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Spring 2024 Highlights
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- Remembering Tom Heberlein and Bert Adams
- Grad student's internship in India
- Day of the Badger is April 16
- Upcoming lectures about W. E. B. Du Bois by Michael Burawoy
- Sarah "Frankie" Frank hired as lecturer
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- Dom Ricks featured in Wisconsin State Journal article
- Conferences help grad students thrive
- Publication: Genetic Influences on Depression and Selection into Adverse Life Experiences
- Publication: Did Immigrant Arrest Rates Change During the Trump Administration?
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Decency. Excellence. Diversity.
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Remembering Tom Heberlein and Bert Adams
We are saddened to share the news that Professor Emeritus Thomas (Tom) Heberlein passed away on Thursday, January 4, and Professor Emeritus Bert Adams passed away on Saturday, January 6. They will both be greatly missed.
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Tom Heberlein
Tom was a respected scholar of the human dimension of environmental change, and the spouse of Professor Emerita Elizabeth (Betty) Thomson. Tom was on the UW-Madison faculty for over 30 years. He chaired the Department of Rural Sociology, later renamed Community and Environmental Sociology, from 1991-1995, and directed the Center for Resource Policy Studies and Programs from 1986-1991.
Tom worked on many questions, including estimation of carrying capacity and the valuation of environmental resources. The role of human behavior in the natural landscape was central in his work. In his 2012 book, Navigating Environmental Attitudes, Tom wrote: “I have spent most of my career as a social psychologist trying to figure out how attitudes work, how they can be changed, and what they have to do with behavior as we struggle to deal with nature."
A memorial for Tom was held on Saturday, February 17 at First Congregational Church.
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Bert Adams
Bert joined the Sociology faculty in 1965. For nearly 50 years he taught courses on Social Theory and large lecture classes on Marriage and the Family, reaching some 20,000 UW students. From 1970-72 Bert served as a senior lecturer and researcher at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. His book, An American Family in Amin’s Uganda, chronicles the experiences he and his family had.
Bert published 20 academic books, including textbooks on family and social theory, and many peer-reviewed journal articles. He received numerous research grants and professional awards and was a Fellow and President of the National Council on Family Relations. Bert conducted sociological research in Kenya, Uganda, India, Canada, and Great Britain, and gave academic lectures in Sweden, Estonia, Bangladesh, and Korea. He was also a remarkably gifted opera singer and, at the end of the term, would often dazzle his students with a song.
A service celebrating Bert’s life was held at Oakwood Village, University Woods on February 24.
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Grad student's internship in India
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During the summer after her first year as a grad student, Anupama "Anu" Kumar traveled to Thiruvanathapuram, India to intern with Kudumbashree NRO as a part of her fellowship from the Institute for Regional and International Studies National Resource Center (IRIS NRC).
Kudumbashree is an organization in Anu's home state, Kerala, which was set up by the government to help eradicate poverty.
At the end of her internship, Anupama learned that she was interested in how states in the Global South think about women and how state institutions shape the economic opportunities available to women. She hopes to continue to study the links between states, community organizations, and families in her graduate school career.
Anupama is grateful to have had these realizations early on in her grad school journey, and she encourages other grad students to apply for the Scott Kloeck-Jenson fellowship through IRIS in their first or second year. Read more on our website.
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Day of the Badger is April 16
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Mark your calendars: Day of the Badger is April 16-17 this year. This spirited 1848-minute "day" of giving unites alumni, friends, and students to strengthen the university and ensure future generations enjoy the same level of educational excellence.
How to prepare:
❤️ Set aside your favorite Badger-red attire for April 16 and 17.
📱 Follow UW Soc on your favorite social media platforms.
🎁 Prepare to promote and support our Sperka Scholarship so current & future Sociology students can continue to have excellent experiences at UW-Madison.
Our Andrea Michelle Sperka Scholarship honors a former Sociology major who tragically lost her life in an automobile accident in Botswana after completing her studies abroad during her senior year. In Andrea’s spirit of helping others, her parents, Carol and Michael Sperka, created this fitting tribute. The Andrea Michelle Sperka Scholarship is awarded each spring to a Sociology major who exemplifies some of Andrea’s outstanding qualities.
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Upcoming lectures about W. E. B. Du Bois by Michael Burawoy
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The Havens Wright Center for Social Justice is hosting Michael Burawoy, a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, to give a series of lectures about the life of W. E. B. Du Bois, one of the great US public intellectuals of the 20th century. Each of these lectures will take place in the Sewell Social Science Building in room 8417.
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Sarah "Frankie" Frank hired as lecturer
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We are very pleased to announce that Sarah “Frankie” Frank has joined us as a permanent lecturer. Frankie is a PhD graduate of our program, where her extensive teaching experience and other work has earned her a multitude of awards. Frankie’s dissertation focused on menstruation, gender, and law. She will continue running Gender and Law labs with the Center for Law, Society & Justice.
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Dom Ricks featured in Wisconsin State Journal article
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Dom earned his BA in Sociology in 2014, and he returned to UW-Madison for his MS in Education Leadership & Policy Analysis.
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Conferences help grad students thrive
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Conferences are an essential part of graduate training and professional development. For this reason, with the help of generous gifts from donors, the Department of Sociology has allocated more funding in recent years to support graduate conference travel. Both the conferences and the work presented at them represent a diverse and impressive array of sociological scholarship.
In 2022, for example, we were able to support Elia Boschetti to attend the American Sociological Association’s annual conference in Los Angeles where he presented two papers, “The speed of life and the life course” and “Exploring the patterns of college major choice by gender and sexual orientation.”
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More recently, Emily Burke attended the 2023 annual meeting for the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in Salt Lake City where she presented her ongoing project titled “To Kneel or to March: Lay Catholic Engagement with Social Issues and Social Action.” And Sarah Jensen traveled to National Harbor (Maryland) to attend the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences meeting where she presented work that is part of
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a multi-year, inter-disciplinary collaborative project examining the how incarceration affects family functioning. Her paper was titled “Associations between the Number of Parental Incarcerations and Girls’ and Boys’ Disruptive Conduct.”
Altogether, in the past two years the department has been able to fund 60 students to present their research at regional, national, and international conferences. We look forward not only to continuing this support, but to increasing support in the coming years. Conference participation plays a vital role in graduate training, and we want to give these opportunities to all of our grad students.
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Publication: Genetic Influences on Depression and Selection into Adverse Life Experiences
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Tamkinat Rauf and Jeremy Freese published “Genetic Influences on Depression and Selection into Adverse Life Experiences” in Social Science & Medicine. You may read the article here.
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Publication: Did Immigrant Arrest Rates Change During the Trump Administration?
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Michael Light, Laura Boisten, and Jungmyung Kim published "Did Immigrant Arrest Rates Change During the Trump Administration? Evidence From California and Texas" in Crime & Delinquency. You may read the article here.
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This newsletter was created by Erin Skarivoda, Tina Hunter, and Eric Grodsky.
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