Scholars Share: Conversations on Graduate Student Research, a partnership between the Graduate College and Graduate Student Association (GSA), is an opportunity for current graduate students from across Drexel's colleges and schools, as well as postdocs and recent alumni, to come together to share their research endeavors and student experience moderated by a student leader and peer who facilitates questions and discussion from the audience.

For more information about Scholars Share and to sign up to present, visit the Scholars Share: Conversations on Graduate Student Research main page.

Getting Straight to Business Scholars Share Event

Thursday, November 10, 2022
12 to 1 p.m. EST

Virtual via Zoom

Watch the Recording [Drexel Streams]

Download Event Flyer [PDF]

Featured Speakers:

Zoë Godfrey

PhD Program in Marketing
LeBow College of Business

The Mediating Effect of Social Identification on Civic Duty and WOM Among Community Orchestra Subscribers

Description: Community orchestras sit at a crossroads: they must instill a sense of urgency about their concerts to drive ticket sales, typically by making the tickets and concerts seem as exclusive as possible. Yet they must also implore the community for support, highlighting the importance of patronizing the orchestra because of one’s civic duty to do so. It is unclear how these competing mechanisms (exclusivity and civic duty) shape consumer patronage behaviors in terms of word-of-mouth. Should individuals tell others about an upcoming concert because it is their civic duty to do so, or will the exclusivity of the event dampen the desire to tell others about it? In this research we investigate these drivers of behavior, as well as social identification with the symphony, to understand more about when and why individuals would share about a community orchestra via word-of-mouth. This research has important implications for theory on the psychology of community arts patronage, and for practice of how to communicate with patrons to best promote desired behaviors.

Bio: Zoë Godfrey, MBA, is a PhD candidate in marketing, consumer behavior. She is originally from California, where she attended La Sierra University double-majoring in marketing and music and graduating from the honors program. Zoë has a background as a harpist, concert producer, and co-founder of a performing arts organization. While attending Claremont Graduate University for her MBA, her senior honors thesis, investigating how music used in WWII propaganda influenced post-war advertising methods, was accepted to a multidisciplinary research conference at UC Davis. This experience sparked an interest in a research career. She is passionate about understanding how music shapes who we are, the bonds we have with music, and what happens when a brand uses "my song". At Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business, she has worked with her advisor, Dr. Daniel Korshun, to investigate how music used in corporate sociopolitical activism messaging shapes consumer processing styles about social issues. With her experience in the performing arts, she is working on another project to uncover the psychological mechanisms that influence patronage behaviors for community arts organizations (with scholars Dr. Brooke Reavey, Dominican University; and Dr. Komal Karani, Lamar University). She hopes to understand more about why individuals affiliate with community arts organizations, and how they share about their affiliation with others. She presented this research project at the Summer American Marketing Association Conference in Chicago. She was awarded the Teck-Kah Lim Graduate Student Travel Subsidy Award to support her attendance at this conference. In her free time, Zoë enjoys attending concerts as often as possible, exploring Philadelphia’s vegetarian food scene, and continuing her search for the world’s best cup of coffee. 

Monét Harbison, M.S. Edu

PhD Program in Educational Policy & Leadership
School of Education

Building Homespace for Marginalized Students in Higher Education

Description: Homespace is a term that denotes comfort and safety, concepts that are often in conflict with the experience of students in educational contexts. Participation in higher education context, especially post undergraduate education often requires students to embrace their alienation and categorization as other. This presentation discusses the obstacles that students of marginalized communities face in curricular and social involvement in higher education and explicates the importance of developing culturally relevant spaces that affirm identity and enhance learning.

Bio: Monét Harbison is a second-year, part-time Ph.D. student in the School of Education. Born and raised in West Philadelphia close to Drexel, Monét is an employee of Drexel University, where she works in the Office of Research & Innovation as the Interim Director of Research Compliance where she leads the research integrity and security initiatives at the University. Monét explores the decolonized University, through the lens of Black Feminist Thought, and Critical Theories.

Tara Li

PhD Program in Strategy
LeBow College of Business

The Effects of Firms' Technological Knowledge on The Search Process for Future Innovation

Description: Tara’s research is at the intersection of organizational learning and search and organization design. She is interested in how decision-makers can manage complex problems to foster firms’ innovation and adapt to dynamic environments. Tara is studying two streams of research:  (1) in what ways does the degree of complexity in a firm’s knowledge influence its search process for future innovation? (2) how can decision-makers apply specific design rules to overcome structural inertia inherent in many modular architectures? Methodology-wise, Tara is skilled at econometric analysis with large datasets, and she is also versed in agent-based computer simulations. Regarding the empirical corroboration of NK model in her research, she applies machine learning programming techniques, especially natural language processing and social network analysis, to mirror NK model with large empirical datasets. Tara is currently studying firms’ search for innovation in the semiconductor and pharmaceutical industries.

Bio: Tara is a PhD candidate in strategy within the management department in the LeBow Business College at Drexel University. Prior to her academic career, Tara had worked in the IT industry for six years. Her experience varied from the hardware field, Lenovo, to the software area, Microsoft. At Lenovo, Tara worked as an order representative in the global supply chain, then as enterprise account sales on IBM X86 servers; After transferring to Microsoft, she was responsible for Azure Cloud Computing and Office 365 in Microsoft. After embarking on the PhD journey, the supply chain experience helps Tara allocate the literature gap in organization design. Drawing on her industry experience in Cloud Computing, Tara aspires to understand the firms' innovation process.

Student Moderator:

Layla Bouzoubaa

GSA Academic Affairs Committee
Student Development Subcommittee

PhD Program in Information Science
College of Computing and Informatics

Graduate College Doctoral Fellow

Bio: Layla is a Moroccan-American professional learner, first-generation student, and advocate for equity in tech. She is a PhD student in Information Science and a Drexel Blue Fellow. Layla spent several years in her previous role as the Lead Research Analyst at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine Department of Public Health Sciences where she focused primarily on Substance Use Disorder and occasionally got to work on projects in cancer, urology and COVID-19. In addition to being a research analyst she also had the privilege of satisfying her love for teaching by co-instructing “Machine Learning & Data Science for Public Health Research” where she taught some of her favorite topics like version control with Git, modern R programming and developing web applications. In the community, Layla virtually co-organizes the Miami chapter of R-Ladies, is a Google WomenTechmakers Ambassador and is a facilitator of Google’s #IamRemarkable initiative. She is eager to pursue her research interests at Drexel where she hopes to traverse the intersection of natural language processing methodology, substances of abuse and filling knowledge gaps with an array of novel data sources. While she's not chasing her academic dreams, Layla enjoys hiking, improving her green thumb and cultivating her appreciation for wines.