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Dear Sociology Community, Alumni, and Friends,
Our department has been busy this fall! We welcomed our newest faculty member, Professor Margaret Hunter, to our department. We are excited and lucky to add her as a department colleague! Welcome also to Noah McClain, the new Academic Year Adjunct Lecturer in our department, and Jennifer Merritt Faria, Sr. Director of Academics at the Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, who are both teaching classes for the department this year. Leonardo Monteiro has also joined the department as a visiting scholar this year, and you can read more about his research below.
Our faculty have also been hard at work! Cara Chiaraluce is working on her manuscript with Rutgers University Press on the intensification of carework associated with caring for disabled, neurodivergent, and/or medically complex children. She recently completed an ACUE microcredential in Inclusive Teaching for Equitable Learning to create more equitable learning opportunities for all students. She is a contributing member of the SCU Student Advising Pilot program, in which they are working to re-envision student advising across the University to better meet student and department needs.
Di Di is working with student research assistants on her project on faith, ethics, and technology this quarter. She is also starting a new project about the experiences of religious and atheist influencers. Starting in January 2023, she will serve as a co-chair for the sociology of religion unit in the American Academy of Religion. She is also selected as a participant in the Early Career Faculty of Asian Descent Workshop organized by Wabash Center.
Prof. Margaret Hunter is working with a student research assistant on her project about students’ sense of belonging at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. She and her research team concluded their focus groups at Morehouse College and are now writing up the results. It was just announced that her article, “Nicki Minaj and the Changing Politics of Hip-Hop: Real Blackness, Real Bodies, Real Feminism?” (co-authored with Alheli Cuenca) was one of the most downloaded from Feminist Frontiers in 2021.
Molly M. King has been working with several undergraduate sociology majors as research assistants over the summer and into the fall quarter. As part of one of these collaborations, she recently published a teaching guide co-authored with two current sociology students, Ana Martinez and Emily Pachoud, and alumna Maria Gregg entitled “Teaching & learning guide for disability and climate justice” in Sociology Compass. She also published with sociology major Megan Imai on their research on the outcomes of being a research assistant in sociology.
Laura Nichols finished her term as the President of the Faculty Senate Council. She is happy that students are now able to be more engaged in the community since the pandemic now that public schools are allowing SCU students back in their classrooms. It has also been exciting to see sociology majors continue to pursue exciting new careers in tech and User-experience. Please connect with us on LinkedIn so we know what you are up to. Laura is expanding her research on barriers to success for aspiring first-generation college students who are transfer students to four-year colleges and also using institutional data to examine the proportion of students who are first-generation college and what their graduation rates are at Catholic colleges. These analyses are coming out in a book about the future of Catholic Colleges (January of 2023).
Laura Robinson has been working with Miller Center Lewis Family Fellows in a signature SCU experience. Two sociology majors, Judith Li and Grace Leete, are 2022 Fellows whose projects with Solageo and Nurture Africa contribute to providing clean water and vocational training in Africa. These projects are part of the Miller Center’s larger mission to provide “students with opportunities to learn and work with social entrepreneurs on the front lines of poverty eradication and sustainable development.” Robinson was also interviewed by Matt Morgan for SCU Magazine. See the story: "How It Started, How It’s Going: For decades, the internet has shaped the way we communicate, but two years of us being extremely online hit fast forward on its real-world impact.”
Our indispensable department manager Greg Walswick updated the Sociology lounge, conference room, and third-floor hallway. This has made these spaces more useful for student use and collaboration with faculty.
Many of our efforts are supported by your gifts of time and service, as well as contributions by generous donors and alumni. No matter what form the support takes, we are grateful to all in our sociological community.
Sincerely,
The SCU Sociology Department
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