to desorb at a faster rate and thus be more readily bioavailable than contaminants sorbed to geologically mature kerogens. However, the final extent of mineralization in biologically active systems was observed to be comparable for all three geosorbents tested regardless of geological age. Analysis of the geosorbents at the conclusion of the mineralization experiments implies that biological activity affects contaminant immobilization through both sequestration and transformation. Dimensional analysis of the experimental system with independent measures of phenanthrene degradation and mass transfer aided in interpretation of the mineralization data by providing a quantifiable parameter. The resulting dimensional parameter not only changes with experimental design, but also was found to change as experimental conditions changed within a single system

Catalyzing Action on Social and Environmental Challenges:An Integrative Review of Insider Social Change Agents

Urgent societal issues require corporations to make changes and contribute solutions. Insider social change agents are uniquely poised to propel this work. Operating from within their workplaces, they can advance changes that are linked to external social concerns but have purposes distinct from the organization’s core strategies and operations. They undertake mobilization activities, making local moves that aim toward more broadly impactful changes. These efforts form the micro-foundations of organizational approaches to positive social change. We review and integrate five streams in which such insider social change agents have increasingly appeared: employee activism, issue selling, tempered radicalism, micro-corporate social responsibility, and social intrapreneurship. Our framework maps the features of change efforts, with elements of persons, issues, places, activities, and outcomes. With a shared framework, researchers can better characterize the multiplicity of insider change efforts and ascertain how they compare, collaborate, or compete. Research will benefit from taking a more integrative view, especially toward the aim of understanding how local efforts aggregate to broader social impacts. To understand how change is inhibited or supported, future research can theorize blockers of societal change alongside insider social change agents and look to the ecosystem level for reciprocal and amplifying processes

The Effects of Soil/sediment Organic Matter on Mineralization, Desorption, Sequestration, and Transformation of Phenanthrene

The bioavailability and desorption profiles as well as the extent of sequestration and transformation of phenanthrene were assessed using three sorbents that had been previously classified based on the Distributed Reactivity Model (DRM). These phenomena were shown to vary with the degree of diagenesis of the sorbent, supporting the applicability of the DRM to predict contaminant fate. Contaminants sorbed to geologically young sorbents will desorb at a faster rate and thus be more readily bioavailable than contaminants sorbed to geologically older sorbents. However, the final extent of mineralization was comparable for all geosorbents regardless of geological age. Results from methanol Soxhlet extraction of the sorbents imply that biological activity alters the soil organic matter (SOM) and changed the nature of sequestration and transformation. This alteration is more pronounced for geosorbents that are younger, more chemically oxidized, and more biologically active. No significant differences were found for phenanthrene-sorbent contact periods of 2 and 4 months

Relationship of Soil Organic Matter Characteristics to Organic Contaminant Sequestration and Bioavailability

Sorption and desorption equilibria of phenanthrene with respect to three different types of geosorbents were measured, as were the rates of desorption and biological mineralization of this representative hydrophobic organic contaminant. The chemical nature of the organic matter associated with each geosorbent was characterized using solid state 13C-NMR spectrometry. The results of these studies reveal that both the desorption behavior and the microbial bioavailability of the sorbed contaminant are influenced by the physicochemical character of the organic matter. The more reduced and condensed the organic matter, the greater the extent of sorption-desorption hysteresis, the slower the desorption rate, and the less readily bioavailable the sorbed contaminant. These observations are consistent with projections predicated on a dual reactive domain model introduced earlier to describe the sorptive reactivities of different types of soil/sediment organic matter with hydrophobic organic contaminants