• Graduate Students: Recent accomplishments.
• Deaths: Sociology mourns the recent passing of three long-time faculty members
• McLeigh: Jill McLeigh joins Military/ Veterans Survey Project
• Awards: Joe Lengermann, Mini Rajan, Chris Andrews, Paul Dean, Gheda Temsah, and Nicole DeLoatch win BSOS awards.
• Three More New Hires in 2011: Sociology hired three new faculty members in 2011!
• Theorizing the Web : Call for papers for Theorizing the Web conference, April 9, 2011.
• Environmental Sociology: New faculty give Maryland Sociology new prominence in environmental sociology.
• New Newsletter: Profiles of the Graduate Director, new faculty, IT office staff, grad students, and undergraduate.
• Merrill Awards: Undergraduate Karen Viruez-Munoz named a Philip Merrill Presidential Scholar.
• New faculty: Four new faculty join Maryland Sociology in 2010.
• Recent publications Faculty 2009-10 publications in top sociology journals.
• ASA Awards: Professors Kleykamp, Korzeniewicz, Robinson, and Presser given awards at 2010 ASA meetings.

In the Spotlight: Recent Graduate Student Accomplishments.

Shanna Brewton-Tiayon has been awarded a Ford Foundation Fellowship. The announcement states: "Your selection for this prestigious award reflects our review panelists’ judgment of your scholarly competence as well as the promise that you show for future achievement as a scholar, researcher, and teacher in an institution of higher education."

Kathleen Denny has been awarded a grant by TESS (Time Sharing for the Social Sciences) that will field her data for part of her dissertation project on race and fatherhood. TESS provides researchers a platform to test ideas on a representative sample of adults in the U.S. using Knowledge Networks an internet survey base.

Paul Dean has accepted a position as Assistant Professor at Ohio Wesleyan University starting Fall 2012. Paul's dissertation examines social movements that seek to influence corporations through market-based mechanisms such as investment boycotts. He interviewed producers of "social certifications" (e.g. FairTrade) that seek to influence corporate social responsibility by certifying compliance with environment, employment,or other standards.

Nathan Jurgenson has been invited to give talks on various aspects of digital media in Italy, Canada, and San Francisco. Nathan has been writing for the Atlantic and Salon. He has helped organize the web pages for the prosumer study group and the blog for cyberology.

The Sociological Cinema website, a video library for the sociology classroom maintained by Les Andrist, Valerie Chepp, and Paul Dean has been cited by the Merlot Project (Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching) for the “exceptionally valuable contribution that Dean, Andrist, and Chepp have made to advancing teaching and learning within the discipline.” The site is also December’s “featured sociologist” by W.W. Norton.

In the Spotlight: Three long-time faculty members died recently and the Sociology Department mourns their passing.

Emeritus Professor Ray Henkel died on October 26 at his retirement home in Riner, Virginia. Ray was a Wisconsin Ph.D. who spent his entire teaching career at College Park. He arrived in the mid-1960s and retired in the mid-1990s. He was an early mainstay of our statistics curriculum, and among other accomplishments installed the first computer in the department. Among his publications was Tests of Significance, one of the earliest in the Sage Series on Quantitative Application in the Social Sciences.

Mehrdad Mashayekhi was an adjunct professor in the department for many years and taught hundreds of Maryland students in courses on Social Problems and Introductory Sociology. Dr. Mashayekhi received his Ph.D. from American Univeristy. His research publications focused on political movements in Iran and he was a great champion of democratic reform. Besides his long academic service to Maryland, Dr. Mashayekhi made great contributions to the Iranian American community in the United States and to many broadcast productions on Iran from the BBC, Voice of America, and other channels.

Bob Hirzel joined the Sociology Department in 1956. He served as Acting Chair and Associate Chair during his long career at Maryland. Besides helping build the department in its early years, Bob also worked with the Maryland Experiment Station. He retired almost twenty years ago and is remembered fondly by all the old-timers in the department.

In the Spotlight: Jill McLeigh joins Military/ Veterans Survey Project

Dr. Jill McLeigh has recently joined the Sociology Department as Coordinator of the Longitudinal Military Research Program. Jill comes to us after completing her dissertation at Clemson University. Her dissertation compares religious and secular international nongovernmental organizations active in humanitarian assistance.

Jill was recently honored at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association as the "Outstanding Student" in Division 18, Psychologists in Public Service. The Outstanding Student Award recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to public service through research, teaching, program development, and/or clinical practice.

Ms. McLeigh has been a Fellow with the American Orthopsychiatric Association in Washington, DC, and an editorial assistant for the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. At Clemson, Ms. McLeigh was a Research Associate at the Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life for six years where she served on the research team for Strong Communities, a child maltreatment prevention initiative. She coordinated the development of Family Activity Centers and provided program development assistance for Building Dreams, a mentoring program for children whose parents are incarcerated.

The Longitudinal Military Research Project is an effort to assemble a multidisciplinary research design team to plan longitudinal research on the impact of the 21st century wars on military personnel, veterans, their families, and their communities. Professor David Segal is leading this national effort.

In the Spotlight: Awards, Awards, Awards!

The department continues to pull in awards from the University and professional associations:

	At the recent BSOS annual awards, retiring Associate Professor Joe Lengermann was awarded the prestigious Dean's Medal for his distinguished service to the college and University. Joe joined Maryland in 1967 and has been Acting Chair (5 times!), Associate Chair, and Graduate Director. He has long been the go-to person for building consensus and resolving problems and we will miss him greatly. Mini Rajan, Sociology's Business Coordinator extraordinaire, won the Outstanding Staff Award.
The Excellence in Teaching Award for lecturers was given to Chris Andrews, who will be leaving us next fall to become Assistant Professor of Sociology at Drew University. Paul Dean, received the Excellence in Teaching Award for graduate student lecturers. Gheda Temsah, received the George M. Phillips Award for outstanding graduate student research on topics of public concern. And, Nicole DeLoatch, our Undergraduate Advisor, received the University's staff Minority Achievement Award recognizing her many contributions to our commitment to diversity.

In the Spotlight: Three More New Faculty coming to Maryland

After four new faculty hires in 2010, four more new faculty have agreed to join College Park this year:

In the Spotlight: Conference: Theorizing the Web

April 9, 2011

Deadline for Abstracts: February 20, 2011

Keynote Speaker: danah boyd

Call for Papers: The goal of the conference is to expand the range and depth of theory used to help us make sense of how the Internet, digitality, and technology have changed the ways humans live. We hope to bring together researchers (particularly graduate students and junior faculty) from a range of disciplines, including sociology, communications, philosophy, economics, English, history, political science, information science, the performing arts and many more. In addition, we invite sessions and other proposals by tech-industry professionals, journalists, and other figures outside of academia. Submit abstracts online at http://www.cyborgology.org/theorizingtheweb/submit.html. For further inquiries, email ttw201l@gmail.com.

Topics will include:

• Identity and self-presentation: concerns of privacy and publicity on the Web
• Surveillance, voyeurism, exhibitionism, and secrecy online
• The blurring of online and offline, real and virtual, cyborgism and augmented reality
• The Internet and the changing nature of capitalism
• How power and inequality (e.g., the Digital Divide) manifest on the Web
• Political activism/slacktivism online
• Bodies and sexuality in the Digital Age
• "Relationship Status" and Online dating
• "Prosumption" (i.e., the convergence of production and consumption online)
• Global implications of the Internet (or of the multiple Internets)
• McDonaldization, rationalization and the Web
• Intersections of gender, race, class, age, sexual orientation, and disability with respect to any of the above.

In the Spotlight: Environmental Sociology at Maryland

The arrival this January of two new faculty members, Dana R. Fisher and Christina Prell, gives Maryland Sociology new prominence in the rapidly growing field of environmental sociology. They join long-time faculty member Kurt Finsterbusch in providing new strength in research and teaching on social aspects of environmental change.

In the Spotlight: New Sociology Newsletter

Welcome to Volume 5, Issue 1!

This newsletter edition begins with greetings from our new Graduate Director – Dr. Bill Falk. But we’ve also got loads of updates including: new GSF election procedures, information on working groups, an announcement for a teaching support group, a list of journal rankings, and a few introductions to some new(-ish) faces around the department.

In the Spotlight: Merrill Awards

Undergraduate Karen Viruez-Munoz was recently named a Philip Merrill Presidential Scholar as one of Maryland's outstanding seniors. Karen has interned with Representative Chris VanHollen and at HHS. Next year she will earn a Masters in Public Policy in a combined Sociology/ Public Policy 5 year program.

The Merrill scholars program also recognizes outstanding teaching by asking each of the senior awardees to name a mentor from College Park and from their K-12 school who most inspired their education. Karen named John Pease as her outstanding mentor at College Park and Kristen Flather of Rockville High School as her outstanding K-12 mentor. This is the second time Professor Pease has been named a Merrill outstanding mentor.

Karen said that "In addition to his passion for sociology and bringing new life to the material, Professor Pease presents his students with material and discussions that they will find useful and relevant the rest of their lives.... I cherish [my two mentors] most because they have always been there to help me improve and to encourage me to move forward."

Congratulations Karen and John!

Other recent Sociology awards

In the Spotlight: Four New Faculty!

In the Spotlight: Recent Publications

In the Spotlight

The Peace, War, and Social Conflict section of the American Sociological Association has awarded Meredith Kleykamp the 2010 outstanding article award for "A Great Place to Start? The Effect of Prior Military Service on Hiring", published in Armed Forces & Society. The article examined the effect of prior military service on hiring for entry-level jobs. The research used an audit method in which resumes differing only in prior military experience were faxed to employers in response to an advertised position.

The Political Economy of the World System Section of the American Sociological Association has announced that Unveiling Inequality by Patricio Korzeniewicz and Tim Moran (UMd Ph.D. 1996) has won the 2010 best book award. The award noted the book's contribution to explaining diverging patterns of inequality across countries from a world-historical and institutionalist perspective. The authors see the change in within-country inequality and between-country inequality not as two separate processes, as many in the field do, but as intertwined developments that have to be examined historically and holistically.

other Sociology awards

In the Spotlight

The Communication and Information Technologies Section of the American Sociological Association has announced that John Robinson is the 2010 recipient of the William F. Ogburn Career Achievement Award. The award "recognizes a sustained body of research that has provided an outstanding contribution to the advancement of knowledge in the area of sociology of communications or the sociology of information technology."

Harriet Presser will be awarded the Jessie Bernard award at the August 2010 meetings of the American Sociological Association. The Jessie Bernard Award has been given for thirty years in recognition of scholarly work that “has enlarged the horizons of sociology to encompass fully the role of women in society”. Harriet has been a Professor of Sociology at Maryland since 1976 and was named Distinguished University Professor in 1999. She was the founding Director of the Center on Population, Gender, and Social Inequality (now the Maryland Population Research Center).

Harriet adds this honor to numerous other career awards including election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Association of University Women's 2007 Founders Distinguished Senior Scholar Award.  Last year the Population Association of America established the Harriet B. Presser award to honor scholars who have done distinguished research on gender and demographic issues.