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Summer 2024 Highlights
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- Congrats, Grads!
- Undergrad Scholarship Winners
- Monica Grant delivered the Sewell Lecture
- Devah Pager Distinguished Alumni Award Winner
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- Awards and Grants
- PAA Awards
- Department Teaching Award Winners
- Day of the Badger Results
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Decency. Excellence. Diversity.
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Alex Mikulas, Shiro Furuya, Grace Venechuk, and Anita Li at our PhD graduation celebration.
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Congrats, Grads!
Another academic year has come and gone, and another group of graduates has earned their degrees and are venturing on to the next chapters of their lives. It's safe to say that all of our graduates this year had academic experiences that were significantly marked by Covid-19.
For undergraduates who completed their degrees in four years, this year's graduates experienced the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in the spring of their senior year of high school, just as they were planning their transition to college. These sociology majors had to be adaptable and resilient in order to persevere and earn their degrees.
Most of our PhD grads were already in our program when Covid-19 turned the world upside down. The path to a PhD in Sociology involves conducting original research, but it became much more difficult to travel to field sites or conduct interviews. Many of our PhD students had to rethink the tried-and-true strategies for conducting rigorous, high-quality research and pushing the boundaries of Sociology as a field. Our PhD graduates rose to the challenge, and they have excellent jobs or other plans lined up for their next steps.
We are so proud of all of our graduates, along with the instructors, mentors, and staff who helped them on their academic journey. You'll find stories below about some of the students, alumni, and faculty who help our department excel. On, Wisconsin!
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Sarah Gesner and Sarah "Frankie" Frank pose outside the Sewell Social Science carillon.
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Katrina Fullerton Rico, Wendy Li, Youbin Kang, Ruo-Fan "Mikki" Liu, and Sarah "Frankie" Frank.
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Congratulations bouquets were abundant at our PhD graduation celebration.
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Lucas Wiscons thanks his advisor, Doug Maynard.
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Undergraduate Scholarship Winners
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Every Spring, we award scholarships to several outstanding Sociology majors.
The Alex and Demiana Hanna Pride Scholarship supports Sociology majors who are actively committed to and engaged in activities that advocate for and support the LGBTQ+ community. This year's recipient is Forrest Jensen, a transgender man and rising junior studying Sociology and pursuing a certificate in LGBT Studies. Some of his LGBTQ+ advocacy and leadership includes volunteering with LGBT Books to Prisoners, facilitating and participating in peer workshops at the Gender and Sexuality Campus Center and, beginning this July, being a member of the ASM shared governance LGBTQ+ committee.
The Andrea Michelle Sperka Award was created in memory of a dedicated Sociology student who served as a volunteer both in Madison and a township in South Africa, all while carrying a demanding academic schedule. This year's recipient is Nur Hidaya Binti Rostam. As a student interested in the impact of social, cultural, and economic capitals on educational success, Nur dedicated her studies to uncovering these intricate relationships. This passion led her to create MyScholarsLab, a nonprofit helping Malaysian high school students navigate tertiary education.
The Alfred Reschke Social Science Scholarship supports outstanding Sociology majors who are about to enter their senior year. This year's recipients are Raphael Jacobson and Rowan Seffans.
Raphael "Raphy" Jacobson is a rising senior majoring in Sociology with certificates in History and Jewish Studies. His interests in Sociology include a focus on government and history, and after graduation he hopes to pursue a career in public service in local government.
Rowan Seffens is a fourth year student with majors in Sociology and German and certificates in LGBTQ+ Studies and European Studies. He will study abroad on the Academic Year in Freiburg program for his next and final year at UW-Madison. Rowan plans to earn a Master’s in Social Work and then to pursue a career working with LGBTQ+ communities.
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Monica Grant delivered the Sewell Lecture
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On Friday, February 23, Monica Grant delivered the annual Sewell Memorial lecture, titled “Fertility Responses to Climate Change in Malawi.” Over seventy members of the Sociology community attended the lecture, including faculty, staff, emeriti, students, and family members. A reception followed the talk.
The annual Sewell Memorial Lecture honors William H. Sewell, for whom the Sewell Social Science Building is named. Bill Sewell, as he was known by his friends, served as chair of Rural Sociology (now Community & Environmental Sociology) from 1949-53 and of Sociology from 1958-62. Later, he served as the University Chancellor from October 1967 to June 1968, during the height of campus unrest over the war in Vietnam.
Sewell, who died in 2001 at the age of 91, played a central role in putting Wisconsin on the map in quantitative social sciences. Perhaps his signature achievement was to found and sustain the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study — the long-term and ongoing study of the Wisconsin high school class of 1957. He also made a point to instill in the department the values of “decency, excellence, and diversity,” which we strive to uphold to this day.
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Devah Pager Distinguished Alumni Award Winner
He received his PhD in Sociology from our department in 1995. From Wisconsin, he moved to the University of Minnesota, where he is now a Regents Professor and Martindale Chair in Sociology, Law, and Public Affairs.
Chris studies crime, law, and inequality, firm in the belief that sound research can help build a more just and peaceful world. His current projects examine voting rights for people with criminal records, prison reentry, fairness in sentencing, Scandinavian justice, gun violence, and monetary sanctions.
He recently received the 2023 American Sociological Association Public Understanding of Sociology award. Chris is a fellow of the American Society of Criminology and a current candidate for President of the American Sociological Association.
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Awards and Grants
Katherine Jensen's book, The Color of Asylum, is a finalist for the C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems. The book also received Honorable Mentions for both the 2024 Roberto Reis First Book Award from the Brazilian Studies Association and the Edwin H. Sutherland Book Award from the Law and Society Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. It was also recommended by the College of Letters & Science as one of nine best summer reads.
Skye Xollo received a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for their work in Sociology on transnational human rights organizing.
Sadie Dempsey received a Graduate Student Service Scholarship from the UW-Madison Graduate School.
For more updates, follow us on social media!
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PAA Awards
The 2024 annual meeting for the Population Association of America (PAA) took place in Columbus, Ohio. Demographers from around the world met to present and discuss their latest research. Three of our sociologists received awards:
Julia Thomas received a poster award for her project, “Legacy of the ‘Forgotten Dead’: Lynching of Hispanics and Risk of Being Sentenced to Death.”
Emma Romell received a poster award for her project, “Family structure, infant health, and social context in France, the United Kingdom and the United States.”
Jenna Nobles received the Clifford C. Clogg Award for Mid-Career Achievement.
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Department Teaching Award Winners
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Every year, the Sociology Department’s Evaluation and Improvement of Instruction Committee grants teaching and mentoring awards to the most impactful instructors and mentors. This year’s winners are:
Excellence in Teaching as a Faculty Member – Chloe Hart
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Day of the Badger Results
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Thank you to everyone who participated in Day of the Badger! An anonymous benefactor agreed to double every donation that came from a new donor--that is, someone who had never given to UW Sociology before. By the end of the Day of the Badger, we had 28 donors, including 11 new donors, who raised a grand total of $4,408 for the Andrea Michelle Sperka Fund. Students with passions and interests similar to Andrea's will benefit from this generosity for years to come.
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Professor and Chair Eric Grodsky sports a Wisconsin Badgers t-shirt while viewing the solar eclipse with alum Bill Carbonaro (PhD 2000) and Bill's sons, Christopher and James.
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This newsletter was created by Erin Skarivoda and Tina Hunter.
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