Graduate Studies Updates
Congratulations!
ChangHwan Kim, Director of Graduate Studies, along with Graduate Studies Committee members Brian Donovan, Mehrangiz Najafizadeh, and Jarron Saint Onge, would like to congratulate our 2023 graduates and award recipients.
Graduates
Damilola Adepeju-Fashina, MA
Religious Diversity and Conflict in Nigeria: Identity Formation and Economic Development
Alanna Daniels, MA
Have You Ever Seen a Commie Drink a Glass of Water? Sociological Explanations for the Anti-Fluoride Movement of the 1950s and 1960s
Laura Muñetón, MA
Whose Work is Essential? Rethinking Class in a Time of Crisis
Qixin Pan, MA
A Psychological Contract or a Golden Chain? Revisiting a Case Study of Kansas Power & Light Workers, 1956-1958
Anna Poudel, MA, with honors
Hybrid Racial Identities of Asian/Black, Asian/Brown, and Asian/White Mixed-Race Individuals: A Comparative Analysis
Matthew Erickson, Ph.D., with honors
Changing Marriage Dynamics in the United States, 1990s to 2010s
Survey Statistician, Census Bureau, Population Division, Local Government Estimates and Processing Branch
Melissa Irwin, Ph.D.
"My grief is my own" - Gen X Views on Mourning 2.0 and Continuing Bonds between the Living and the Dead on Facebook
Andrew Kim, Ph.D.
Three Essays on the Intersection of Race and Gender in the Labor Market
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Pennsylvania, Population Studies Center
Kafayat Mahmoud, Ph.D.
Associations between Family Structures, Formal Social Participation, and End-of-Life Care Quality
Postdoctoral Fellow, Boston University
Alexander Myers, Ph.D.
Laboratories of Bureaucracy: The Development of Labor Market Institutions in Wisconsin, 1900-1940
Lecturer, Washburn University, Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Scott Tuttle, Ph.D.
Degrees of Separation: The Impact of Race and Immigration Status on Professional Career Paths
Management Analyst, Jackson County Circuit Court, and Lecturer, University of Kansas, Department of Sociology
In Memoriam
Gregory Goldman, Ph.D.
Civil Judaism in Crisis: Antisemitism, Israel, and American Jewish Identity Politics
Awards
- May J. Geis Opportunity Scholarship for Student-Faculty Research, with Dr. David N. Smith
- Carroll D. Clark and Morris C. Pratt Graduate Student Scholarship
- Helen Waddle Roofe Research Scholarship
- Carroll D. Clark and Morris C. Pratt Graduate Student Scholarship
- Carroll D. Clark and Morris C. Pratt Graduate Student Scholarship
- Helen Waddle Roofe Research Scholarship
- Carroll D. Clark and Morris C. Pratt Graduate Student Scholarship
- Office of Graduate Studies Carlin GTA Award
- Helen Waddle Roofe Research Scholarship
- Carroll D. Clark and Morris C. Pratt Graduate Student Scholarship
- Office of Graduate Studies Summer Research Scholarship
- Carroll D. Clark Award for Teaching Excellence
- Carroll D. Clark and Morris C. Pratt Graduate Student Scholarship
Kafayat Mahmoud
- Carroll D. Clark and Morris C. Pratt Graduate Student Scholarship
- College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Outstanding MA Thesis Award
- Carroll D. Clark and Morris C. Pratt Graduate Student Scholarship
- Midwest Sociological Society 3-minute Thesis Competition, 2nd place
- Carroll D. Clark and Morris C. Pratt Graduate Student Scholarship
- Helen Waddle Roofe Research Scholarship
- Carroll D. Clark and Morris C. Pratt Graduate Student Scholarship
- Carroll D. Clark Award for Professional Service
- Christopher Gunn Graduate Student Scholarship
- Carroll D. Clark and Morris C. Pratt Graduate Student Scholarship
- Samuel and Fred Sass Summer Dissertation Scholarship
- Carroll D. Clark and Morris C. Pratt Graduate Student Scholarship
Graduate Student Activities
Jennifer Babitzke- Over the last year Jennifer completed two ASDs: the first in Gender and the second, which included her Critical Review Essay, in Families. Jennifer was awarded the Morris C. Pratt & Carrol D. Clark Graduate Student Scholarship; the Helen Waddle Roofe Research Scholarship; and the Louise Julie Doehring McClendon Scholarship in Gerontology for the 2023-2024 academic year. Jennifer was also selected to participate in KU’s Applied Humanities Bootcamp in May 2023 and as an IPSR fellow for the 2023-2024 academic year. Jennifer will serve as a GRA for Dr. Misty Heggeness on a project through United We, a Kansas City program that works to advance women’s economic and civic leadership in their communities. Jennifer will be gathering data on county and municipal requirements for licensing childcare providers in Kansas. She will serve in this role in July and August 2023.
At the start of the academic year, Jennifer will serve as a GRA for Dr. Carrie Wendel-Hummell to develop up to 75 hours of online training materials for the Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) workforce. This project is a community-engaged, applied research project connecting KU’s School of Social Welfare’s CRADO department, KU’s Lifespan Institute, KU Medical Center, and Wichita State University’s Training and Technology team. Jennifer will collaborate with stakeholders and team members to develop training materials, surveys, and engage in user experience of the training modules to continually improve on deliverables.
Lastly, Jennifer will continue her research interests in gender, families, and caregiving by focusing on how fathers are implicitly and explicitly encouraged and prevented from engaging in egalitarian divisions of childcare/caregiving labor within families through macro-level policies, social-cultural discourse, and micro-level family dynamics. A burgeoning interest in this area of research involves how social scientists measure gender equality and equity globally which informs how family support policies are enacted at the state level. Jennifer is in the process of developing her dissertation proposal this summer and into the fall.
Zahra Mansoursharifloo - During the 2022-2023 academic year, Zahra Mansoursharifloo, as second author, published an article, “U.S. Foreign Policy and Indexing Theory: A study of U.S. press coverage of the Taliban and ISIS,” in the International Communication Research Journal. She also presented her master’s thesis, “The Role of Online Social Movements in the Emergence of Offline Social Movements,” at the 2023 Midwest Sociological Society meeting. Continuing her research on social movements in Iran and as her master’s thesis, Zahra is now working on how the White Revolution (1963-1979) sowed the seeds of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
Derek Wilson - Derek Wilson has been hard at work on his dissertation after successfully defending his proposal in the fall of 2022. Derek's dissertation uses Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis to assess the lived experiences of older adults using smart home technologies in the Midwest. Using one-on-one interviews with an average time of 2 hours and 24 minutes, Derek has completed his data collection and is focusing on analysis. Derek hopes to complete his analysis and begin drafting chapters in early Fall. He also plans to enter the job market, looking for a teaching position in the Fall of 2024. In his personal life, Derek got married to Amanda Platt on 7/7/23 and had a wonderful wedding with their friends and family.
Besides his dissertation, Derek has continued to focus on his teaching, research, and publication efforts. In Summer of 2023, Derek was accepted into the Institute for Policy and Social Research as a doctoral fellow. In this program, he will work with doctoral students from various social science disciplines to improve their dissertations and expand their capabilities. Derek is currently finishing a commentary article for submission to the Journal of Applied Gerontology which focuses on the current state of social research around smart home technology in gerotechnological studies. Derek is also continuing to work on an article with his master's advisor, Dr. Twyla Hill of Wichita State University, which examines computer and internet use by age cohorts. Lastly, Derek has completed his fifth and final year as the social chair of the Sociology Graduate Student Association. He hopes to be of assistance to the next social chair but plans to focus his attention on his dissertation and the job market.