Endowed Professorships in Social Sciences

Name of Professorship	Appointment Date	Current Holder	Description
Centenary Research Professorship in Social Sciences #1	2008-2010	Betsy Rankin (Vita)	Funded in 1991, this professorship will support Dr. Rankin's research to learn how to statistically analyze panel data using the latest techniques, i.e.,panel data is pooled time series, cross sectional data where there are a cross section of entities that are observed at more than one point in time. Mastering the techniques used to analyze panel data will benefit both my own research as well as research I do with students. I have three panel data sets that I have been collecting for several years. I have been able to get presentations out of these data sets, but to get papers published from this data, I need to apply the more advanced techniques. One of the data sets is on the sale of lottery tickets across parishes with four years of sales for each of the 64 parishes in Louisiana. Another is a data set dealing with a related issue of the distribution of TOPS dollars across parishes over multiple years, data which I began collecting while on sabbatical a few years ago. The third is a data set Harold Christensen and I have collected for five years on endowments of private colleges and various other variables that the endowments might affect. I generally also have students working on papers that would be much better papers if we used the more advanced techniques. After mastering the techniques myself, I would add a section to my Econometrics class on this topic since students would also benefit from these techniques.
Centenary Research Professorship in Social Science #2/ Research #11	Summer 2008	Mark Goadrich (Vita)	Funded in 1999, this professorship will allow Dr. Goadrich to conduct two summer projects. First, Bradlee Robertson and I will be using machine learning algorithms into improve multi-agent robotic simulations in the RoboCup Rescue competition. This annual competition simulates the use of robots in search-and-rescue missions after natural disasters. Second, Nolan Baker and I will be writing educational mathematical software for the XO Laptop, developed and distributed by the One Laptop Per Child foundation, using Python and open-source Sugar operating system. We will be implementing an environment for elementary and middle-school students to explore different aspects of finite mathematics, such as sets, probability, and logic.
Centenary Research Professorship in Social Science #3/ Research #12	Summer 2008	Helen Sikes (Vita)	Funded in 1998, this professorship will allow John Hafer, a Senior Finance and Economics major, and Dr. Helen Sikes to research the structure of executive compensation as it involves executives that have participated in corporate miscondust. The value of options granted in their pay package should prove to be an important component in a logit regression model that seeks to identify variables that influence top level officers to participate in insider trading activiities and acts of "financial accounting irregularities". Besides being underpaid compared to their industry counterparts, executives that choose to participate in these activities might be influenced by the number of options held, number of options granted in any year or the value of in the money options held in their portfolio. Results obtained will contribute to the literature by identifying these variables as either influenctial motivators or inhibitors of corprate deviant behavior
Centenary Research Professorship in Social Science #4/ Research #13	Summer 2008	Helen Sikes	See above.
Additional research for Social Science #3	Summer 2008	Michelle Wolkomir (Vita)	This additional funding will allow Dr. Wolkomir and Michelle Holt, student researcher, to survey individuals on valued ideas. Most people, and certainly most scholars, understand how powerfully ideas guide human behavior. Ideas are influential because they provide a framework for interpreting events and are linked to emotions and to self-concept. Valued ideas, and the actions predicated on them, can make us feel like good or bad people, inspiring a range of feelings and psychological states. For this reason, people often resist changing ideas that make them feel good or that enhance their self-worth. Social change, however, often requires that people alter valued ways of thinking, and understanding how and when they are willing and able to do so is therefore a critical sociological task. Using in-depth interviews with 20 members of a Unitarian Universalist Church, this study examines how and when people engage in these kinds of ideological shifts, paying close attention to how ideas can be reshaped within a belief system as opposed to rejecting or switching belief systems entirely. We will also pay close attention to the gender dynamics of shifting ideologies to explore whether and how the process of ideological shifting might vary for men and women. In doing so, we hope to develop theoretical insights into how ideas are changed (but not discarded or invented) and how this process of change may be impacted by social (gender) status.
Centenary Research Professorship in Social Science #5/ Research #14	Summer 2008	Kelly Weeks (Vita)	Funded in 1998, the professorship will allow Dr. Weeks and Matthew Wallace, student researcher, to empirically examine whether prospective students respond better to advertisements for institutions of higher education that contain more emotion-based or fact-based content. Specifically, we would like to survey high school students for attitudes toward advertisements, attitudes toward colleges, and intentions to behave after they view advertisements of certain colleges that are more emotional or rational. This research will benefit Centenary as we continue to develop our brand image and marketing strategies, as well as the general higher education community as they search for the best ways to market to prospective students.
Centenary Research Professorship in Social Science #6/ Research #15	Summer 2008	Kelly Weeks	See above.

Last updated June 2, 2008.