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St. Cloud Area Quarterly Business Report, Vol. 25, No. 4
Get PDFBusinesses reported worsening economic conditions in the last three months of 2023, but expressed optimism for the first half of 2024. Over the year on a seasonal basis, only 135 jobs (0.1%) were added to the economy. Four of six regional economic indicators pointed down. Only 60% of businesses surveyed reported the same operating hours as they had had in 2020; half of the remaining 40% said their hours were more flexible, while the other half decreased hours of operation. They also said one third of customers now had higher expectations of firm performance than 2020. Improvements in speed and value were most often cited
Mick Foley\u27s Mankind and the Performance of Mental Illness in Professional Wrestling
Get PDFProfessional wrestling, as a form of scripted entertainment, has relied on gimmicks and narratives that reinforce and glorify stereotypes related to mental illness. While scholars have studied stereotypes in professional wrestling, most existing work focuses on racial and ethnic stereotypes. Scholarship has also addressed the impacts of violent, theatrical wrestling content on viewers. Professional wrestling uses troubling stereotypes of mental illness to craft dramatic, violent content. Although significant progress has been made in how society understands mental illness, misunderstandings and stigmas persist. For example, individuals suffering from mental illness are often imagined as violent, dangerous, unstable, abnormal, and incapable of forming healthy relationships. Additionally, promos and ringside commentary often supplement stereotypical characterizations by using exaggerated and shocking rhetoric associated with mental illness. These rhetorical strategies include describing wrestlers as deranged, insane, and unhinged. This article analyzes Mick Foley’s wrestling gimmick Mankind as a significant example of a performance of mental illness in professional wrestling. I summarize the origins of the gimmick and describe how the gimmick engages aspects of mental health and mental illness. I reflect on the implications of Foley’s Mankind for wrestling fans and within a broader cultural context where mental health in media is garnering more scholarly attention. This work contributes to a growing body of scholarship on professional wrestling by examining how wrestling uses a widespread public health concern as theatrical material
Notes on the pervasiveness of injuries in professional wrestling in the Atlantic Canadian circuit, as seen from ringside
Get PDFThe frequency of injuries in professional wrestling is explored through 4 cases observed in independent wrestling shows in Atlantic Canada, while conducting ethnographic research into professional wrestling fans. Both veteran and younger professional wrestlers suffer frequent and chronic injuries, and tend to manage them as part of a normalization of pain and injury, with negative impacts for the lives and long-term health
Consumers’ Attitudes towards Online Advertising: A Model of Personalization, Informativeness, Privacy Concern and Flow Experience
Get PDFOnline personalized advertising has been widely adopted in China in the recent years, leading to both positive and negative results. This study endeavors to examine the impact of perceived personalization of online advertising on consumers’ attitudes toward advertising. A total of 472 questionnaires were administered and analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling. The results show that perceived personalization exerts a positive impact through perceived informativeness, and a negative impact through privacy concerns. However, the positive effect was determined to be stronger and thus perceived personalization had an overall positive impact. Additionally, the results showed that both effects were mediated by flow experience. The practical and theoretical implications of the findings were discussed
St. Cloud Area Quarterly Business Report, Vol. 25, No. 1
Get PDFThe St. Cloud Area recession that we predicted in last quarter’s review had not started in the first quarter of 2023. The St. Cloud Area Quarterly Business Survey showed fewer respondents reporting a decrease in their own business activity over the last three months, and more were positive about the next six months, than had responded in November 2022. The St. Cloud Index of Leading Economic Indicators ticked up slightly in the last quarter, with only 3 of 6 indicators contributing positively to the index. In special questions, one-third of respondents said job turnover in 2022 was greater than in 2019, with most others seeing no difference. Survey respondents also indicated tighter credit conditions, with more relying on their own sources of finance
Are We There Yet? Where Developmental Education Has Been and Where it is Going: A Critical Discourse Analysis of California’s AB 705
Get PDFThis critical discourse analysis was conducted to understand how the public entities in California higher education have redefined Assembly Bill (AB) 705, and, in the process, redefined California community college students and the community college mission statement. Current literature on AB 705 has been limited to success stories and data analyses and has been mostly funded by organizations with a stake in the successful implementation of the law. There are currently no studies of the language of the law and the documents that were written to translate the law into layperson’s language. This study used the methodology and methods of critical discourse analysis to delve into the language of AB 705 and nine documents in its discursive constellation to identify the rhetorical strategies used by the authors of the documents and to determine how these strategies were used. The analysis revealed that the language was used to reframe community college students, developmental education, and the law itself, leading to the conclusion that developmental education in California may never “get there.
Self-Perception of Gender Influence on Leadership in Two-Year, Public Institutions of Higher Education
Get PDFThis quantitative cross-sectional study examines the way in which leaders of two-year, public institutions perceive their gender identification influences the way they are able to demonstrate leadership traits. The study is founded in social identity theory, first introduced in 1979 by Tajfel, which helps to evaluate whether members of a group (leaders) assimilate to specific traits in order to be accepted and valued by their peers. The findings show that overall leaders identifying as women and those identifying as men perceived no difference in how their gender identification impacts their ability to display specific leadership traits to supervisors, peers, or subordinates. The study did find that there is a perceived difference in gender identification influencing how the respondents lead.
Keywords: Gender Identification, Leadership, Two-Year, Higher Education, Leadership Trait
Community in the Classroom
Get PDFResearch prior to the COVID-19 pandemic has heavily supported the importance of a classroom environment in which students feel as if they belong. A sense of belonging and inclusion from one’s peers is a basic human need and has been found to increase a student’s engagement in class and, in turn, their academic achievement. As students return to in-person learning, deficits in social and emotional skills of students have been the focus of many teachers in the field, stressing the need for strategies that foster relationships in the classroom. This study was conducted to test whether implementing different community building activities weekly, in addition to the traditional ice breakers used during the first week of school, provided increased benefits for student sense of belonging, sense of engagement, and achievement in the tenth grade life science classroom. The activities used in this study were developed to help students get to know one another and embrace their own individuality. The results of this study found that while student belonging and engagement survey scores did not significant increase from the community building activities conducted, student sense of belonging and engagement did seem to improve based on student interviews. Survey responses were subjective as opposed to concrete achievement scores. That being said, student achievement was found to increase significantly from the implemented community building activities throughout the course of the study
School of Public Affairs 2022 Annual Report
Get PDFOnwards to our second decade!
The School of Public Affairs’ annual report presents a magazine-style look back at the school’s year. Contents include the stories and accomplishments of current students, alumni, faculty, and other community partnerships. It also celebrates the generous giving of donors. A limited amount of print copies are produced and mailed to constituents. Support and collaboration of the annual report is regularly given by University Communications, the St. Cloud State University Foundation, St. Cloud State University Alumni Relations, University Archives, and the Departments of Criminal Justice, Economics, Geography & Planning, and Political Science.
Note: The School of Public Affairs annual report evolved from seasonal newsletters. The first issue was published in April of 2018
Introduction to Health, Illness and Injury in Professional Wrestling: A Special Issue of Survive and Thrive
Get PDFIntroduction to considerations of medical humanities in the context of professional wrestling, followed by an overview of the contents of the issue