Haven for all Hungry Souls: The Influence of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools on Morris Brown College

HAVEN FOR ALL HUNGRY SOULS: THE INFLUENCE OF THE AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH AND THE SOUTHERN ASSOCIATION OF COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS ON MORRIS BROWN COLLEGE By Serena Celeste Wilson Morris Brown College is a small, private historically Black college located near downtown Atlanta, Georgia. The College is the only post-secondary institution in Georgia founded by Blacks for the purpose of educating Blacks. The relationship between Morris Brown College, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools presents an untapped area of research regarding the how external regulatory and fiscal contributing bodies influence the internal mission, culture and management of an institution of higher education. Morris Brown College presents a unique case because, since its founding, it has maintained a close affiliation with the Church that established it. Yet, in recent years, its financial existence has been dependent upon the receipt and use of public funding—which is intricately tied to accrediting standards and oversight. In 2003 the College lost its accreditation. This study employs an ethnographic case-study qualitative research design to explore how the College’s relationship with these bodies influenced the institution’s organizational structure, fiscal management, and administrative culture and identity. The study’s findings indicate that the College’s relationship with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools was largely reflective of the values, ideals, and perspectives of who represented the College at any given time. The College’s relationship with its founding body, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was primarily maintained through the placement of Church members (largely clergy) on the College’s board of trustees, and evidenced in the College’s ideology and mission. Although an autonomous operating body, the College’s relationships with these two bodies are complicated by the institution’s reliance on continued financial support from the Church, and validation (in the form of accreditation) from SACS. While healthy working relationships with both bodies are not mutually exclusive, the internal planning, governance, and evaluation of the College must necessarily consider the values and expectations of these (and other) external entities

Kairotic strategema: A rhetorical investigation of Barack Obama’s 2009 health care address

This thesis examines President Barack Obama’s address given on September 9, 2009 entitled “Remarks by the President to a Joint Session of Congress on Health Care.” In order to address various situational and contextual elements such as legislative ambiguity, national expense, bureaucratic intrusion, abortion, euthanasia and illegal immigration, President Obama opportunely enters the conversation at a particular time so as to benefit his agenda of passing health care reform. Revolving around the notion of kairotic strategema, which includes the understating of deliberative address as well as the possession of kairos and phronesis, I assert that this aids President Obama in being able to strategically deliver a crucial address while influencing both the American public and Congress first toward acceptance and then toward the passing of health care reform

Moving from brain-computer interfaces to personal cognitive informatics

Consumer neurotechnology is arriving en masse, even while algorithms for user state estimation are being actively defined and developed. Indeed, many consumable wearables are now available that try to estimate cognitive changes from wrist data or body movement. But does this data help people? It's a critical time to ask how users could be informed by wearable neurotechnology, in a way that would be relevant to their needs and serve their personal well-being. The aim of this SIG is to bring together the key HCI communities needed to address this: personal informatics, digital health and wellbeing, neuroergonomics, and neuroethics

Effectiveness of different investigation procedures in detecting anthropogenic impacts on coralligenous assemblages

Coralligenous habitat is one of the most important and sensitive habitats of the Mediterranean Sea and several different sampling procedures are currently used in the ecological investigations of coralligenous assemblages. This study aimed to assess the efficacy of different methods in detecting anthropogenic impacts on coralligenous habitat. In particular, the choice of sampling methods, the level of taxonomic resolution, the sampling area, the number of replicates and the spatial scales for detecting possible impacts were evaluated. Results showed that photographic samples larger than 1800 cm2, numbers of replicates larger than 10, the use of taxa and morphological groups as assemblage descriptors, and sampling designs with a high replication at small spatial scales are a valid methodological procedure in impact evaluation studies based on coralligenous assemblages

Mental workload as personal data: designing a cognitive activity tracker

Research continues to correlate physical signals with mental activity, as opposed to physical activity, with physiological sensors. Further, with the proliferation of wearable technology, it seems imminent that our smart watches can soon keep track of our mental activity as well as our physical activity. Our research is working towards accurately measuring Mental Workload ‘in the wild’ using physiological sensors. While we work towards that goal, however, we have begun to explore the design aspects of representing personal cognitive data to users; analogous to a step counter for physical activity. We present the results of diary studies, focus groups, and prototyping exercises to identify design considerations for future cognitive activity trackers

Exploring the relationships between social media influencers and service failure recovery process: views from social influence and commitment-trust theories

Prior research has advanced several explanations for social media influencers’ (SMIs’) success in the burgeoning computer-mediated marketing environments but leaves one key topic unexplored: the moderating role of SMIs in service failure and recovery strategies. Drawing on a social constructivist perspective, and employing social influence theory (SIT) and commitment-trust theory (CTT), 58 semi-structured interviews were conducted with millennials from three European countries (Italy, France and the United Kingdom). Four themes emerged conceptualising millennials perspectives of SMIs’ role in the service failure recovery process

Measuring Mental Workload Variations in Office Work Tasks using fNIRS

The motivation behind using physiological measures to estimate cognitive activity is typically to build technology that can help people to understand themselves and their work, or indeed for systems to do so and adapt. While functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) has been shown to reliably reflect manipulations of mental workload in different work tasks, we still need to establish whether fNIRS can differentiate variety within common office-like tasks in order to broaden our understanding of the factors involved in tracking them in real working conditions. 20 healthy participants (8 females, 12 males), whose work included office-like tasks, took part in a user study that investigated a) the sensitivity of fNIRS for measuring mental workload variations in representations of everyday reading and writing tasks, and b) how representations of natural interruptions are reflected in the data. Results supported fNIRS measuring PFC activation in differentiating between workload levels for reading tasks but not writing tasks in terms of increased oxygenated haemoglobin (O2Hb) and decreased deoxygenated haemoglobin (HHb), for harder conditions compared to easier conditions. There was considerable support for fNIRS in detecting changes in workload levels due to interruptions. Variations in workload levels during the interruptions could be understood in relation to spare capacity models. These findings may guide future work into sustained monitoring of cognitive activity in real-world settings

Exploring customers' responses to online service failure and recovery strategies during Covid‐19 pandemic: An actor–network theory perspective

While the debate on online service failure and recovery strategies has been given considerable attention in the marketing and information systems literature, the evolving Covid‐19 pandemic has brought about new challenges both theoretically and empirically in the consumption landscape. To fully understand customers' responses to service failure during a crisis we asked 70 millennials from three European Countries—Italy, France, and the UK—to describe their responses to service failure during the Covid‐19 pandemic (30 completed a 4‐week diary and 40 completed a 4‐week qualitative survey). Drawing on phenomenological, constructivist, and hermeneutical approaches, and utilizing an actor–network theory perspective, the current study proposes a new framework for understanding customers' responses to online service failure and recovery strategies during the Covid‐19 pandemic. Conclusions highlight implications for theory, policy, and management practice through extending comprehensions of service failure recovery processes by examining how marketing policies generate different social impacts during a crisis situation which facilitate the achievement of customer satisfaction and positive outcomes

Examining the role of social media influencers in service failure and recovery strategies: an empirical investigation of millennials' views

Purpose: Prior research has advanced several explanations for social media influencers' (SMIs’) success in the burgeoning computer-mediated marketing environments but leaves one key topic unexplored: the moderating role of SMIs in service failure and recovery strategies. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on a social constructivist perspective and an inductive approach, 59 in-depth interviews were conducted with millennials from three European countries (Italy, France and the United Kingdom). Building on social influence theory and commitment-trust theory, this study conceptualises four distinct pathways unifying SMIs' efforts in the service failure recovery process. Findings: The emergent model illustrates how source credibility and message content moderate service failure severity and speed of recovery. The insights gained from this study model contribute to research on the pivotal uniqueness of SMIs in service failure recovery processes and offer practical explanations of variations in the implementation of influencer marketing. This study examines a perspective of SMIs that considers the cycle of their influence on customers through service failure and recovery. Originality/value: The study suggests that negative reactions towards service failure and recovery are reduced if customers have a relationship with influencers prior to the service failure and recovery compared with the reactions of customers who do not have a relationship with the influencer