Big Ideas TXST

Texas State University’s Laure Brimbal, assistant professor in the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Texas State University, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss the research that shows children are judged more harshly for telling blunt truths than for lies.

Research published in October by Brimbal suggests children who tell blunt truths such as “I don’t want this present – it’s ugly!” are judged more harshly by adults than those who bend the truth to be polite or protect others. Published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Moral Education, the research demonstrates the mixed messages that adults are giving children about lying versus telling the truth in different contexts.

The study followed 267 adults from the Northeast U.S. being shown videos of children, aged 6 to 15, telling the truth or lying in various social situations. In some scenarios, the 24 different children lied to protect others. Findings showed that the adults judged the blunt truth-tellers more harshly than those who lied or told vague truths, but only when they told lies in order to be polite. When children lied to protect others, telling blunt truths or lies had less of an influence on how adults viewed the child.

Prior to coming to Texas State, Brimbal was a postdoctoral research associate at Iowa State University. She earned her Ph.D. in psychology and law from the Graduate Center, CUNY in 2016. Her research interests lie at the intersection of psychology and the criminal justice system, specifically policing. Her focus is on interviewing and issues such as how to build rapport to overcome resistance and how to use evidence in an interview to improve lie-detection accuracy. She has also examined broader issues of decision-making in investigations, evaluating the effectiveness of training approaches and integrating research and practice.

Further reading:

Children who tell blunt truth, as opposed to lying, are being judged harsher by adults

Texas State University’s Stella Silva, assistant vice president for inclusive excellence-faculty and staff initiatives, and Victoria Black, associate dean of University College student services, join the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss the university’s recent designation as a Seal of Excelencia recipient.

Texas State is one of only six institutions certified in 2022 for the seal by Excelencia in Education, the nation’s premier authority on efforts accelerating Latino student success in higher education. Texas State joins an exclusive group of 30 colleges and universities nationally who are so recognized for demonstrating through data, evidence-based practices and leadership, how they are intentionally serving Latino students.

The Seal of Excelencia framework was developed with colleges and universities over many years as a tool for institutional self-assessment. The seal certification is valid for three years and institutions committed to a journey of transformation to intentionally serve their Latino students may choose to apply. This marks the fourth year Excelencia has offered the Seal of Excelencia—a national certification process supporting institutional transformation to serve Latino, and all, students.

Texas State has been designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution since 2011. Currently, 40.5% of the student body identifies as Hispanic/Latino. In 2021, Hispanic Outlook magazine recognized Texas State as one of the Top 100 Colleges and Universities for Hispanics. Texas State was nationally ranked in seven categories, including 13th for total bachelor’s degrees granted to Hispanics, 28th for total Hispanic enrollment among 4-year schools and 47th for total master´s degrees granted to Hispanics.

Further reading:

National spotlight on Texas State for Seal of Excelencia honor

Rodney Rohde, Texas State University System Regents Professor in the College of Health Professions and chair of the Clinical Laboratory Science Program at Texas State University, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss the recent outbreak of monkeypox in the U.S.

Rohde holds certifications as a specialist in virology, specialist in microbiology, and molecular biologist from the American Society for Clinical Pathology. He spent a decade as a public health microbiologist and molecular epidemiologist with the Texas Department of State Health Services Bureau of Laboratories and Zoonosis Control Division prior to his academic career. His research interests are diverse but focus on adult education and public health microbiology, specifically with respect to rabies virology, oral rabies wildlife vaccination, antibiotic resistant bacteria and molecular diagnostics/biotechnology. He has published numerous articles and has received a variety of grant support for his research. Rohde is a member in the prestigiousAlpha Mu Tau Fraternity (AMTF) and was named a CLS Distinguished Author, along with his colleagues, in 2013. He received the 2007 ASCLS Scientific Research Award and again in 2014for his work with MRSA and rabies, respectively.

Further Reading 

What is monkeypox? A microbiologist explains what’s known about this smallpox cousin

What do HIV and COVID-19 have to do with monkeypox?

Monkeypox Arrives in the U.S.—Now What?

Monkeypox: What We Do and Don’t Know About Recent Outbreaks

Louis Pasteur’s scientific discoveries in the 19th century revolutionized medicine and continue to save the lives of millions today

Aimee Villarreal, an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Texas State University, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss her appointment by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland to the Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names, a federal advisory group to help identify and recommend changes to derogatory terms still in use for places throughout the country.

Villarreal was trained in anthropology at the University of California at Santa Cruz with specialization in Mexican American culture and history. As a Chicana with roots in New Mexico and Texas, she is descended from farmworkers, faith healers, educators and community workers whose collective spirit she brings to her teaching, scholarship and creative projects. She is committed to homeplace ethnography and applied projects in partnership with local stakeholders.

Her interdisciplinary research explores social movements and other acts of rebeldía for social justice, equity and sustainable futures in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. She produced and served as lead researcher for an award-winning documentary animation about the 1680 Pueblo Revolt. Currently, she is working on Unsettled Refuge, a historical project involving researchers in Canada and the U.S. who are documenting Indigenous practices of sanctuary and humanitarianism in North America. Her forthcoming book Sanctuaryscapes in the New Mexico Borderlands tells time-traveling stories about how vulnerable people band together to create communities of protection and care.

Further reading:

1680 Pueblo Revolt: Frontera!

Hank Hehmsoth, an associate professor of practice in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Texas State University, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss his work with Christopher Cross, music education and the fascinating discoveries he’s made in jazz research.

As a performing artist, Hehmsoth has played more than 10,000 international, national, state and regional area performances, from classical to jazz to pop/rock, as well as Broadway, concert tour music, nightclubs and symphony. He is a lifetime voting member for the Grammy Awards.

Hehmsoth teaches composition and jazz piano. His students play piano, bass, sax, flute, guitar and have won awards and scholarships including Berklee College of Music  and the Patti Strickel Harrison Scholarship. Composition students learn commercial arranging and contemporary techniques in jazz. His studio includes international students from Serbia, China, South Korea and South America.

He is a MacDowell Norton Stevens fellow in composition, a National Endowment for the Arts fellow in jazz composition (1979), a Fulbright Senior Specialist in jazz studies, a National Endowment for the Arts project specialist and a research scholar for the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University.

Further reading:

Dale Blasingame, an assistant professor of practice in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Texas State University, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss National Parks, State Parks and incorporating these outdoor treasures into higher education.

A founder of the Study-in-America program at Texas State, each semester Blasingame oversees a class of students who travel to public parks across the U.S. to hone their journalism skills and learn to tell stories with substance and relevance. Students benefit from the experience of studying beyond the traditional classroom setting, much like studying abroad.

Blasingame is an avid hiker and traveler. In 2014, he visited all 95 state parks in Texas in one year. He’s now almost halfway through his mission to visit all 400+ national park properties. Dale’s dog, Lucy, joins him on trips and loves to hike and climb rocks. Blasingame and Lucy were included on Texas Highways Magazine’s list of Extraordinary Texans for 2016, and his stories have been featured on TV, radio, digital and in magazines. He’s been able to marry his passions of technology and our parks by creating a course called Mobile Storytelling in the Park, in conjunction with Texas Parks and Wildlife, where students produce social video content at state parks. In 2017, Blasingame received a grant to develop the School of Journalism and Mass Communication’s first Study in America course, where he took students to do similar work in national parks. The program is now in its third year.

Blasingame is a member of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation, National Park Foundation, National Parks Conservation Association and The Trail Foundation. He’s also a licensed commercial drone pilot.

Before joining the Texas State faculty, Blasingame was a television news producer. He spent nine years at WOAI-TV in San Antonio, where he won two Lone Star Emmy awards and was nominated for a third. Before that, he was a news anchor and sports reporter for KTSA-AM in San Antonio. Blasingame is a member of the Online News Association, Society of Professional Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

Further reading:

Study-in-America: Journalism Students report from state, national parks as they create content for digital and social media outlets

Digital Media Innovation

Dale Blasingame on Instagram

Lucy And Her Leash

Kate Spradley, a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Texas State University joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss her work along the South Texas border with Operation I.D.

Beginning in 2013, the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State began a service-learning project ‒ Operation Identification (OpID) led and directed by Spradley. Operation ID was founded to facilitate the identification and repatriation of unidentified human remains found along or in close proximity to the South Texas border through community outreach, scientific analysis and collaboration with governmental and non-governmental organizations.

The process of identification of migrant remains in Texas, as in every other border state requires collaboration. FACTS faculty and staff work closely with the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, South Texas Center for Human Rights, Colibrí Center for Human Rights, in addition to foreign consulates, the USCBP Missing Migrant Project, the National Missing and Unidentifeid Persons System (NamUS) and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, as some of the cases represent individuals under the age of 18. Working together with undergraduate and graduate students, Spradley’s team serves the families of the missing and law enforcement agencies within Texas that have limited resources to pursue identification efforts. Operation Identification facilitates exhumation, processing, analysis, storage, and identification efforts of migrant deaths from South Texas.

Spradley received her master’s from the University of Arkansas in 2000 and her Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee in 2006. She is a biological anthropologist with specific research interests in human biological variation, forensic anthropology, bioarchaeology and quantitative methods.

Further reading:

The Guardian: ‘Treated like trash’: the project trying to identify the bodies of migrants

Seoyoun Kim, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Texas State University joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss the surprising health benefits of volunteering.

Kim's research indicates that that health benefits derived from volunteer work are greater for lower-income volunteers than for wealthier ones. In the U.S., approximately 29 million older adults volunteer through an organization annually, contributing 3 billion hours of service to the community at large. Kim analyzed data from the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative U.S. study funded by the National Institute on Aging and the Social Security Administration that surveys approximately 20,000 older adults every two years and accounts for income. Using this data, her research team created a quasi-experimental study using statistical analyses to adjust for the fact that wealthier older adults were more likely to volunteer, among other factors, thereby reducing bias in their results.

Findings showed that in the full sample, volunteering enhanced self-reported health and reduced depressive symptoms for older adults in general. Significantly, those in the lowest wealth quintile experienced more gains in self-reported health from volunteering compared to their wealthy counterparts. Volunteering was associated with fewer depressive symptoms regardless of wealth status.

Kim earned her bachelor's degree in sociology from Michigan State University and her in Ph.D. in sociology gerontology Purdue University. Her research interests include

aging and the life course, physical and mental health and quantitative methods.

Further reading:

Volunteering provides greater health benefits to low-income volunteers than more wealthy counterparts

Volunteering as an Equalizer: A Quasi-Experimental Study Using Propensity Score Analysis

Andrew Ojede, an associate professor in the Department of Finance and Economics at Texas State University joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss the impact that international sanctions are having in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

When Russian forces crossed the border into Ukraine on February 24, the international response was swift. The United States, European Union and other nations around the world imposed strict and far-reaching economic sanctions on Russia that far exceeded previous sanction efforts. From targeting Russian banking interests, oligarchs and Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, the unprecedented financial pressures are having a crippling effect on the Russian economy… but also spilling over to affect those countries imposing the sanctions as well.

Ojede is the co-founder of the Africa Policy & Analytics Group. He earned his B.A. in economics from Makerere University, Uganda, his master's in economics from the University of North Texas and his Ph.D. in economics from Kansas State University. His research interests include international economics, macro economics, regional economic growth and international development.

Further reading:

Analysis of rouble currency crisis

Andrea Banzatti, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics at Texas State University joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss the observatory time he has been awarded on NASA's recently-launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

JWST is NASA's flagship infrared telescope designed to study exoplanets and distant galaxies. The telescope was successfully launched Dec. 25, 2021, and is now at its permanent home at the L2 Lagrangian point, where it will observe the deepest reaches of the cosmos. Banzatti will use 19 hours of observation time during the telescope's first cycle of observations in the summer of 2022 for the research program, "The infrared water spectrum as a tracer of pebble delivery to rocky planets."

Banzatti earned his Ph.D. at ETH Zurich, Switzerland in 2013, after earning both his master's and bachelor's degrees in physics from the University of Milan, Italy. Banzatti's research interests include the observations of protoplanetary disks and exoplanet formation across the wavelength spectrum (ultra-violet, optical, near- and mid-infrared, and radio), and across disk evolutionary stages (primordial, transition and debris disks). Much of his research focuses on monitoring biologically-relevant gas chemistry, such as water and organic molecules, in planet-forming regions.

Further reading:

Exoplanet Formation Research at Texas State

Texas State physicist to use James Webb Space Telescope to study water delivery to exoplanets