Until the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) vs. Alston, student-athletes were not allowed to be compensated for the millions of dollars in revenue they generate for universities. While universities cannot directly pay student-athletes, student-athletes can now make money based off their name, image, and likeness (NIL). NIL legislation has the potential (and has begun to) change college recruiting with the transfer portal and free agency landscape. Now, schools can bake NIL connections into their recruiting pitch, creating a recruiting renaissance. This research is an empirical study to determine the factors that contribute to an athlete’s NIL valuation and earnings. A hierarchical mixed-model analysis run in SAS also is used to analyze the data. The significance of this study includes providing schools and athletes with vital information pertaining to their fiscal valuation during the recruiting process. The findings can help families and student athletes to better estimate expected NIL earnings.

This thesis will focus on increasing the engagement of members within the W.P. Carey Business Ambassadors. This was done by first analyzing the environments the organization exists in: Arizona State University and the W.P. Carey School of Business. Each of these organizations contextualize the Business Ambassadors, providing a structure for the organization to operate within. Next, the organization’s processes are analyzed. This provides a current status of the club to be used a foundation for systematic review. Through this review, it is revealed that members often do the bare minimum required for the organization. In fact, only a select few fully taking advantage of the events offered by the club. To fix this, the management techniques outlined in the thesis’ primary source, Reframing Organizations by Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal, are introduced as ways to assist managers in problem sectors or areas of opportunity. These areas of review are the Structural, Human Resources, Political, and Symbolic frameworks. Each frame is explored and described, eventually being contextualized with the Business Ambassadors organization. These frames then provide insights to ways the organization can invoke greater participation from its members. These solutions include investing in training and mentorship, fulfilling member needs, promoting leadership, and leveraging the symbolic strength of the organization. The paper concludes with next steps for the organization and ways the solutions can be put into action with respect to the club’s goals.

This paper uses March CPS data to decompose the Gini coefficient by source of income. The sources of income, divided by labor income, capital income, and public transfer income, include earnings; interest, dividends, and net rentals; public assistance and welfare; retirement funds; self-employment; farm or non incorporated self-employment; nonfarm self-employment; Social Security or railroad retirement; supplemental security; wages and salaries; and unearned sources. The decomposition yields the share of a source in total income, the source Gini corresponding to the distribution of income from a source, the Gini correlation of income from a source with the distribution of total income, and the impact of a marginal change in a source on overall income inequality. Labor income had the largest negative impact on income inequality (resulting from wages and salaries mostly), while capital income did worsen it but on a much smaller scale. Public transfers that favor bottom income groups helped to alleviate income inequality for both individuals and households.

In 2021-2022, MLB underwent a labor stoppage due to a failure between the league and union to sign a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) for the 2022 season until mid-March of 2022. This failure led to a contentious debate between owners and players over economic, competitive balance, and gameplay issues. To evaluate how MLB has reached this point in labor relations and make predictions for the future, it is first important to look at the history of sports and collective bargaining and, more specifically, this history in baseball. Next, one should evaluate the history of the antitrust exemption and its impact on labor relations in MLB. It is then important to analyze the main tenets of the 2022 CBA and their implications. Following this historical and current analysis, one can make hypotheses about where baseball labor relations and antitrust laws are heading and what will be key issues to look toward in the future.

In the United States, the importance of acquiring higher education has steadily increased with almost two-thirds of the population attending some college or university (U.S. Census Bureau). Across different socioeconomic groups, the accessibility of higher education is vastly different. Factors such as low income, immigration status, and familiarity with national policies and institutions pose significant obstacles, especially for low-income communities of color. As the standard of skills needed for a productive career heightens, research needs to target specific marginalized communities that may disproportionately face barriers to entry into the pursuit of higher education. In this study, I will focus efforts on Maryvale, Arizona to assess the impact of socioeconomic status (SES) on educational attainment levels. 20% of Maryvale’s population falls below the federal poverty line, a greater proportion than the rest of Arizona. While income and poverty levels contribute as obstacles to the process of development, they are compounded by factors such as limited English-speaking ability and a lack of health insurance within Maryvale’s population. This study uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to show how low socioeconomic status has a negative relationship with higher educational attainment in historically underserved communities like Maryvale.

This paper explores the current literature and history of the Arabic language and culture. It particularly focuses on cuisine, literature, art, architecture, and education in relation to culture. The history and modern implications of the origin and evolution of Arabic and its connection to Islam is also explored. Specific loanwords from Arabic to English are shown, and the direct impact of the language itself on English speakers is investigated. The impact on Western economies is also examined. All of these ideas are organized by the pursuit of knowledge to better understand Arabs in order to breakdown negative stereotypes to preserve and cultivate future relations.

“Bridging Success: Reviewing Effectiveness and Implementing Additional Programming” focuses on partnering with Arizona State University’s Bridging Success program to evaluate effective program components and propose additional programming for the upcoming Bridging Success Early Start (BSES) program. To effectively evaluate Bridging Success, this thesis is broken down into several sections: methods, literary analysis, landscaping, presentation of results, discussion of results, recommendations, and conclusions to ultimately address our central research questions: How is Bridging Success Early Start valued by previous program members, and does the program contribute to a successful transition to college for students who were formerly in foster care?