Imagine. sociology news volume 8 . issue 2. Spring 2014 department of sociology university of maryland
“BEFORE YOU ARE THROUGH WITH ANY PIECE OF WORK, NO MATTER HOW INDIRECTLY ON OCCASION, ORIENT IT TO THE CENTRAL & CONTINUING TASK OF UNDERSTANDING THE STRUCTURE AND THE DRIFT, THE SHAPING & THE MEANINGS, OF YOUR OWN PERIOD, THE TERRIBLE & MAGNIFICENT WORLD OF HUMAN SOCIETY.” - from THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION by C.W. MILLS
JOEY BROWN
VALERIE CHEPP
CARRIE CLARADY PHILIP COHEN
SONALDE DESAI ANYA GALLI
PATRICIO KORZENIEWICZ LUCIA LYKKE EMILY MANN
MANDI MARTINEZ
LAWRENCE MUDD RASHAWN RAY LORI REEDER
DANIEL STANDRIDGE
ANDRES VILLARREAL JOSEPH WAGGLE
SARAH WANENCHAK MORIAH WILLOW WEI-HSIN YU
Contributors Contribut
Once again, we have had a blast producing the newsletter for our department this semester. Our latest cohort has proven to be a bright and intellectually curious bunch. The many research centers housed in our department are producing some excellent research. And, as usual, UMd sociology remains a strong and supportive community. We hope this newsletter provides a snapshot of our department as we finish up another great school year.
Many thanks go to our all of our contributors, without whom we’d have no choice but to publish 20 pages of vegan-friendly comfort foods from feminist cook books like A Second Helping for the Second Sex or The Gluten Mystique. So, thanks, everyone!
Joe, our co-conspirator and fellow grad student Ann Horwitz, and Anya.
just imagine.
Joseph Waggle and Anya M. Galli
letter from the editors
In this issue, contributors give us a review of this year’s William Form guest lecturer Alex Bierman; a profile on incoming faculty Andres Villarreal and Wei-hsin Yu, and; a look into the research and mentorship being done in our own Group Processes Lab. Our contributors also sat down with a fantastic undergrad, a fantastic alum, and the administrator responsible for making three of our newest and busiest research centers run smoothly. We also asked faculty and staff for their advice on how blogging and social media can improve our lot both professionally and personally. Look for all of that and more in this Spring 2014 issue. Have a great summer! Anya & Joe
While the academic year ends in just a few days, we will have a busy Summer in our department. As usual, many of our faculty and graduate students will take advantage of the slower pace of campus responsibilities to advance their research. A few will be teaching Summer courses. But with the faculty who are responsible for administrative responsibilities, such as the Associate Chair (John Pease), our new Director of Graduate Studies (Liana Sayer), the Director of Undergraduate Studies (Linda Moghadam) and the Director of Research (Jeff Lucas), we will be working on coming up with strategies to address some of the concerns raised during our recent departmental retreat last March. One of these concerns is how to continue enhancing the quality of our Graduate Program. For example, many of our faculty, students and alumni have encouraged us to recognize that our graduates pursue a broad range of professional opportunities beyond jobs in research universities, and to use this recognition to reevaluate the content and goals of our training programs. This certainly will be one of the issues that we take up for discussion during the Summer, and parallel concerns involve all aspects of our department, from undergraduate training to research efforts and future faculty recruitments. Such an evaluation is made more important by the fact that our department will undergo some important changes in the coming months. After many years of playing a crucial role in our department, some faculty members are retiring into Emeritus status: Bill Falk, Melissa Milkie and John Robinson (who retired at the end of last year). We wish them all our very best: they have all made invaluable contribution to our department, and we will work hard to ensure that we continue pursuing the high standards of excellence they have set through their work and example.
Patricio Korzeniewicz, PhD
Letter from the chair ust to mention one new initiative, we hosted a great event just a few days ago, commemorating the contributions of Congressman Parren Mitchell to our department and the University of Maryland. In 1952, after suing the University to gain admission, Parren Mitchell became the first African American to attend graduate school at the University of Maryland, receiving a Master’s degree in Sociology. Congressman Mitchell stated later in his life that his sociology training shaped his activism in politics and social change. To celebrate his memory, the Critical Race Initiative, led by Assistant Professor Rashawn Ray, held a symposium and reception, both of which were well-attended by members of our department, the university and the broader community. We hope that in the future, we will hold similar events commemorating Congressman Mitchell on a regular, annual basis.
We are looking ahead for another great year for the department! In the meantime, I hope you have a productive summer (come see me, I’ll be around)! Patricio Korzeniewicz korzen@umd.edu
Philip Cohen, PhD
From the director of Graduate Studies: Beyond Academia In last year’s letter I recommended broadening yourself, supplementing your specialization with a wide variety of knowledge, and pursuing in-depth study of topics other than your own. But what about broadening yourself beyond academia? Students might be surprised to hear that there is wide support among faculty for the diversity of career goals and outcomes that our students pursue – this doesn’t always come across. Personally, I am happy and proud to see the students with whom I have worked use their graduate training in sociology to build successful careers, contribute to the common good, and live fulfilling lives (or at least one or two of those) – regardless of their industrial or occupational destination. As a department, we want to build a program in which students can thrive, emerging prepared for any of the things you can do with PhD in sociology. And yet, there are three strong reasons why today’s faculty members orient their teaching and training efforts toward students who are aiming for tenure-track academic jobs, especially at research universities. First, the ability to place graduates in such jobs is a primary metric – along with academic publications – by which our department’s prestige (and our personal reputations) within the discipline of sociology and on our campus is established. It is cold comfort for the majority of students to know that our department, if we want to be considered successful at placing students in tenure-track jobs, could do pretty well by placing a minority of students in such jobs. That’s academia. Second, just because our faculty comprises the very best analysts of social life in the
world doesn’t imply that we’re also top-notch experts when it comes to understanding the dynamics right under our noses. We have our biases and preconceptions, our blinders and misapprehensions. Usually, I have found, faculty seek to replicate for their students the graduate school experience that they had (or wish they had had). That makes perfect sense, because for most of us, we have the kind of job we wanted when we were in grad school, so it seems to have worked. As a result, we think we’re doing students a favor by orienting everything toward tenure-track, research-oriented jobs. And of course we have students who themselves are geared for academic jobs, and they push in that direction as well – which is absolutely appropriate. Getting a PhD from a research university is pretty much the only way to get a job on the faculty of such an institution, so a place like this is where you go if that’s the career you want, and you can reasonably expect to receive the training necessary for pursuing that goal. If we don’t train people for these careers, no one will. In 2006 the American Sociological Association surveyed more than 600 employed PhD sociologists working outside of the professoriate (there is a Powerpoint document with the results here). Most of the respondents worked in the fields of health, education, statistics, or demography; a third worked in the public sector (as do many of our graduates). The responses to that survey are relevant for our department today. Although they were well prepared for many aspects of their jobs, there were several areas where the non-academic sociologists reported feeling under-trained: policy analysis, visual presentation, grant writing, and program evaluation. For improving graduate education, the number one recommendation was to increase information about non-academic careers and reduce snobbery toward such work. These are good goals for us. Expanding training in these areas, and improving our positive communication about careers outside academia, would help our students regardless of their career direction. Philip Cohen pnc@umd.edu
It has been a pleasure serving the Graduate Student Forum as your presidents this year! Thank you to all the officers of the GSF for your help and service to our department (and to Junie the pit bull, pictured below, for her constant emotional support to both of us). We collectively made it through an endless winter and a brief, but challenging, period while the dying fridge made the entire fourth floor smell like rancid cheese. Fortunately, we all met these challenges with fortitude, and the GSF was able to make some exciting strides this year.
We kicked the year off by welcoming our newest cohort of students during orientation. If you haven’t had the opportunity to get to know the current first years, stop by the gang office before the year is over – this batch of new graduate students has proven bright and engaging. We are looking forward to getting to know our incoming first years in the fall.
Lucia Lykkke and Mandi Martinez
letter from the gsf presidents
After literally years of battling with the volatile temperament of the fridge in the Mills lounge, behold! We have a beautiful new refrigerator. Special thanks to policy rep Tyler Myroniuk for heading up the effort to have the old fridge removed, to Mills rep Wendy Laybourn for cleaning out that abomination, and to treasurer Jonathan Jackson for coordinating changing the GSF’s account to a new bank so we could pay for the new one. We are happy that this year’s GSF will leave a legacy of a functional refrigerator for years to come! The GSF also administered a survey to students, spearheaded by Tyler Myroniuk, to figure out what career trajectories graduate students intend to follow after graduation. We hope that this information will help the department support us as we pursue our long-term goals. We agree that our favorite thing about this department is its collaborative spirit. As we move through the program, we are impressed by how graduate students are engaged with one another and with faculty, support and assist each other rather than compete with each other, and work to make our department the best it can be. Thanks to our fellow students and faculty for making our tenure as presidents enjoyable and productive. Lucia Lykke & Mandi Martinez
Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing Meredith Buchman, Program Coordinator extraordinaire for three of the sociology department’s research centers: the Program for Society and the Environment, the Culture Lab, and the Maryland Time Use Lab. A veteran of higher education, Meredith joined the University of Maryland in the spring of 2014, bringing fifteen years of higher education experience, two masters’ degrees, and plenty of personality to the department. Prior to joining the University of Maryland, Meredith held a wide variety of positions from University Instructor to Outreach Manager. Meredith’s job responsibilities run the gambit from planning budgets, maintaining websites for three research centers, and assembling literature reviews for faculty members. Although she has only been with the department for a short time, Meredith has always had a deep love for the University of Maryland and felt a connection to the faculty and a fascination with the research being conducted in the sociology centers from the start. Meredith has always had a deep passion for education, which she links to her parents, both of whom were teachers. Meredith hails from Mars (PA) and enjoys working closer to home these days. On her days off, Meredith can be found engaged in a competitive game of backgammon in the park with husband Brian or going on a field trip to the Smithsonian with two year old son Moses. When she isn’t busy at her desk, Meredith likes to steal away to the sociology graduate office for a hot cup of coffee with a touch of mocha or stroll down to the STAMP Student Union for a Philadelphia roll.
Moriah Willow
Staff spotlight: Meredith Buchman
Meredith has always enjoyed games and was once a member of a video game guild. Asked about her hobbies, Meredith told me about her love of hiking, the great outdoors, and travel. She dreams of going to Grenada, Spain, to run wild with gypsies with her classical guitarist husband.
We are very lucky to have Meredith with us - she brings a great deal of passion to her work and is always looking for ways to improve the functioning of sociology department’s three research centers. While she has a great many job responsibilities, Meredith still finds the time to make everyone around her feel at home. Stop by the Program for Society and Environment on the 3rd floor and say hello to the newest member of department’s administrative team, Meredith Buchman.
GRADUATE STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: LORI REEDER AND VALERIE CHEPP
This semester, we’re profiling two of our graduate students who have done the seemingly impossible: finished the program and moved on to amazing careers! Join us as we pick the brains of Lori Reeder and Valerie Chepp about academic training, the job market, and what they most look forward to AG (after grad school). Where are you heading in the fall? LR: The Survey Improvement Research Branch in the Social, Economic, and Housing Statistics Division at the U.S. Census Bureau. VC: I’ll be joining the Sociology Department as an Assistant Professor at Hamline University in Saint Paul, MN, where I’ll also be directing the Social Justice Program that is housed in Sociology. What brought you to pursue/accept the position you’ll be starting in the Fall? LR: I knew I wasn’t ready to pursue the academic job market, so I wanted a position that would not hurt my chances of pursuing an academic job down the road. I applied to predominantly research positions that each allow for the opportunity to also engage in independent research. VC: At the beginning of my job search (and at the helpful suggestion of Dr. Rashawn Ray), I identified a set of employment criteria that were important to me. I prioritized
these criteria into primary (i.e., “must haves”) and secondary (i.e., “it would be nice but not necessary”) categories. This exercise helped me to identify my ideal job: a tenure-track Assistant Professor position at a high quality liberal arts college in a large urban area, preferably in the Midwest or East Coast, with smart, friendly colleagues and engaged students. This was important knowledge for me to tap into during the job application process, since it’s easy to get swept up in the momentum of the job search. Before you know it, you could find yourself applying to every job out there with the hopes that you’ll land something…anything! Casting a wide net is an understandable strategy, and I applied to several positions that didn’t meet every criterion of my ideal job. However, I didn’t apply to jobs that strayed too far from my ideal. This helped to provide structure and logic to my job search. In the end, I was incredibly fortunate to accept the position at Hamline, since it fits all the criteria of my ideal job! Can you talk a bit about the process of deciding on a certain type of position (e.g. research vs. teaching)? LR: I chose a research position because my research experience far outweighs my teaching skills and comfort in the classroom. A non-academic research position still allows for a chance to publish and to adjunct to acquire classroom experience, if necessary. VC: I think it’s useful to remember that there are many different types of positions out there. While we often use a teaching/research binary as a quick heuristic device for categorizing jobs, this method isn’t always accurate or helpful. I find teaching to be incredibly rewarding, intellectually stimulating, creative, and fun, but it also helps me to think through my ongoing research questions and projects. That said, I’ve invested a lot of time and energy in honing my teaching abilities. I wanted to work at an institution that valued my teaching talents, and that provided institutional support and creative flexibility for teaching, such as smaller class sizes and an appreciation for active learning. I was also interested in an institution that would value my research and scholarly activity centered on teaching and learning, such as my teaching website The Sociological Cinema (which I created with Lester Andrist and Paul Dean) and my publications in the field of teaching and learning. What types of obstacles did you face in pursuing this job? What advice would you give to new grad students on the same path? LR: One small obstacle was finding and waiting for research positions to become available. Another was rewriting my resume to highlight my research skills and technical skills more than my substantive research. VC: Like many academic job seekers, I faced obstacles related to the time-consuming
nature of the job search. It was a challenge to keep so many balls in the air: jobs applications, the dissertation, journal articles, an R&R, preparing for phone/campus interviews, and maintaining The Sociological Cinema, among other obligations. The advice I would give grad students is to be strategic about your job search. Have your application materials (e.g., teaching portfolio, cover letter templates, CVs, writing samples) polished and ready to go before job season begins. Ask colleagues to provide feedback on these materials and talk to others who already went through the process. Also, take the time to identify what type of job you really want, and realize (and be comfortable with the fact) that this may not map onto the positions that are most highly valued and deemed “dream jobs� in our discipline. Think about what you like to do on a day-to-day basis. Conduct research? Present research? Write? Publish in academic journals? Publish in more popular, public sociology formats? Mentor? Teach? Write grants? Program development? Course development? Collaboration? Work with community organizations? Work with public policy organizations? Explore new technologies in the classroom? The list goes on. But identify what you like and then pursue jobs that allow you to do this work and institutions that reward this work. What was your experience applying to jobs? [Did you apply for multiple types of positions? How did you narrow down (or expand) your options? At what point in the dissertation process did you begin looking?] LR: I began searching for jobs last fall (fall of 5th year) after defending my dissertation proposal. I applied to a handful of permanent positions and a couple of postdocs. I focused on jobs that would be autonomous enough to allow for independent research and that have had a history of employees transitioning to academic institutions. I received two offers. What aspects of your experience at UMD were most important in securing the position you accepted? LR: Many faculty maintain professional relationships with UMD alumni who now work at various agencies throughout the region. I think that this influences the culture of our department and sends the message that going into a research position that is not strictly academic is still a good choice. Faculty members were generally supportive of my pursuit of research-oriented jobs, particularly because I was applying to organizations that are conducive to transitioning to positions at research universities. VC: Numerous teaching and research experiences at UMD helped me to secure my position at Hamline University. The fact that I independently taught several different courses, including developing my own ethnography course, set me apart from other candidates who had either only served as teaching assistants or never taught at all. I think it’s important for grad students to have a variety of different courses under their
belt by the time they go on the market. The Sociological Cinema, which I developed with Lester and Paul at UMD with the support of the Sociology Department and the Center for Teaching Excellence, also set me apart from other candidates. The hiring committee at Hamline told me that other applicants actually cited The Sociological Cinema in their application materials as evidence of their teaching effectiveness! At Hamline, I will also be directing the interdisciplinary Social Justice Program. My dissertation research on spoken word poetry and social justice cuts across different disciplinary bodies of literature and was pivotal in demonstrating my ability and interest in directing this program. Looking back, what was the most useful advice you got about the job market? LR: I can’t recall any specific advice, so I’ll instead say what was helpful to me. In my first couple of years of graduate school, I attended every job talk, every seminar, and every brown bag I could. In addition, I often attended the graduate student meetings with guest speakers. Attending these types of functions were great career development opportunities. By attending these, you can meet people from a wide range of universities, and agencies. These events provide the opportunity to meet people across a wide spectrum of roles with a variety of responsibilities, which can help you get a feel for the type of work you would be most content doing. What are you most looking forward to about your new position and/or place of residence? LR: I’m most looking forward to the collaborative research opportunities available at the Census. The Social, Economic, and Housing Statistics Division is increasingly focused on scholarly research as part of its mission, so it’s an exciting time to be joining that division. VC: I’m most excited about working with Hamline students and my new faculty colleagues. During my campus visit, I was completely energized and impressed by the students I met: they were passionate, curious, smart, and very engaged in their education and their communities. The warm welcome and friendly emails that I have already received from Hamline faculty—and I haven’t even arrived yet!—have also been exciting. I’m looking forward to working with colleagues within Sociology and across disciplines in various research and teaching collaborations. Finally, I’m super excited about moving to the Twin Cities (and crossing my fingers for no more polar vortexes)!
In the fall our department will be joined by two new faculty members, Andres Villarreal and Wei-hsin Yu. Graduates of the University of Chicago, they join us from Austin, where they currently work in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas. Rounding out their household is their four-year-old daughter. As a demographer and a former Austinite, I jumped at the chance to ask them a few questions. Your earliest degrees are in mechanical engineering (AV) and business (WY), but shortly after you earned your first degrees each of your research interests took a turn toward the sociological. Can you tell us a little bit about that process and how that happened? AV: Several factors contributed to my decision to leave engineering for the social sciences. First, I became very interested in the dramatic social and political changes going on in Latin America at the time (the late 1980s and early 1990s). In my native country of Mexico, pro-democracy forces were making headway against an authoritarian regime that had been in power for almost seventy years. Deep structural reforms were also underway intended to combat inflation, and liberalize the Mexican economy. These reforms were having serious negative consequences for a large segment of the population. I found myself wanting to better understand these social and political changes. I also became quite involved in student organizations opposing U.S. foreign policy towards Central America. I began spending much more of my time reading on these subjects instead of working in the lab. It was then that I decided to switch fields. However, I believe there is another part of the explanation, which in some ways has interesting sociological implications. My decision to leave engineering was in a very direct way also a result of having more opportunities available to me after transferring to college in the U.S. As a kid growing up in an industrial city in Mexico, there was considerable social pressure to study something practical, particularly something relating to business or engineering. If you were good at math, you were invariably encouraged to study engineering, which was considered both a practical and a relatively high status profession. So when I began college in Mexico I majored in
Carrie Clarady
New faculty Spotlight: Andres Villarreal & Wei-hsin yu engineering. There were few other choices available in the university where I started. There was certainly no department of sociology. When I transferred to a university in the United States after my second year, a whole new set of fields of study were opened to me. I found myself enjoying courses in the humanities and social sciences, with which I had no prior experience. I am not sure I see a very strong connection between my training in engineering and my current research. I don’t think there are any substantive connections. But perhaps my training in engineering does affect my choice of sociological methods. All of my work so far has been quantitative in nature. I feel more comfortable with statistical analysis than other kinds of methods. I especially enjoy programming code. WY: I went to college in Taiwan. Over there one chooses a major before entering a university, largely based on one’s score in the national college entrance exam. The business department in my university was among the most desirable departments in the country, and I had the exam score to get in, so I chose it with a very vague idea about what a business major entailed. Soon after I started college, I knew I was in the wrong business. I always found organizational behavior courses, especially the ones talking about economically irrational organizational behaviors (e.g., isomorphism), more appealing than the courses about management, finance, or marketing. In the process of searching for what I wanted to do, I came to take a lot of sociology courses. I realized that my way of thinking about organizations and labor markets was really closer to a sociologist than an economist or a businessperson. Thus, I decided to move to sociology after graduating from college. What does your research focus on now, and what drew you to that area? AV: My current research focuses on three broad areas within sociology: international migration, race and ethnicity, and social inequality. I also retain a strong interest in the study of crime and violence, a topic in which I was particularly active earlier in my career and which I hope to revisit in the coming years. All of my research is carried out within the context of Latin America, with a special focus on Mexico. I am drawn to the study of Mexico because I want to better understand the (continued on next page)
(continued from previous page) society I grew up in and with which I still have strong ties. Beyond that, I have been known to roam around different topics, depending on what catches my attention. Sometimes it is a very pressing social problem that draws me to a particular topic, other times it is simple curiosity. WY: My research has always been on work and inequality. I focused more specifically on gender inequality in the labor markets in the past, but in recent years I paid more attention to consequences of various work conditions, including psychological health, long-term economic outcomes, and marriage and family patterns. As to what drew me to the area, work (in the labor market) is always a very important part of my life, and I think it is the case for most people. Even people who work merely out of necessity spend much of their lives in the workplace. Given that we have to spend so much time and physical and mental energy on work, it makes sense to try to understand it more. What do you love most about what you do? AV: I love the freedom I have to explore any ideas that I find interesting. Very few jobs outside academia give individuals this amount of flexibility. I am sometimes amazed that I can make a living satisfying my own curiosity regarding social phenomena. Of course, on a day-to-day basis, academic research involves an enormous amount of grunge work. Each paper I write involves a lot of tedious work, including endless revisions to manuscripts. But there are also exhilarating moments of discovery. These moments constitute perhaps two percent of our work experience, but they are worth the effort. WY: I am able to think of all sorts of random ideas and can actually get paid if I manage to convincingly demonstrate these ideas with data. It’s the series of somewhat sociological questions and observations that come to my mind every day that excites me. Is there anything in particular that you think you’ll miss about living in Austin? AV: I will miss some close friends I made over the years. I might also miss eating good breakfast tacos, but I am hoping I can find a good place in the DC area that serves them. WY: Short commute. We live about one mile from the campus and spend very little time on transportation. The DC area is much bigger. There is no doubt I will end up spending more time on my commute.
And what excites you about coming to the DC area? AV: I find the idea of living in a large and diverse metropolitan area exciting. I think the DC metropolitan area has a lot to offer culturally. I have already explored some of the attractions during my visits over the past year and a half, but I am looking forward to seeing more. Professionally, there are lots of important think-tanks and NGOs located in DC that do important work in my areas of interest. WY: I never lived in the DC area, but I imagine that it has everything a large city can offer. I lived in Taipei, Tokyo, Chicago, and Singapore before Austin. Austin is not bad, but it is the smallest city I have ever lived. I always want to be in a more cosmopolitan area. Besides, the DC area is very diverse, with people from everywhere. As a result, I already have some old friends from high school or college in the area. I also think I will get to meet a lot of interesting and different people in the area. Do you have any great advice for graduate students? AV: Graduate school can be very anxiety-provoking. It’s difficult to balance one’s intellectual interests with practical concerns about finding a job. My advice would be to keep practical concerns in mind, but take the opportunity to explore topics you may have not encountered before. Oh, and learn as much about sociological methods as you can! WY: If I have to give a general advice to graduate students, I would say, be openminded and allow yourself to be exposed to things you don’t think would interest you. I changed a lot over the years in terms of what I found interesting and what I’d like to work on. I frequently found myself developing interest in things that I had not thought much about. I sometimes see students coming to a program with very clear ideas in mind about what they want to study, which can work really well for some. But at the same time, this way of thinking may limit a student’s exposure to other topics that he or she may find equally (or more) appealing. The same applies to methods. Students who are strong believers in qualitative methods sometimes won’t allow themselves to get into data and statistical analyses. They might just lose the opportunity to find out that they actually enjoy quantitative data analyses. We thank Drs. Villareal and Yu for their easy and earnest responses, and we are newly inspired to find (or learn to make) good breakfast tacos in the area. The commute, however, is out of our hands.
Our undergraduate student spotlight is on Lawrence Mudd. Lawrence is a sociology major, focusing on social stratification. In fact, he’s a graduating senior with only a few weeks left before finishing up his Bachelor’s degree. Lawrence is a Maryland native who grew up in Oxon Hill and currently resides in Brandywine. I caught up with Lawrence and had a chance to speak with him about his time at the University of Maryland. Here’s what he had to say. Why did you decide to attend the University of Maryland? It was always “the school” in my mind. Because I’m a kid from PG County, any time we had school field trips or anything like that and it was to a college, it was here because it was the closest school and it’s the flagship school of the state. So, in my mind when I pictured college growing up, it looked a lot like this campus: the big rolling mall and all that kind of stuff, big red buildings, that was it. When I was applying to school, I applied to other schools, but I never really had any intentions of going anywhere but here. One of my happiest moments was getting into my dream school. What led you to major in sociology? I came into the university as a psychology major. That lasted for about a semester. I actually wasn’t really aware of sociology as a discipline in high school. I hadn’t heard of it or anything like that. So, when I got to [Maryland], I was placed in a Living and Learning program called CIVICUS. It’s focused on civic engagement and social justice. We had classes that we had to take. One of them was SOCY 105, which was Social Problems. That was my first experience with [sociology]. I got in and I really liked it. I was like, “This feels more like where I need to be.” How would you say Sociology has impacted the way you view the world? It’s changed drastically. I had this conversation with my fellow sociology majors. Sociology has ruined a lot of things for us because we’re aware of how society plays a role in most aspects of people’s lives. It colors so many things I see. I watch old movies that I used to love and I’m like, “Wow! This is really sexist!” or “This is really racist!” I feel like I’m viewing the world with a different set of glasses than everyone else a lot of the times. What are your plans after graduation? Now that I’ve gotten into sociology and everything, I have the framework. I’m on a social justice kick, but I want to affect it in a way that’s more broad and far-reaching
Joey Brown
Undergraduate spotlight: Lawrence Mudd than academia. I was looking into doing something in policy making, [like] lobbying for certain social issues. I think something that would help me be competitive in that world is a law degree. I’ve got a job that I’ve been working at now for the past couple summers. They offered me a position full-time. I feel like it would be a cool thing to do for a year before I go back to being a student. I figure I’ll do that and when next fall comes, I’ll be doing the LSAT and sending my applications in. (continued on next page) (continued from previous page) Completing a Bachelor’s degree requires a lot of work. How have you managed to stay motivated? It’s never been that big of a problem. I’ve never really needed someone behind me yelling to push me or anything like that. Deadlines, I impose them on myself so heavily even for things in my personal life. What it comes down [to] for me is being focused on where you’re going. I know maybe I don’t want to do this paper or assignment, maybe I don’t see the relevance, but I’m really looking at the big picture and the big picture is this is what I need to do to get to where I need to be. It’s just as simple as that. I do what needs to be done. What are some interesting activities you’re involved in outside of sociology? I am the President of the Office of Multiethnic Student Education’s Academic Excellence Society. Our organization, we’re an honor society. We have requirements for our members to keep them from strictly focusing on academia. So, we’re trying to create more wellrounded people. We hold diversity events. Because we’re a multiethnic society, we feel it’s important to not only explore diversity, but celebrate it. So, we have events designed [to get] people to do that. That’s one of my big commitments. I play an instrument. I play guitar. Big reader. Big TV watcher. I’m a nerd at heart. What will you remember most from your time here at the University of Maryland? I’ve always been a more interactional person. I feel the best when I’m recognized by another person individually. So, there’ve been a couple of times with a couple of teachers in the Sociology department, with Dr. Ray, Dr. Moghadam, Dr. Kleykamp, when I’ve had professors commend me on a paper or anything like that. I took Dr. Ray’s Sociology of Race Relations last semester. It was probably a really [small] thing to him, but it was a really big thing [to me]. It was our final paper for the semester. He sent all our grades to us after the semester was over. He sent me mine [with] a real quick message. He was like, “This is your grade. This is one of the best papers I’ve ever read.” That was all he said. For that, I wanted to jump up and down and show people. To other people, it was like, “What’s the big deal? It was just one paper.” It wasn’t a big thing, but for me [it] was. It’s those moments I’ll remember, those moments that define me. What I’ll remember is the recognition from people that I respect.
On Friday, April 25th, Dr. Alex Bierman spoke at the 5th annual William Form lecture. Dr. Bierman is currently an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Calgary and is an alumnus of the University of Maryland sociology department. His talk was titled “The Threat of War and Psychological Distress among Civilians Working in Iraq and Afghanistan.” This talk presented findings from a recent publication of the same name that appeared in Social Psychology Quarterly, co-written with Ryan Kelty (who is also an alumnus of UMD sociology). The talk focused on the nonlinear role of mastery in impacting the experience of distress by Department of Army Civilians (DACs) while deployed overseas in support of Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom (OIF and OEF). Bierman makes the case that DACs are an understudied yet important group of individuals. While DACs typically are not involved directly in combat actions, the risks they face overseas are no less dangerous than their service member counterparts. Department of Army civilians, like their service member counterparts, face risks in the form of improvised explosive devices (IEDs or roadside bombs) and indirect fire from RPG, mortar, IRAM, or other high explosive device attacks. The nature of these attacks is random and indiscriminate. Therefore, mental distress caused by an ever present threat is likely to be experienced by DACs and service members alike. Bierman and Kelty performed a quantitative analysis of a web-based survey provided to logistic units in both Iraq and Afghanistan. This analysis sought to determine the effect of mastery and threat on psychological distress. Distress is measured both in its internal and external forms as symptoms similar to depression and anger respectively. Mastery is measured by the Pearlin and Schooler (1978) index which focuses on an individual’s control over their life. Lastly, threat is measured by a single question which measures
DanielAustin Standridge Margaret Smith
the 5th annual form lecture: Orienta Alex Bierman staff spotlight: Huger the frequency with which a respondent felt their life was threatened. It is possible that a more sophisticated measure of threat, such as one including the actual frequency of attacks, success rates, injury rates, etc. would add a stronger understanding, Bierman stated that previous research supports the validity and utility of a one item measure. Now with the stage set, what interesting findings were presented? Ultimately Bierman stressed that mastery has a nonlinear relationship with distress. Generally findings suggest that as mastery increases, internalized distress decreases. However, at high levels of mastery, distress increases slightly. Individuals at high levels of mastery still experience lower levels of distress than those at low levels of masters, however there is a point at which mastery becomes slightly detrimental. Bierman continued on to show that the relationship between mastery and distress was further complicated by threat. As threat increased, mastery was found to diminish, thus increasing the negative experience of distress. Lastly, Bierman presented findings from an analysis of the moderating effect of mastery on distress; mastery diminishes the effect of threat on distress differentially at varying levels of mastery. Ultimately, Bierman leaves us with the complex relationship between threat, mastery, and the end result of distress. Threat diminishes resources which protect against distress. Mastery prevents the negative effects of threat on distress, but at high levels is slightly detrimental. Bierman, in his publication, acknowledges the limitation of a cross sectional analysis and notes the need for longitudinal data. Bierman ended his presentation by hinting some future research of this same vein. For those whose support is vital to the success of the military mission, DACs deserve our current and future attention.
Thank You, 2013-2104 Graduate Student Forum! Once again, our GSF has done the department proud with their service. These graduate students have served our community well by representing us to the faculty and the university at large, by organizing social events, and by making sure our department remains a strong and supportive environment for us all.
Presidents: Mandi Martinez and Lucia Lykke Treasurer: Jonathan Jackson Social Chairs: Tuesday Barnes, Jenelle Clark, and Jonathan Cox C Wright Mills Lounge Representative: Wendy Laybourn Website Representative: Anya Galli Pre-Candidacy Representative: Joanna Pepin PhD Representative: Denae Johnson Admissions Representatives: Joanna Pepin Rachel Shattuck Awards Committee Representative: Joanna Pepin Policy Committee Representative: Tyler Myroniuk
Congratulations to our 2014 graduates!
Master’s Degrees: Wendy M. Laybourn Kristin Kerns Bryant Best Joanna R. Pepin Joey Brown Esha Chatterjee Jonathan M. Cox Hsiang-Yuan Ho Jaein Lee Jessica E. Pena Shengwei Sun Jingyuan Xie Doctorates: Valerie Chepp, Speaking Truth to Power: Spoken Word Poetry as Political Engagement Among Young Adults in the Millennial Age. Jillet Sam, Place and Caste Identification: Distanciation and Spatial Imaginaries on a Caste-Based Social Network. Molly Clever,The More Things Stay the Same: Colonization, Resistance, and the Fractured Sovereign State.
Graduate Awards
Luoman Bao received the Graduate School Summer Research Fellowship. She has also won a competitive travel award to attend a full week RAND Summer Institute on Aging sponsored by the National Institute on Aging and the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research at the National Institutes of Health. Tyler Crabb received the Charles Coates Award from the Center from Research on Military Organization. Tyler Myroniuk received the Maryland Population Research Center 2014 Summer Student Grant. Joanna Pepin received the Graduate School Summer Research Fellowship. Shengwei Sun won the Irene B. Taeuber Graduate Student Paper Award from the DC Sociological Society.
Emily Mann received her PhD from the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland in 2010. During her time a Maryland, her research focused on the sociology of sexualities, in particular, teenage sexuality and social regulation. She taught courses in the Sociology and LGBT studies Departments and received the 2010 Robert W. Janes award for Excellence for her work in our department. Emily generously agreed to answer some questions about what she’s been up to in the (incredibly productive) years since she left UMD. What are the highlights of the past few years since you left UMD? After leaving UMD, I had the opportunity to pursue a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Health Equity Institute at San Francisco State University, which provided me with a skill set beyond my graduate training. In addition to collaborating with an interdisciplinary research team to implement a multi-sited, mixed-methods study with Latina/o youth in California, I was also able to connect with numerous scholars and advocates focusing on sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice. In particular, I became a member of the Reproductive Justice Working Group, organized through the Center for Reproductive Rights and Justice at the University of California, Berkeley, and attended regular talks and events organized through UCSF’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health and ANSIRH (Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health). All of these experiences proved to be instrumental in helping me grow as a scholar and land my first tenure-track position at the University of South Carolina, which begins this August. It also didn’t hurt that I got to spend a couple years living in San Francisco.
Anya Galli
ALUMNA SPOTLIGHT: EMILY MANN
Can you talk a bit about your current research/interests? What are you working on/ what are you excited about? My current research interests remain focused on the social regulation of youth sexualities but have evolved to focus mainly on how Latina/o youth make decisions about their sexual and reproductive lives within an array of structural constraints and inequalities. More specifically, I am interested in how Latina/o teen parents navigate their social worlds with an eye toward situating their experiences within a reproductive justice framework. There is a movement afoot to challenge and reshape our dominant understandings of teen pregnancy and parenting away from shame and blame and toward support and empowerment, and I am excited to be contributing to that conversation through my research, scholarship, and collaborations. Looking back at your experiences with the job market, what is your advice for current grad students? Was there any advice that was particularly helpful to you? I went on the job market at a time when the recession was hitting the academic job market the hardest (2009-2011), so my perspective is colored by that. That said, my advice to current graduate students boils down to this: Figure out as soon as possible if you really want an academic career and if you decide you do, then learn as much as you can about recent graduates’ trajectories and model your approach on what they did (as well as what they wish they did differently). In addition to this general advice, I especially recommend forming a writing group with a few other graduate students who are at a similar point in the process. I found that tremendously useful and supportive. I am also happy to chat individually with current graduate students in more detail about navigating graduate school and the job market. I can be reached via email at emily. mann@gmail.com (continued on next page)
(continued from previous page) One topic we’re focusing on in the newsletter this semester is how to create and maintain a professional web presence. Can you talk a bit about how you’ve used social media to advance your research/interests/career? Any tips for current grad students? I am avid user of Facebook and Twitter (@emannphd) and the latter in particular has allowed me to connect and communicate with a variety of folks that I otherwise might never have gotten to know and to share information that I use in my teaching and research. I am somewhat unusual in that I use the same account in both a professional and personal capacity – some may argue this is a no-no – but I prefer to integrate the two. Given that, it’s important to be reflexive about what you say within that very public space, so for some it may make sense to maintain a public professional account and a personal locked (or anonymous) account. I also think it’s great to use academia.edu or create your own website to maintain a professional web presence. When people use search engines to look you up, these show up as the first hits so you can more actively shape how others make sense of who you are. Outside of academia, what are your loves/hobbies? While my current position as a VAP hasn’t left me with a ton of free time, I do have a couple of hobbies that I really enjoy. One of my favorite things to do in my free time is pursue various culinary adventures. Since I have had the opportunity to live in two wildly different cities – San Francisco and Las Vegas – in the past few years, I have been able to explore their respective food scenes, which has been a lot of fun. I’m really looking forward to continuing that hobby in the context of the South. Beyond that, since moving to Las Vegas, I have been fostering dogs for a local dachshund rescue organization, which has been a real joy. If you like dogs and have the space, I highly recommend it!
Amanda Nguyen
Student-led research in social psychology: a look into undergraduate participation and interest in the Sociology Group processes lab For the majority of my undergraduate career, I never considered social science research as an option for my future. I had read a handful of peer‐reviewed articles assigned in my sociology courses, but I felt detached from an understanding of how they did the research. I saw research careers as for STEM majors. It was not until I was given an opportunity to actually be involved in conducting social science experiments in the Sociology Group Processes Lab that these stereotypes were broken for me and I finally developed an appreciation for the works of the authors of those journal articles. I first became involved in the GP Lab in my senior year. I was an undergraduate research assistant helping run graduate student experiments as part of an independent study course. I administered lab experiments, reviewed informed consent forms and potential risks of studies with participants, debriefed participants, and logged payment information. The experience gave me a look at the side of research that I had not before known. My time in the lab challenged me intellectually to think about the kinds of research questions I would want to explore if I was the researcher. In turn, it got me thinking about my future and the kinds of things I could do with my sociology degree. Having the opportunity to work with graduate students and to have Professor Lucas as a mentor strengthened my desire to apply to graduate programs to pursue graduate studies in sociology so that I could see my research ideas come to fruition. While my semester‐long experience in the lab was worthwhile, I still didn’t feel as though I fully understood the process of research. Following the end of that first semester, I asked Professor Lucas if I could stay on and volunteer my time in the lab. I explained to Professor Lucas that I felt as if I was just starting to get something valuable from the lab and to have to end my time felt like it would be a disservice to myself, especially given the personal research interests that I was beginning to develop. To my delight, Professor Lucas happily agreed. It was not until the beginning of that following semester that Professor Lucas and I discussed a new idea he had. Professor Lucas was rolling out a new program to target promising undergraduates, particularly sophomores and juniors, to take part in a one year research program in the Group Processes Lab beginning Spring Semester of 2014. To enhance the experience for students, former undergraduate research assistants would mentor and train the incoming cohort of undergraduates to be starting in the lab. The program would span over the course of two semesters for the cohort and challenge students to intellectually participate in research, push them to conceptualize their own ideas and research designs, and actively engage them to be involved in their own data collection. The main goal for Professor Lucas’s independent study program is to get undergraduates intellectually and actively involved in research that contributes
to the academic field. The hope is that this program will be able to serve as a model for mentoring undergraduate students in research and get undergraduates involved in producing research that contributes to the knowledge base of our discipline. To help fund the program, Professor Lucas created an account through the college in which moneys raised goes directly towards supporting student projects.
Currently, there are ten undergraduate students in the independent study program. Students are placed into research groups of about 2‐3 members to collectively work on a research project, which they conceptualize and design themselves. Groups meet with Professor Lucas weekly to get feedback and discuss the progress of their individual projects. We hope to see all of the current student‐led projects launched in April and for the students to have data that they can begin to analyze before the semester is over. Current Student Studies in Progress: Evolutionary Psychology Study—Undergraduate researchers provide participants with scenarios to examine gendered‐effects during an economic downturn. Text Study—A study on the relationship between the difficulty of understanding text and how important people think it is. Rule Following Study—Undergraduate researchers evaluate the relationship between competency and rule following. Undergraduate Student Profiles: Kamilah Wakil—Kamilah is a junior sociology student from Brookeville, MD. She has a culinary and management degree and is currently pursuing pre‐medical studies in addition to her concentration in social psychology. In the Group Processes lab, she has worked on an evolutionary psychology study based off of the lipstick effect, looking at displaying status in times of economic recession. When she isn’t studying or doing homework, she enjoys spending time on her family’s farm and working as a weekend school teacher teaching third grade social studies and Arabic language. After graduation she hopes to go on to graduate school to complete a doctoral degree in counseling psychology and oncology where she can combine her love of natural and social sciences to help others who are dealing with cancer.
Dian Dong—Dian is a sophomore Sociology major student. Dian grew up in China and sees people undergoing vast number of social problems, so she craves finding answers for these intertwining conflicts. She financially supports a girl from a low‐income family in China to finish her education. She also participates in Alternative Breaks to help indigenous kids in Ecuador and their community. She believes that the study of social psychology provides her with knowledge to reflect on real social issues. She appreciates having the opportunity to participate in the Group Processes Lab and conduct experiments with fellow students. Savannah Doane‐Malotte— Savannah is a sophomore sociology major from Burtonsville, MD. She is currently working on an evolutionary psychology study within the lab, and is specifically interested in international social issues. When she’s not conducting research or drinking coffee, she works as an intern with the international non‐profit Stop the Silence: Stop Child Sexual Abuse, which combats child sexual abuse through prevention and mitigation. She is also President of the Stop the Silence: University Movement club on campus, a member of Cru, a Christian organization on campus, and is a tutor for student athletes. After graduation, she wants to travel the world combating social injustice, specifically gender issues, through a non‐profit or charitable organization. Meghan Imwold—Meghan is a sophomore from Baltimore, Maryland. She is majoring in sociology with a concentration in social stratification. Additionally, she has a minor in human development. On campus, Meghan is involved with Students Helping Honduras, Phi Sigma Pi, and the University Honors College as an HONR100 Section Leader. During her time with the Group Processes Lab, she has worked on designing a study about rule following and competency. She reflects, “It has been an eye opening experience to see all of the collaboration and editing that goes into social science research!” Leah Yablonka—Leah is a senior Environmental Science and Policy major, concentrating in Society and Environmental Issues with a minor in Sustainability Studies. This field of study integrates Environmental Science and Sociology to understand the institutional mechanisms that contribute to the current state of the environment. Leah’s spare time in college has been spent in various leadership positions on campus and in internships across the non‐profit, public and private sectors. Specifically, her sociological interests revolve around social and sustainable issues in the private sector, including the lack of women in executive positions and what motivates corporations to take voluntary sustainable action. _______________________________________________ To give to the Sociology Group Processes Lab Fund, please visit http://www.bsos.umd.edu/alumni/giving/give/department/sociology
This semester, we asked faculty and students about the benefits and challenges of maintaining a professional presence online. Nathan and Les – as two rogue social scientists – sociologically Sonalde Desai: describe and analyze their experiences at John Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity. Enjoy! I have a personal website www.sonaldedesai.org where I have a blog. I started this blog when we began fieldwork and have written on it on and off. I have not been as regular and I would have liked to be but it has been fun. This site also contains almost all of my publications and links to newspaper articles. This site was useful in two ways: 1. I have received two grants to support my India work because funders are interested in the linkages between research and public policy that articles on this site reflect. One of the grants actually contains some funds regular posting of new results on this site. 2. I usually refer people who ask for publications to this site so that they can download. Many of my developing country colleagues do not have the kind of electronic database access we have. So they appreciate the opportunity to download articles. However, maintaining the site is quite difficult and I often fall off the wagon.
Advice on developing and maintaining a web presence
Rashawn Ray: After much reservation, two years ago I joined Twitter (@sociologistray)... and, I love it! Twitter allows me to disseminate information about research on racial and social inequality. It also allows me to stay abreast of cutting-edge research and occurrences in social life that become relevant for teaching and interacting with the lay public. An aspect of Twitter that I enjoy is that I can only tweet 140 characters. As a result, Twitter forces me to send something short and get back to writing articles. It also gives me a place to store readings that I want to return to when I have time to properly digest the findings and implications. I believe that Twitter helps you to construct a professional brand. As the way academics access articles and books changes, an online brand may become even more important for young scholars. I choose to focus on certain themes focused on race, social class, and gender and people who follow me know that they can find information about these topics on my page.
Sarah Wanenchak: The thing that’s become the center of my online/social media presence is vulnerability. We’re taught that we’re not supposed to do that, to be vulnerable. Life teaches us this, but I think academia teaches it especially hard. When you’re in graduate school you’re highly susceptible to fear—What’s going to happen to me? Am I going to find a job? What do all these faculty think of me? How am I coming off? Does so and so hate me? Am I letting people down? Oh God. That kind of fear can break you, but keeping it inside for even greater fear of looking weak makes it even worse, and at some point I decided I couldn’t do that anymore. I’ve written extensively on Cyborgology—the group sociology blog founded by PJ Rey and Nathan Jurgenson, to which I’m a regular contributor—about how the various places online wherein I make my home have become places for me to work things out, to talk and think through whatever’s occupying my brain at any given time. I don’t know how to not do that; I’ve been doing it for as long as I’ve been using the web. I came of age online, like many of us; I live there. So when I first extended myself into social media, I began by doing the same. I put all of me out there: I talked about life, friends, school, work, likes and dislikes, opinions about culture and politics, arguing about matters of research and theory, ranting about TV shows, nail polish. That’s not to say that I had no filters, but my presence was not what we normally consider “professional”. It still isn’t. I write essays on sociology and technology at Cyborgology, but there I’ve also written about fiction, video games, my cousin’s recent suicide, revolution, pain and joy, time and memory.
For me, social media—and really the entirety of the web—are part of a single massive discussion, and for me the lines that demarcate different parts of that discussion have always been blurry. Because I am blurry. I see no reason to pretend otherwise. So my online presence is my academic life, my professional work, but it’s also so much more. I have feelings about that work, frustrations and excitements, and I talk about that. When I had a mental breakdown after my comps, I talked about that, and I still talk about mental health a good deal, because that stigma needs to be fought. When
something has me fired up—really passionate in ways that are so easy to lose in the daily grind that grad school can be—I talk about that. And when I’m worried or afraid or suffering from doubt, I talk about that too. I talk about everything. I should note here that what I have done flies in the face of almost every single piece of conventional common sense I’ve ever received on this subject. It’s very possibly an extremely bad idea. I do not recommend it to anyone. But it’s an option, and it’s the one I’ve chosen. I love my social media-augmented life, the friends I’ve made, the connections I’ve cultivated, and the conversations I’ve been part of. I’ve learned so much, and it’s helped me beyond measure in the work I do. Someday I might regret it. That day hasn’t yet arrived.
sociology news . volume 8 . issue 2 . Spring 2014 department of sociology . university of maryland