overview

• Melanie Sartore-Baldwin is a Professor in the Department of Recreation Sciences at East Carolina University. Her research foci are on human-animal interaction (HAI) within sport and physical activity, the use and abuse of nonhuman animals in the sport industry, and the elimination of nonhuman animal exploitation within the sport realm. She graduated from Texas A&;M University in 2007, became a NASSM Research Fellow in 2012, and was awarded the NC Governor's Volunteer Service Award in 2023 for her dedication to walking shelter dogs in Pitt County, North Carolina. To date, Sartore-Baldwin has facilitated the walking of thousands of shelter dogs by hundreds of ECU students during the eleven years of ECU's collaboration with Pitt County Animal Services. After the death of her husband in 2020 she transitioned to exploring how dog walking can help facilitate positivemental health outcomes and accompany one along the lifelong grief journey.