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

Michigan Focused Biomass Waste Circular Economy Case Studies

This project developed two case studies to demonstrate a biomass waste circular economy with a focus on food and agriculture waste in Michigan. Each case study was chosen as a representation of the potential pathways for urban food and agriculture waste to be recycled throughout the system. The first case study examines food waste taken from the University of Michigan’s two major athletic and event complexes, Michigan Stadium and Crisler Center, to use as input for an anaerobic digester for the campus to produce biogas and liquid digestate. To make the purchase of an anaerobic digester beneficial to the university, a minimum of four years of use will be required when selling the liquid digestate and utilizing the energy output. The second case study examines soybean and cherry pit waste from Michigan farms to act as input for Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) for the Detroit Wayne County Airport (DTW). Each agriculture waste source was chosen based on the production quantity throughout the state. Michigan is the number one producing state of tart cherries and a major producer of soybeans. This method of using agricultural waste does not become beneficial for the immediate future due to the price of SAF technology; however, the combination of cherry pit and soybean waste and production can produce 93 days of fuel for DTW, which will significantly reduce the carbon footprint of the airport. The goal of this project was to address the growing waste crisis and establish solutions that are beneficial to both communities and the environment. Our work emphasizes the need for systemic changes in how waste is approached and highlights the positive potential outcomes achievable through the effective utilization of biomass waste as a resource

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

Quantifying Sources of Variability in Infancy Research Using the Infant-Directed-Speech Preference

Psychological scientists have become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and replicability, and infancy researchers in particular face specific challenges related to replicability: For example, high-powered studies are difficult to conduct, testing conditions vary across labs, and different labs have access to different infant populations. Addressing these concerns, we report on a large-scale, multisite study aimed at (a) assessing the overall replicability of a single theoretically important phenomenon and (b) examining methodological, cultural, and developmental moderators. We focus on infants’ preference for infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS). Stimuli of mothers speaking to their infants and to an adult in North American English were created using seminaturalistic laboratory-based audio recordings. Infants’ relative preference for IDS and ADS was assessed across 67 laboratories in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia using the three common methods for measuring infants’ discrimination (head-turn preference, central fixation, and eye tracking). The overall meta-analytic effect size (Cohen’s d) was 0.35, 95% confidence interval = [0.29, 0.42], which was reliably above zero but smaller than the meta-analytic mean computed from previous literature (0.67). The IDS preference was significantly stronger in older children, in those children for whom the stimuli matched their native language and dialect, and in data from labs using the head-turn preference procedure. Together, these findings replicate the IDS preference but suggest that its magnitude is modulated by development, native-language experience, and testing procedure

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