Sociology Newsletter
Summer 2008
(L. Clark)
Sociology Department's Outstanding Graduating Senior 2008
Sociology Scholarships and Waivers 2008-09
Sociology Honors Society Initiates
Jails Course Offered This Summer
J. Teachman & L. Tedrow Hosting Symposium in Population, Health, Aging
Soc Student Accepted in ICPSR Summer Internship Program
New Capstone Fall 08: Qualitative Research in Sociology of Health
What Are Sociology Graduates Doing?
Sociology Department's Outstanding Graduating Senior 2008
Amanda Turner is the Sociology Department's Outstanding Graduating Senior for 2008. Amanda's performance has been strong throughout her academic career. She excelled in classes and has been actively involved in research, both as a research assistant and as an independent scholar. She was a research assistant for professors John Richardson and Karen Bradley on their project on the historical characterization of intelligence in educational and industrial psychology texts. According to Karen Bradley, "Amanda’s judgment was always right on. She is able to operationalize abstract theoretical concepts in a way that demonstrates sophisticated reasoning abilities. She also was a teaching assistant in my Work and Occupations class. She excelled when she took that class, and was able to apply what she learned to grade quizzes successfully with very little oversight from me." John Richardson described Amanda as "superb: capable, disciplined, genuinely interested. She is the best of possible research assistants." Amanda also worked with Kristin Anderson on the Patient Neighborhood Health Mapping project. In this role, she conducted in-depth interviews and filled the role as a software training specialist for NVIVO, the qualitative software program that will be used for this project.
Amanda also pursued her own research questions through a senior thesis project. This project examines stereotypical representations of gender and family in video games through a case study of The Sims 2, a game that is popular with adult women and men. Amanda is using two methods for this project. First, analyzed the content of the game by coding the characteristics assigned to the individual characters, including their aspirations, jobs, talents, skills, and personality attributes, and family roles. Second, Amanda conducted in-depth interviews and observations of women who play The Sims 2.
Perhaps the most impressive of her accomplishments to date is that Amanda is already a published sociologist. On the recommendation of an instructor at her community college, Amanda submitted an article written as a term paper for a Popular Culture course to the on-line journal Watcher Journal: The Undergraduate Journal of Buffy Studies. This paper has been accepted for publication and is titled "'Because It's Wrong': Limitations of Female Empowerment in Buffy.”
Following her graduation from Western, Amanda plans to pursue a Ph.D. in cultural sociology beginning in the fall of 2010. She plans to become an academic sociologist. Amanda is already investigating potential programs that will allow her to work with faculty who share her interest in popular culture.
Congratulations Amanda!
Sociology Honors Society Initiates
On Scholar’s Day, the Sociology Department initiated 32 students to Alpha Kappa Delta, the international honor society in sociology. If you’re interested in finding out more about AKD, visit the national website for AKD and look for the application next winter, which we’ll announce over the listserv and post in the newsletter. Congratulations to the following students, and welcome to AKD!
| April Baetz | Erin Cross |
Brandon Kilgore | Sarah Reinecke | |
| Ryan Beli | Valina Edmunds | Linda Lancaster | Megan Reinhart | |
| Meslissa Brown | Ashley Eskes | Susan Lange | Anne riordan | |
| Anne Buethorn | Christina Hatton | James LeDuc | Ashley Stevens | |
| Stacy Bunnell | Christine Hayes | Molly Lester | Jamie Vallee | |
| Rachael Cable | Laura Hoff | Ashley Melseth | ||
| Elizabeth Clary | Ruth Howard | Rikki Olson | ||
| Terrence Clifford | Erika Hulings | Samantha Raddatz | ||
| Katelyn Cohen | Amanda Jones | Erika Reams | ||
Sociology Scholarships and Waivers 2008-09
Each year the Sociology department awards promising students with scholarships, partial tuition waivers and/or cash awards. The scholarships must be used by the recipients at Western Washington University during the 2008-09 academic year. Award criteria include a combination of merit, special circumstances, and a writing sample. Recipients for the 2008-09 academic year were recently honored during Western's annual Scholars Week. Congratulations to each of our 12 recipients!
Jails Course Offered This Summer
This Summer, Ron Helms will be teaching a course on the Sociology of Local Jails (Soc 397j), Monday-Friday 12-1:20pm. Dr. Helms organized a jails course so that students would be able to learn from the ltierature, develop theoretical insights, and take concepts and ideas with them as they engaged in field research. "Jails appear to be utilized at increased rates in communities where other institutions are performing poorly." See Jail Article featured in American Jail Association and Academe.
J. Teachman and L. Tedrow Hosting Symposium in Population, Health, Aging
Lucky Tedrow and Jay Teachman will be hosting the second annual NIA sponsored symposium in Population, Health, and Aging. The purpose of the symposium is to provide undergraduates planning a career in health care with training in the value and nature of interdisciplinary study. Ten undergraduates from around the country will come to Bellingham for an eight week period beginning June 23. Academic backgrounds represented include sociology, epidemiology, biology, and medicine.
Soc Student Accepted into ICPSR Summer Internship Program
Gina Kim has been accepted into the ICPSR Summer Internship Program for undergraduates. Gina is a Sociology and Political Science double major with a minor in Gender Studies graduating in June 2009. Gina has an interest in pursuing a demography concentration in the Sociology major. She is interested in data analysis and quantitative research methods. Previous research experience includes working on an ethnographic study performing qualitative data analysis and numerous survey interview opportunities resulting in data to transcribe code and analyze. Last summer Gina was a Fellow at the University of California Public Policy and International Affairs Junior Summer Institute at Berkeley, CA.
The ICPSR program is ten weeks in duration, June 9, 2008 to August 15, 2008. Interns will learn data processing skills necessary to prepare social science data for permanent archiving and distribution for secondary analysis, including preserving respondent anonymity, reviewing data for consistency and composing descriptive summaries of data collections. They will also gain experience using statistical software including SAS, SPSS and STATA, by working in both Windows and UNIX environments. In addition to working on data processing projects, interns will attend courses in the ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research and learn bibliographic processes. All interns will receive direct oversight by an experienced Research Assistant or Research Associate who will serve as their mentor throughout the program. Also, Interns will be provided with a calendar of activities meant to further enhance their internship experience, which will include presentations by various ICPSR and ISR projects and there will be a number of opportunities for ICPSR Staff involvement.
New Capstone Fall 08: Qualitative Research in Soc of Health
Kristin Anderson is preparing a new capstone course in the Sociology of Health, to be offered Fall quarter 2008. The course provides students with an opportunity to investigate a student-initiated question relating to the health of older adults in the United States. Students will receive training in content analysis and in-depth interview analysis and use this training to conduct an original analysis that will culminate in a research paper. Data for the class have already been collected as part of the "Patient Health Neighborhood Mapping" project conducted by the Critical Junctures Institute for Health Care Advancement and Learning. We will have access to neighborhood health maps drawn by 150 Whatcom County residents over the age of 55 years, focus group interviews about the maps conducted with 15-20 groups, and in-depth interviews about the maps conducted with 20-50 research participants. This course provides students with an opportunity to participate in community-wide efforts to improve health and health care in Whatcom County.
Faculty Updates
J. Teachman has recently published the following:
M. Whyman, M. Lemmon and J. Teachman. 2008. “Fertility Change in the United States Over the Past Fifty Years and its Consequences.” Forthcoming in N. Lauster and G. Allan (eds.), The End of Children / End of Childhood. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press.
J. Teachman. 2008. “Divorce, Prevalence and Trends. Forthcoming in H. Reis and S. Sprecher (eds.), Encyclopedia of Human Relationships. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
J. Teachman. 2008. “The Living Arrangements of Children and their Educational Well-being.” Journal of Family Issues, forthcoming.
J. Teachman. 2008. “Complex Life Course Patterns and the Risk of Divorce in Second Marriages.” Journal of Marriage and Family 70:294-305.
J. Teachman and L. Tedrow have recently published the following:
J. Teachman and L. Tedrow. 2008. “The Demography of Stepfamilies in the United States.” Forthcoming in J. Pryor (ed.), International Handbook of Stepfamilies: Policy and Practice in Legal, Research, and Clinical Spheres. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
J. Teachman and L. Tedrow. 2008. “Divorce, Race, and Military Service: More than Equal Pay and Equal Opportunity.” Journal of Marriage and Family, forthcoming.
What Are Sociology Graduates Doing?
Ejike Chima is currently working in Washington D.C. with disadvantaged kids who have gotten mixed up in the drug markets and in many ways have screwed up their lives. He plans to get into a Master’s program in Sociology in order to focus on issues such as AIDS among African Americans in the inner city and related problems.
Andrew Dimitrov (2006) is currently in Bulgaria taping a travel/historical documentary. When he returns to New York in the fall, he will be attending the New School's New School for General Studies' MA Media Arts program. The program is the only Media program in the world which offers comprehensive instruction in three areas: production, theory, and management. After graduate school, Andrew hopes to be an independent filmmaker; in addition, he aspires to host his own television production company, tentatively entitled Meat Picnic, a collection of structurally abstract and comedic shorts to be broadcast somewhere.
Matt Hall (2004) is working on his graduate degree in demography at Penn State University.
Zach Hays (2004) is finishing his Ph.D. in Crime, Law, and Justice at Penn State.
Erin Lundstrom has a son named Ashton, and she is working as an Editor at a company called PRWeb, a major newswire with an office in Ferndale. They distribute press releases press releases online. She says, "It's a great job, I really enjoy it. It is not so much related to Sociology but more toward my minor of Communications. The company was started here locally but was recently purchased by a major PR software company, Vocus, on the East coast. We are the industry leader in what we do and it is very excited to be part of hugely successful global company."
Joel Myrene is now working as a behavioral health counselor at St. Joseph's Hospital.
Gina Taboada is working on her Masters in Social Work through Eastern's Everett part-time program. Gina wanted to thank the Sociology Department for preparing her so well. "Out of everyone in my cohort I am one of few who know how to write research papers. So many have never looked at journal articles and have no clue how to find or comprehend them. They also struggle with using APA format or writing professional papers!"
Graduation Procedures
Deadlines for graduation applications:
Fall 2008 graduation - June 6, 2008
Winter 2009 graduation - August 22, 2008
Spring 2009 graduation - December 5, 2008
To apply for graduation, make an appointment with Linda Clark for a Major Evaluation. Stop by Arntzen Hall 513 to sign up--an appointment schedule is posted outside the door; or email to set up a time (provide your open days and times).
Get a Degree Application from the Registrar's Office, OM 230. You'll submit your Degree Application to the Registrar's Office, along with your major/minor evaluation.
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