Sociology | CAS in the Media | Washington State University

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Hispanic population helps redefine New Orleans region

December 2, 2013

New Orleans—which sometimes bills itself as the Gateway to the Americas—has deep ties to Latin America that stretch back to the turn of the 20th century. But New Orleans never became a teeming hub of Hispanic immigration like its fellow port cities of Houston, Miami and Los Angeles. And for most of the 20th century, the metropolitan region’s Hispanic population grew slowly. A small but diverse population of Cubans, Salvadorans, Hondurans and Brazilians eventually took root.

Elizabeth Fussell, associate professor of sociology, has done extensive research on the city’s post-Katrina influx of Hispanic people.

Read more in the New Orleans Advocate.

NSF grant to study corporate influence on government

November 12, 2013

Sociologist and new member of CAS faculty Mikhail Balaev has received a two-year National Science Foundation award to study political and corporate ties in the American government. The grant will enable him to collect and analyze data related to the professional affiliations of presidential appointees since 1978 in order to create a network model of the ties between corporations and executive government.

Balaev is a macro-sociologist with broad academic interests in economic and political sociology. Growing up in Soviet Russia, he witnessed the massive socio-economic change brought by the collapse of the Soviet Union, which inspired his interest in sociology.

Advancing social justice: Renowned sociologist, criminologist to speak, accept Wilson Award Oct. 17

October 13, 2013

Sociologist and criminologist Robert J. Sampson, one of the nation’s top scholars in studies of urban inequality, social structures and civic engagement, will present “Neighborhood Inequality and the New Social Transformation of the American City” on Thursday, Oct. 17, at 7 p.m. in the CUB Junior Ballroom. WSU will honor him with the William Julius Wilson Award for the Advancement of Social Justice as capstone to the 2013 William Julius Wilson Symposium.

“Rob Sampson is one of this country’s most imaginative, persistent, and tough-minded researchers into social life and the human condition. He is a most worthy recipient of the award,” said James Short, WSU emeritus professor of sociology.

Sociologist part of new NSF-funded project to evaluate partner accommodation policies

October 3, 2013

WSU sociologist Julie Kmec is part of a research team recently awarded a three-year, $449,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study the effects of partner accommodation policies (PAPs), including their implications for increasing the number of female faculty teaching science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

Working with faculty in the WSU School of Economics, she will help provide theoretical and empirical evaluations of PAPs, as well as a description of their presence and scope in major U.S. universities.

March changed lives of former WSU employees

August 30, 2013

We were there …

Elaine Zakarison, Pullman resident and daughter of Fred Yoder, founder of the sociology department, and LeRoy Ashby, retired history professor, are among members of the WSU community who have special memories of attending the March on Washington (D.C.) in 1963, when Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.

Read the article and find related stories at WSUNews

Text corrected 9:35am 8/30/2013