Big Ideas TXST

Elizabeth K. Eger, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Texas State University joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss presenteeism—the pressure to work while sick—and the negative impacts this has on both the individual and business.

Presenteeism, or sickness presence, is the act of showing up for work without (really) being productive. The individual is there because they have a project to finish or a boss or co-workers who depend on them. Another reason people engage in presenteeism is that they don’t have paid sick leave and COVID has greatly complicated the situation with the increase in remote working.

Eger obtained her Ph.D. at the University of Colorado Boulder where she also received graduate certificates in citical theory and in women and gender studies. Eger teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in organizational communication, qualitative methods, gender and communication, and work, identity and difference. Her research examines how we understand ourselves in relationship to work, how communication of difference impacts our organizational, health, and life experiences, and how collectives create organizational identities. Her ongoing research explores difference-based organizing, including long-term ethnographies of a transgender outreach center and a computing camp for girls of color. For five years before joining Texas State, Dr. Eger worked as a researcher for the National Center of Women and Information Technology to advance the meaningful participation of women and underrepresented people in IT careers and education.

Further reading:

Why Americans Can't Call in Sick

#mydisabledlifeisworthy on Twitter:

Josh Daspit, an associate professor of religious studies in the Department of Philosophy at Texas State University, and Daniel Roy join the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss the Sustainable Cultivation and Advancement of Local Enterprises for Underserved Populations (SCALEUP) program.

SCALEUP is a new initiative at Texas State designed to research the factors restraining minority-owned business growth and develop remedies.

Daspit's research interest is in entrepreneurship and he focuses on issues related to family businesses, innovation and social dynamics. He has more than 40 articles published in outlets such as California Management Review, Corporate Governance, Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, Family Business Review, Human Resource Management Review, Journal of Business Research and Journal of Knowledge Management. Daspit currently serves as an Associate Editor for Family Business Review and for Journal of Family Business Strategy. He also serves as the Social Media Editor of Family Business Review and is on the editorial review boards of Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, Journal of Family Business Management and other journals.

Roy is a graduate of St. Mary's University in San Antonio where he received a BBA in Corporate Financial Management. After a brief stint in corporate banking, he returned to Texas and embarked on 25-year entrepreneurial journey starting three successful companies each deeply committed to the core values of integrity, caring and excellence. Roy was part of a national effort to develop a certification credentialing program that provides foundational employability skills to help people land jobs and get promoted in retail stores and beyond. To date, more than 50,000 jobseekers have been trained nationally. He has also served on the State Board of Directors for the Texas Association of Business, as chairman of the board for the Greater San Marcos Chamber of Commerce and numerous community and non-profit boards.

Further reading:

Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship project descriptions

Joseph Laycock, an associate professor of religious studies in the Department of Philosophy at Texas State University, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss religious freedom, new religious movements and the fascinating, pan-cultural phenomenon of exorcism.

Laycock teaches courses on world religions, religion in America and the intersection of religion and popular culture. He is the author of several books including The Penguin Book of Exorcisms, Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk About Religion, Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic Over Role-Playing Games Says About Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds and The Seer of Bayside: Veronica Lueken and the Struggle to Define Catholicism.

Laycock has been interviewed for several documentaries as well as Geraldo at Large, The Colbert Report, Coast to Coast AM, Mysteries Decoded, NPR, The Texas Standard, The Jenny McCarthy Show and Armchair Experts with Dax Shepard.

Further reading:

Joseph P. Laycock website

Joseph Laycock on Twitter

Religious studies professor explores exorcisms in new book from Penguin Classics

‘Speak of the Devil’ by Philosophy professor Joseph Laycock looks at The Satanic Temple and religion in America

How the Satanic Temple is using ‘abortion rituals’ to claim religious liberty against the Texas’ ‘heartbeat bill’

Kim Rossmo, holder of the University Chair in Criminology and Director of the Center for Geospatial Intelligence and Investigation at Texas State University, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss geographic profiling and the surprisingly wide range of applications for that discipline in various fields of study.

Rossmo has researched and published in the areas of environmental criminology, the geography of crime and criminal investigations. He was formerly the director of research for the Police Foundation in Washington, D.C. Prior to that, he was the detective inspector in charge of the Vancouver Police Department’s Geographic Profiling Section, which provided investigative support for the international law enforcement community.

Rossmo is a member of the Police Investigative Operations Committee of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) and was a commissioner and chair for the Austin Public Safety Commission for 10 years. He is an adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University, sits on the editorial board for Homicide Studies and is a full fellow of the International Criminal Investigative Analysis Fellowship. Rossmo has completed projects studying the geospatial structure of terrorist cells, geographic profiling applications in counter-insurgency and patterns of illegal border crossings. He is currently the principal investigator for two National Institute of Justice research grants, one on offender decision-making and the other on the systemic causes of wrongful convictions. He has published books on geographic profiling and criminal investigative failures and a crime atlas for Texas. Rossmo has been awarded the Governor General of Canada Police Exemplary Service Medal.

Further reading:

Jack the Ripper: A wrongful conviction based on flawed DNA analysis

TXST helps Killeen Police Dept fight crime by identifying crime hotspots

Geographic profiler uses Nazi Berlin to model terrorist activities

Research indicates sharks are nature's serial predators

NIJ grant to fund study of wrongful convictions, investigative failures

Kaitlin Hopkins, head of the Musical Theatre Program at Texas State University, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss building a ground-breaking musical theatre program from the ground up and then navigating the program through the COVID pandemic.

Hopkins is an award-winning actress, director, producer and educator who has worked in theater, film and television for more than 30 years. In 2009 she revived the BFA Musical Theatre program at Texas State, which is now ranked in the top 10 musical theatre programs in the nation. She is also the proud co-founder of EETA, Educators for Equity in Theatre Arts.

In addition, she is the co-founder of Living Mental Wellness, which is a holistic evidence-based company that offers educational programs to enhance mental wellness for performing artists through an integrated scientific life skills model. Her TEDx Talk on the importance of mental wellness education for students, along with her research and curriculum-based mental wellness training program for performing artists at Texas State has garnered international attention.

As an educator, she received the 2016 Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching from Texas State and was recognized by Broadway Dreams Foundation as an innovative voice in education, and one of the 6 top women educators in the performing arts. In 2012, in collaboration with the ProJazz Institute Hopkins created and launched the first musical theater-training program in Chile. In addition, she serves as an external examiner for the Sharjah Performing Arts Academy in Dubai and on the artistic advisory board for North Texas Performing Arts. Hopkins teaches master classes all over the country and consults for multiple individuals and arts organizations.

As a director, writer and producer her production of The World According to Snoopy made its world premiere at Texas State and had regional premiers at Theatre Under The Stars and Theatre Aspen. Other producing credits include producing radio plays and musicals for The Plays the Thing Series (LA Theatre Works) and The Pet Shop (Animal Planet Network) hosted by comedian Andy Kindler. Her directing credits at State University include: The Hunchback of Notre Dame, RENT, Anything Goes, Urinetown, Hair, All Shook Up, Oklahoma!, The Wild Party, A Little Princess (world premiere) and Bat Boy-The Musical. Her productions at Texas State have been recognized with numerous awards by the Austin Critics' Table Awards.

Further reading:

www.kaitlinhopkins.net

Living Mental Wellness

www.LivingMentalWellness.com

Erika Nielson, director of the Common Experience at Texas State University, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss the 2021-2022 Common Experience theme of "Compassion."

Texas State presents an academic theme each year, providing numerous opportunities for everyone — students, faculty, staff and community members — to share in a Common Experience. The Common Experience theme for the 2021-2022 academic year is Compassion. It's an academic and real-world look at the self. The university community will focus on topics such as mindfulness, support, relief and genuine human kindness — for oneself, for others, and for everything around us.

This Common Experience theme focuses on compassion as a concept that unites in commitment to affect change for the better beginning with the self and expanding throughout the campus, community, country and world. With profound implications for personal wellbeing and growth, dynamic potential for application and collaboration across disciplines, and promise of deeper connection between students, faculty, staff and administration, moving toward compassion can empower our university and its members to shape lasting personal and collective change for the better on the Texas State campuses and beyond.

In addition to heading up the Common Experience, Nielson is the Common Reading coordinator, new student convocation chair and is a senior lecturer in University College. She received a B.A. in anthropology from Texas A&M University, an M.A. in reading education from the University of Texas of the Permian Basin and a Ph.D. in developmental education, literacy specialization from Texas State. Nielson is also a yoga student of 24 years and a yoga teacher of 20 years. Her research focus includes educators and students in pre-kindergarten through higher education engaging in mindfulness, self-compassion and yoga practices, and their understanding and observations of those practices, as well as the literacy practices of adult learners.

Further reading:

Common Experience

https://www.txstate.edu/commonexperience/ce-theme.html

Nick Dornak, director of watershed services with the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss the Clean Coast Texas Collaborative.

The collaborative will provide coastal communities with technical assistance on best practices to reduce nonpoint source pollution and incorporate stormwater management techniques. As a primary component of the recently launched Clean Coast Texas initiative, the collaborative encompasses a dynamic team of scientists, educators, engineers and communication professionals, who will work with communities throughout the Texas Coastal Zone to address stormwater management and water quality concerns. Partners in the collaborative include the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Services’ Texas Community Watershed Partners, the Texas Sea Grant College Program and Doucet & Associates.

Dornak has extensive experience with community-based planning, wildlife remediation work and public policy related to natural resources. His work is driven by his knowledge of the issues and his determination to find workable solutions. He is based in Driftwood.

Further reading:

Clean Coast Texas

Meadows Center, General Land Office launch Clean Coast Texas Collaborative

Award-winning novelist Jennifer duBois, assistant professor in the Department of English at Texas State University, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss her career, creative process and joys of teaching in the MFA program in creative writing at Texas State.

duBois has written three acclaimed novels. Her debut, A Partial History of Lost Causes, was the winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction, the Northern California Book Award for Fiction, a Whiting Writers' Award, a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction. Her second book, Cartwheel, was the winner of the Housatonic Book Award fiction and was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award. Her most recent novel, The Spectators, earned recognition from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. duBois' writing has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, Lapham's Quarterly, American Short Fiction and The Wall Street Journal.

Further reading:

Novel by Texas State Professor Jennifer duBois Reviewed in the New York Times

Texas State English professor named NEA Creative Writing Fellow

Texas State lecturer receives prestigious Whiting Writers Award

Jennifer duBois website

Katherine Warnell and Jennifer Clegg, assistant professors in the Department of Psychology at Texas State University, join the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss their ongoing research into how children learn to lie.

Lying is a complex behavior that requires sophisticated social cognition. The liar—in this case, children—have to think about how others are perceiving them, what they know, and whether the lie is successful or not. In their studies, Warnell and Clegg examine how children between 4- and 10 years old learn about different types of lies: Anti-social lying, as when a child tries to deny guilt after doing something wrong, and prosocial lying, or polite lies, which are often used to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. Anti-social lies appear early in development, whereas prosocial lies are more difficult for younger children to grasp. On top of that, there are differences in lying across cultures, which adds further complications to the research.

Further reading:

Texas State psychology professors and students study how and why youngsters lie

Merritt Drewery, assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Sciences at Texas State University, joins the Big Ideas TXST podcast to discuss her innovative study into using black soldier fly larvae as an environmentally sustainable, high-protein feed source for cattle production.

Drewery’s research program focuses on the identification of novel feedstuffs to enhance livestock production. She is currently working on insects and insect products as feed for beef cattle. She is also dabbling in social sciences, assessing the impact of Covid-19 on different professional groups. A first-generation college graduate, Drewery credits her academic mentors with much of her professional success. As such, she is committed to helping students succeed in their academic and professional pursuits. She teaches animal science, leadership, research methods and grant development courses, but encourages any student to reach out to her for guidance and support.

Further reading:

Fly larvae studied as potentially novel livestock feed under USDA grant

Ag program aims to increase underrepresented students in grad programs via USDA grant