FSU Sociology Newsletter, Fall 2019

Fall 2019 Sociology Newsletter

Note from the Chair

Greetings! I am happy to share the latest news from FSU Sociology in this first edition of our new biannual online newsletter. Much has changed since our last newsletter was published (in hard copy) in 2006. The department was then chaired by Pat Martin and has since seen an additional four Chairs: Irene Padavic, Ike Eberstein, John Reynolds, and myself. While Irene and John have turned their full attention back to their research and teaching, both Pat and Ike have retired from the faculty (2008 and 2016, respectively). I thank them all for their wonderful leadership and years of dedicated service!

Our department also has grown significantly over the past several years, in both size and accomplishment. We are now comprised of 24 faculty members, six of whom were hired in 2017 and 2018. Our newest colleagues, Shantel Buggs, Katrinell Davis, Mathew Hauer, Patricia (Trish) Homan, Teresa Roach, and Sourabh Singh, have added immensely to the depth and breadth of our programs and to our intellectual environment. I encourage you to learn more about them and their exciting research by examining their profiles on the FSU Sociology website . In addition to our faculty, we now have roughly 300 undergraduate majors and 45 graduate students. In the past year alone, we graduated an impressive 11 Ph.D.s!

As our department has grown, so too have our accomplishments. Indeed, our faculty and students excel at what they do. I encourage you to read further into this newsletter to learn about the many prestigious fellowships, grants, contracts, awards and recognitions garnered by our faculty and students.

Faculty in our department also are increasingly holding crucial roles in interdisciplinary centers, programs and research endeavors on FSU’s campus. After serving for eight years, Karin Brewster recently stepped down from the role of Director for the Center for Demography and Population Health (CDPH). Anne Barrett is currently in her fifth year as the Director of the Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy and Amy Burdette is the Director of the brand-new Bachelor’s in Public Health program, which she designed and launched this Fall. Many of our faculty also are actively engaged in the Master’s in Demography, Master’s in Public Health, Bachelor’s in Public Health, and African American Studies programs. Our faculty are clearly excellent leaders and essential to the mission of the University and the College.

This fall we engaged in a small fundraising campaign – you may have received some emails about that in October and November. On the whole, it was quite successful! Thank you to everyone who contributed to that campaign, or in other ways this year. Your funds help to support our students in ways we otherwise could not (e.g. recruitment efforts, awards, travel, extra training and workshops). We are truly grateful for the support of our wonderful alumni and friends, and we encourage you keep the Department in mind as you consider ways to give back.

Stay connected by keeping up with the Department on twitter @FSUSociology and Facebook (FSU Sociology). I also invite you to share updates about your own accomplishments and life events in our next newsletter by contacting me at [email protected] .

All the Best,

Kathi Tillman

Professor and Chair of Sociology

In this issue…

Meet Our New Graduate Students
Meet Our Recent Graduates
Grad Students On the Job Market
Alumni Spotlight
Faculty Spotlight
SWS Update
AKD Update
International Awards
Newsworthy News
Thank You to our Donors
Work Hard, Play Harder

Meet Our New Graduate Students

Rachel Sparkman is interested in Rural Sociology, Migration, and Spatial Inequalities. They hold a BA and MA in Sociology from Marshall University in Huntington, WV.

Timothy William Arthur is interested in Sexualities, Race and Ethnicity, and Social Movements. They hold a BA in Business Administration from Bryan College in Dayton, TN and a MA in Sociology from Sam Houston State University.

Andre Vaughn Ivey is interested in Family Violence, Gender, and Race. They hold a BS in Sociology from Georgia Southwestern State University and a MS in Sociology from Valdosta State University.

Jason Vincent D'Amours is interested in Sexualities, Medicalization, and Qualitative Research Methods. They hold a BA in Sociology and Gender Studies from New College of Florida.

JoVontae Butts is interested in Sociology of Technology, Urban Inequalities, and Critical Race Theory. They hold a BA in Sociology from Michigan State University.

Kyle Rose is interested in Environmental Sociology, Disability Studies, and Qualitative Research Methods. They hold a BS in Sociology from The University of South Florida.

Taylor Darks is interested in Race Relations, Policy Reform, and The African Diaspora. They hold a BS in Sociology from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University.

Rwiti Roy is interested in Social Inequalities, Social Movements, Gender, and Political Sociology. They hold a BA in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University in Kolkata, India and a MS in Social Work with a specialization in women-centered practices from Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, India.

Mary Breedlove is interested in Sex Education, Sexual Health, and Demography. They hold a BA in Sociology and Anthropology from Agnes Scott College, in Decatur, GA.

Trinity Amethyst Lakin is interested in Sociology of Education, Race, and SES/Class Inequalities. They hold a BS in Sociology & Psychology, from Florida State University.

Christine Mantragrano is interested in Sociology of the Family, Relationships, Gender, Sexuality, Health, Political Sociology and Racial/Ethnic Inequalities. They hold a BS in Sociology & Communication from Florida Gulf Coast University and a MA in Sociology from Florida Atlantic University.

Meet our Summer 2019 Graduates

Elyse Claxton

Dissertation: Feminine Body Ideals in Teen Girls and Women Magazines and Instagram,

Chair – Deana A. Rohlinger

As a passionate educator with experience in course development and instructional design, I believe it is critical to provide real-world, personalized, high-quality educational opportunities for adult learners in the area of higher education.

I’m a fanatic for relationship building and finding ways to better serve and engage anyone seeking to empower themselves through learning. With 6 years of experience developing and presenting content in a manner tangible to a wide variety of learners coupled with my strong inner motivation, superior organization talents, and advanced teaching skills, I am prepared to excel at helping learners understand the curriculum.

I’m committed to professional development and use evaluation measurements to guide revisions of the course content and my instructional teaching methods. I hope to inspire students to take ownership of their learning, to develop a passion for learning, and to become lifelong learners.

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Dr. Claxton is a current Adjunct Instructor at Florida State College at Jacksonville whose research interests are media, gender, and social movements and whose teaching focus includes women’s studies, mass media, and marriage and the family. Elyse is currently seeking a full-time instructor position.

Stephanie Ureña

Dissertation: The Disablement Process of Aging United States Veterans ,

Chair – Miles Taylor

My research centers on the ways social factors shape population health and well-being, with an emphasis on aging, life course processes, health disparities, and Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.

A special focus of my research is on the implications of military service for the long-term health of U.S. veterans, which has received federal funding from the National Institute on Aging.

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Dr. Ureña is currently employed at the University of South Carolina, where she is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Office for the Study of Aging, a Core Member of the Carolina Consortium on Health, Inequalities, and Populations, and a Faculty Affiliate at the Arnold School of Public Health.

Andrew Latinsky

Dissertation: Weathering the Storm: An Examination of Fetal Loss, Maternal Age, and Norms of Race and Sexuality ,

Chair – Koji Ueno

As an academic who came into Sociology from Women's Studies, my background will always focus on issues of inequality and intersectionality, particularly involving race and gender in the United States. My recent work has mostly explored public health issues, moving from the birth-outcomes focus of my dissertation to the service and older-adult wellness focus of my current work at the Florida Department of Elder Affairs.

My current work for the State has focused on issues such as hurricane response, suicide risks among older adults, how people feel about the broader aging network, and more. Even as a mostly quantitative researcher, I’ve always tried to embrace how data and humanity meet in a sociological context. When data and teaching meets the needs of individuals and social institutions, we all can all use our skills to try to make the world a little better.

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Dr. Latinsky is currently a research analyst for the Florida Department of Elder Affairs in Tallahassee, FL. His research interests include social i nequalities, race, gender, and public health and his teaching focus includes public health, and social problems.

Graduate Students On the Job Market

Bertan Buyukozturk

Bertan is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Florida State University. His research interests include new media (gaming), social psychology, identity, culture and social inequalities. His work broadly explores the construction of identity and inequality through digital, physical, and symbolic interaction. Integrating sociological approaches with game studies, he explores player dynamics and the (re)production of dominant and marginalized identities in video game culture. Given his interest in the social elements of digital play, he has conducted ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews within collegiate gaming communities. His dissertation, Constructing Gendered Gamers and Gaming Culture (Chair – Douglas Schrock), analyzes the internalized self-narratives of gamers and their significance in reinforcing gender hierarchies. Bert's teaching focus includes Social Psychology, Social Problems, and New Media & Society

Elyse Claxton, Ph.D

Elyse is a passionate educator with experience in course development and instructional design. She believes it is critical to provide real-world, personalized, high-quality educational opportunities for adult learners in the area of higher education. She is dedicated to relationship building and finding ways to better serve and engage anyone seeking to empower themselves through learning. With 6 years of experience developing and presenting content in a manner tangible to a wide variety of learners, she excels at helping learners understand the curriculum. She also is committed to professional development and uses evaluation measurements to guide revisions of the course content and her instructional teaching methods. She consistently achieves evaluation scores of 4 (Agree) or 5 (Strongly Agree) in all areas of her teaching. Fundamentally, Elyse hopes to inspire students to take ownership of their learning, to develop a passion for learning, and to become lifelong learners.

Elyse is a current Adjunct Instructor at Florida State College at Jacksonville. Her research interests include media, gender, and social movements. Her teaching focus includes Women’s Studies, Mass Media, and Marriage and the Family. Elyse is currently seeking a full-time instructor position.

Shawn Gaulden

Shawn is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Florida State University and will complete his Ph.D. in the Spring of 2020. His research includes activist leadership roles and opportunities and barriers to social movement engagement through the use of information and communication technologies. His dissertation, Misinformation and Leadership in Social Movement Echo Chambers (Chair – Deana Rohlinger), focuses on social movement leadership, misinformation, and echo chambers in online social networks. He is experienced in statistical, qualitative, and social network analysis, data management and reporting. He hopes to find a career position collecting, analyzing, and reporting on data relating to social media or public policy. His teaching focus includes Social Movements and Collective Behavior, and Social Problems.

Megan M. Jones

Megan is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Florida State University who will be completing her Ph.D. in the Spring of 2020. Her specialties include data management and team leading. Her dissertation, Sexual Frequency Patterns of Women across Duration and Historical Time (Chair – Koji Ueno), focuses on the gender inequalities within sexual and romantic relationships over historical time, with an in-depth comparison of the unique differences between cohabiting women and women who are married. She hopes to find a career position working in an organizational setting in a metropolitan location. Using her skills, she will be able to assist organizations in collecting and analyzing socially and demographically relevant data in order to assess productivity, optimize human resources, and present information pertinent to the company’s goals and daily operations in multimedia platforms. Her research interests include marriage, sexualities, and data management and her teaching focus is on families.

Alumni Spotlight

Dr. Robert (Bob) Hummer, Class of 1993

Dr. Robert Hummer is the Howard W. Odum Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Fellow of the Carolina Population Center. Dr. Hummer was recently elected to be 2021 President of the Population Association of America (PAA), the largest American professional association focused on demographic and population-based research. He will be the first-ever FSU alum to serve in that role.

Dr. Hummer’s research focuses on the accurate documentation and more complete understanding of health and mortality disparities by race/ethnicity/nativity, socioeconomic status and gender in the United States. His latest book, Population Health in America (with Erin R. Hamilton, published in 2019 by the University of California Press), weaves together demographic data with social theory to provide an in-depth historical and contemporary portrait of US population health and challenges readers to examine current health policy priorities and to ask whether major shifts are needed.

Beginning in 2020, Dr. Hummer will become the Director of the long-running National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), a nationally representative longitudinal study of over 20,000 American adults who are now around 40 years old and have been followed since they were adolescents. Add Health is one of the most well-utilized and cited social science data sets to have ever been collected, given its wealth of social, demographic, biological, health, and contextual information. Dr. Hummer’s goal in serving as Director of Add Health is to produce cutting-edged data for the scientific community that will help shed light on the health of American adults as their lives unfold in the 21 ^st Century.

Dr. Hummer reports that he received an “inspiring … transformative … incredible” educational experience while he was a PhD student in the FSU Department of Sociology. His main mentor and dissertation chairperson was Dr. Ike Eberstein. Dr. Hummer noted that mentorship from Dr. Eberstein was the most important factor in helping him transform his raw talent into a fabulous academic career, while reinforcing the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance at the same time. Dr. Hummer also was guided extensively by the knowledge and wisdom of Dr. Charles Nam; Dr. Nam was hugely influential in broadening the scope of Dr. Hummer’s research work and reinforcing the importance of integrity and ethics in everything that university professors do and stand for. Other FSU faculty members that played very important roles in Dr. Hummer’s development include Drs. Pat Martin, Jill Quadagno, Bob Weller, David Sly, Monica Boyd, Charles Tolbert, Melissa Hardy, Carl Schmertmann (Economics), and Bill Serow (Economics). The FSU Sociology Department was also a wonderfully welcoming department for students throughout Dr. Hummer’s tenure, a culture that continues to exist to the present day.

Dr. Hummer’s advice to current students at FSU is simple: 1) work hard … but also: 2) maintain a healthy work-life balance, while 3) maintaining the highest regard for professional and personal ethics. In closing, Dr. Hummer notes that the FSU Department of Sociology is a truly special context for helping students achieve their academic and professional potential in a very supportive and inclusive space. Dr. Hummer reported that he’s eternally grateful to the FSU faculty and staff members who spent such quality time with him and created a student-centered culture encompassing both academic excellence and professional/personal ethics at the highest levels.

Faculty Spotlight

Dr. Amy Burdette

Dr. Amy Burdette serves as a faculty member to both the Department of Sociology and the public health program at Florida State University. Amy earned her Ph.D. at the University of Texas in Austin in 2007. Following the completion of her graduate program, she became a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Amy’s primary areas of expertise include the sociology of religion and medical sociology. Her research focuses on issues related to religion and health as well as social inequalities in health across the life course. Amy is an exceptional scholar whose work appears in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Social Science and Medicine, Society and Mental Health, the American Journal of Public Health, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Sociology of Religion, and the Journal of Marriage and Family. Her work has been cited over 2,700 times.

Recently, Amy was promoted to full professor and made the director of the new Bachelor’s Degree in Public Health. The BSPH specializes in health-focused social science, public policy, and advanced statistical methods. The interdisciplinary approach of the program provides students with a strong foundation in the five core areas of public health: epidemiology, environmental health sciences, health policy & management, social & behavioral sciences, and biostatistics. Amy is also the incoming editor for the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. JHSB is the flagship journal for medical sociology. As editor, Amy intends to build on the journal’s established tradition of excellence by integrating the journal into the broader discipline, encouraging intersectional approaches, and prioritizing studies of the social causes and social consequences of biological processes.

SWS Update

The FSU Chapter of Sociologists for Women in Society held two meeting this semester. During the first we watched a reading by Roxane Gay on being a “Bad Feminist.”

Our second meeting was honored with a special guest Meg Baldwin, Executive Director of Refuge House , the domestic and sexual violence center serving the Big Bend area. Meg is an expert on several areas of victims’ rights. Prior to leading the Refuge House, Meg was a law school professor here at FSU and chose to instead take up a career in advocacy. A key takeaway from our time together, as stated by Meg, is that “…t here are studies which find that it is the first person who a victim speaks to after the assault that shapes the victim’s perspective. Please be nice to them, tell them you believe them and love them.”

We are currently reading the popular novel The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, in preparation for our first meeting in the spring semester.

AKD Update

Congratulations to the newest members of the FSU Chapter of Alpha Kappa Delta Honors Society , the International Sociology Honors Society!

Inductees from Left: Felipe Obijo, Melissa Marinheiro, Tyler Bruefach, and Alyssa Ramsarran.

Not pictured: Sunshine Jacobs

International Awards

Three of our faculty were recently honored with international awards.

Dr. Anne Barrett was awarded a 2018-2019 Fulbright U.S. Senior Scholar Grant to study older Italians' caregiving networks. As a result of the award, she was able to travel to the University of Trento, where she conducted research during the Fall of 2018.

Dr. Miles Taylor was awarded a 2018-2019 Fulbright U.S. Scholar Grant to study social disparities in health trajectories over the life course in Canada using their National Population Health Survey. As a result of the award, she was able to travel to McGill University in Montreal, where she conducted research and taught workshops during the Fall of 2018 and Fall of 2019.

Dr. Koji Ueno was awarded the 2019-2020 Abe Fellowship. This fellowship is sponsored by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership (CGP) and is designed to encourage international multidisciplinary research on topics of pressing global concern.

Newsworthy News...

Recent Faculty Promotions

Dr. Amy Burdette and Dr. Miles Taylor were both promoted to the rank of Professor, effective Fall 2019.

Dr. Dawn Carr was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor and granted tenure, effective Fall 2019.

Recent Faculty Awards and Honors

(Summer 2019 – Fall 2019)

Dr. Shantel Buggs was awarded the A. Wade Smith Award for Teaching, Mentorship, and Service by the Association of Black Sociologists. The award particularly targets members who have been dedicated and innovative teachers and those who have nurtured future scholars in the field.

Dr. Amy Burdette was named the next Editor of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior (2020-2022). JHSB is the flagship journal for medical sociology.

Dr. Patricia Homan was awarded the 2019 Roberta G. Simmons Outstanding Dissertation in Medical Sociology Award from the American Sociological Association Section on Medical Sociology. Dr. Homan’s award-winning dissertation chapter, “Structural Sexism and Health in the United States: A New Perspective on Health Inequality and the Gender System,” recently published in the June 2019 issue of American Sociological Review.

Dr. Douglas Schrock , Janice McCabe (Dartmouth College), and Christian Vaccaro (Indiana University of Pennsylvania) won the 2019 Maines Award for their work, “Narrative Manhood Acts: Batterer Intervention Program Graduates’ Tragic Relationships.”

Dr. Miranda Waggoner was named a Greenwall Faculty Scholar in Bioethics for 2019-2022 by the Greenwall Foundation. This highly competitive career development award supports innovative empirical research in the area of bioethics. In addition, Dr. Waggoner's book The Zero Trimester won two awards: the 2019 Robert K. Merton Book Award from ASA's Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology, and the 2019 Adele E. Clarke Book Award from ReproNetwork, an interdisciplinary community of reproduction scholars. Finally, Dr. Waggoner won the 2019 Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award from the Sociology Graduate Student Union.

Recent Faculty Grants and Contracts

(Summer 2019 – Fall 2019)

Dr. Shantel Buggs and Dr. Apryl Williams (Susquehanna University/Harvard University), won the Natalie Allon Fund Research Award from Sociologists for Women in Society in August 2019.

Dr. Dawn Carr , along with a team of FSU researchers from across the university, received a $2.9 million grant from the National Institute on Aging to identify new ways to detect and treat age-related cognitive decline and dementia.

Dr. Katrinell Davis and Dr. Michael McFarland were awarded research funding for Summer 2019 through the University’s Committee on Faculty Research Support (COFRS) program.

Dr. Mathew Hauer was awarded research funding from Harvard/RAND to complete a project entailing demographic modeling of Puerto Rico (2019).

Dr. Mathew Hauer and Dr. Patricia Homan were awarded research funding for Summer 2019 through the University’s First Year Assistant Professor Award program.

Dr. Miles Taylor and Dr. Claire Kamp Dush (Ohio State University) were awarded a 2.5 million dollar grant from the National Institute on Aging to move forward with The Work and Family Life Study (WAFLS), an extension of data collections in both 1980 and 2000 that examined trends in marital and family functioning and their impact on health and well-being. The newest data collection, slated to sample 2000 US married adults starting in 2021, will provide valuable insights into how today’s different- and same-gender couples function and how marriage is changing in an aging America.

Dr. Miranda Waggoner was awarded a College of Social Sciences and Public Policy (COSSPP) small research grant for Summer 2019.

Recent Faculty Elections

(Summer 2019 – Fall 2019)

Dr. Shantel Buggs was elected to serve on the Nominations Committee of the ASA Section on Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology and as a Council Member in the ASA Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities.

Dr. Dawn Carr was elected as the Secretary/Treasurer of the Aging and the Lifecourse section of ASA.

Dr. Patricia Homan was elected as a member of the Fall 2017 Nominations Committee for the Medical Sociology section of ASA.

Recent Staff Accomplishments and Updates

Michelle Bravo joined the Department in October 2017 as our new Administrative Associate and Undergraduate Advisor.

Megan Milla just joined the Department in December 2019 as our new Office Administrator.

Kimberly Taylor McClellan (BS, FSU 17) was promoted to the position of Academic Program Specialist in Fall 2017, serving as the curriculum advisor for our graduate students. She also earned her Master's Degree in Academic Advising from Kansas State University in Summer 2019.

Recent Graduate Student Awards, Honors, and Elections

(Summer 2019 – Fall 2019)

Bertan Buyukozturk , a seventh-year doctoral candidate, was awarded an Intramural Grant from the FSU Graduate School.

Benjamin Dowd-Arrow , a sixth-year doctoral candidate, was chosen to guest edit a volume on “Guns and Society” for a special edition of Sociological Inquiry. He is working along with two other co-editors, Dr. Amy Burdette and Dr. Terrence Hill (University of Arizona).

TehQuin Forbes , a fourth-year doctoral candidate, was elected to serve a two-year term on the American Sociological Association's Student Forum Advisory Board (SFAB).

Metin Guven , a second-year doctoral student, was awarded a Turkish Government Scholarship.

Marty Masek , a third-year doctoral candidate, was accepted to the Berkeley Formal Demography Workshop, which focused on migration. The Berkeley Formal Demography Workshop is funded by NICHD R25HD083136 and co-sponsored by the Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging (CEDA) and the Berkeley Population Center.

Emily Šaras , a fifth-year doctoral candidate, was named a 2019-2020 PEO Scholar, an honor which recognizes academic excellence and achievement by women in doctoral-level programs.

R. Kyle Saunders , a second-year doctoral student is the current Managing Editor of Reviews for the Journal of Health & Social Behavior, ASA’s flagship journal for medical sociology. Kyle also is the August 2019 Co-winner of Most Distinguished Graduate Paper of the Year at West Virginia University, with co-author Brittany Kowalski.

Recent Undergraduate Student Awards, Honors, and Elections (Summer 2019 – Fall 2019)

Caroline Mooney (Sociology and Criminology) was inducted into the Garnet & Gold Scholar Society. This Society facilitates student involvement and recognizes undergraduate students who excel within and beyond the classroom in at least three of five areas: international experience, internship, leadership, research and service.

Sabine Nemours and Andrew Taylor were chosen to present their research at the 2019 President's Showcase of Undergraduate Research Excellence.

Thank you!

Thank you to all who donated during our recent campaign and those who donate year round!

Ms. Kristin Allen
Dr. Anne Barrett
Dr. Stephanie Burge and Dr. Gregory Burge
Dr. Elwood Carlson and Mrs. Judy Harlow
Dr. Dawn Carr
Ms. Charlotte Chickering
Ms. Christina and Mr. John Crotty
Ms. Valerie Duzyk
Mr. Bruce and Ms. Charonda Huff
Dr. Gloria Lessan
Dr. Steven McDonald

Dr. Irene Padavic
Dr. James Orcutt and Dr. Annette Schwabe
Ms. Ladanya Ramirez Surmeier
Dr. John Reynolds
Dr. Deana and Mr. Jack Rohlinger
Dr. Douglas Schrock
Ms. Nicole Seiler
Dr. John Taylor
Dr. Kathryn and Dr. Stuart Tillman
Dr. Koji Ueno
Dr. Hena Wadhwa

If you would like to support our student recruitment and training efforts, please donate today!

DONATE TODAY!

Work Hard, Play Harder...

As you can see, we are all working very hard in the Department but we also have fun times together! We kicked off the semester with a Welcome BBQ at The “Rez” .