IBS News
2012
Rick Rogers and Fred Pampel are featured in an article in Arts & Sciences Magazine about their research on education and mortality. See: http://artsandsciences.colorado.edu/magazine/2012/05/want-to-have-a-longer-life-go-to-college/
Jason Boardman is the 2012 recipient the Early Achievement Award from the Population Association of America. This award, presented for the first time this year, recognizes the career of a promising scholar who is a member of PAA and who received the PhD in the previous 10 years. The presenter of the award said about Jason that "His research has been at the forefront of the integration of demography, genetic epidemiology, and public health. Using creative research designs, he has combined insights form behavioral genetics and population science to provide innovation and leadership in research on gene-environment interactions that influence health related behaviors (e.g., smoking) and health outcomes. Not only has he been an incredibly productive scholar during his first 10 years post-PhD -- -amassing an impressive body of work (nearly 40 publications in leading public health, sociology, demography and behavioral genetics journals, with nearly 1300 citations according to Google Scholar) --but he has also been an outstanding citizen, with a stellar record of service both to his institution and also to our profession." Visit this link for more information on this prestigious award: http://www.populationassociation.org/sidebar/annual-meeting/awards/early-achievement/
There is an article about Jason and his award in the Colorado Arts & Sciences magazine here: http://artsandsciences.colorado.edu/magazine/2012/05/boardman-receives-early-achievement-award/
Christie Sennott was chosen as a recipient of the American Association of University Women Boulder Branch's Brown/Ricketts/ Udick Grant ($1000). This annual grant is awarded to female graduate students at CU. The award ceremony will be held at the CU Alumni Center in September.
Lori Hunter was an invited plenary speaker at last weekend's Western Regional International Conference on Global Health at the University of Washington in Seattle. Lori spoke on her collaborative work in South Africa linking HIV/AIDS mortality and household reliance on natural resources. She reports that getting on a plane for the first time since chemo was scary and full of strange emotions. Still, Lori was happy to have a familiar city at the end of her first journey away from the safety blanket home. http://wrihc.org/
Wee-Kiat Lim has been awarded the Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences (CARTSS) Graduate Fellowship. It is a competitive grant program for graduate students in CU Boulder College of Arts & Sciences social science departments. The fellowship program supports pilot projects designed to increase the chances of securing external funding support as well as field research, data acquisition, travel, and other research costs essential to successful completion of research required for MA or PhD degrees. The grant amount is $1,000.
Congratulations to Laurie Hawkins, who passed her specialty comp exams this week.
Congratulations to these IBS recipients of the end-of-year SOCY departmental awards: Bethany Everett for the outstanding graduate student paper award, Kari Alexander for the GPTI of the year award, Brandi Gilbert for the Dakin award, and Jane Menken for the outstanding faculty mentor award.
IBS was well represented at the 2012 Population Association of America meetings in early May. Participants and attendees included: Rick Rogers, Fred Pampel, Jane Menken, Stefanie Mollborn, Lori Hunter, Jason Boardman, Jill Williams, Jani Little, JD Daw, Laurie Hawkins, Christie Sennott, Raphael Nawrotzki, Rob Kemp, Liz Lawrence, and Bethany Everett.
Tracy Kirkland won first place in the graduate non-fiction category of the Center for the American West's Thompson Award for Western American Writing for her paper "Renewable Energy Development & Symbolic Landscapes of the American West." The paper is based on collaborative work with Kathleen Tierney, Lori Hunter and Barbara Farhar on solar power development in Colorado's San Luis Valley. The project was funded by the pre-cursor to CU's Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute. Read more here: http://centerwest.org/academics/writing-awards/
Sanyu Mojola gave an invited talk on her book in progress, "Consuming Women: Becoming Modern in the Age of AIDS," at Colorado College in the Sociology department last Friday.
Bethany Everett successfully defended her finished dissertation, titled, "Sexual Minority Status and Health: Investigating Health Disparities among Vulnerable Subpopulations." (Committee: Rick Rogers (chair), Jason Boardman, Stef Mollborn, Joanne Belknap, and Dick Jessor.)
Brandi Gilbert was selected to receive the prestigious American Sociological Association Minority Fellowship. This dissertation fellowship provides financial support for her final year of doctoral studies. It also provides funding for Brandi to attend a researchers meeting to present her dissertation study findings upon completing the program.
In addition to participating in the plenary session of the upcoming Amnesty International meeting, Mike Radelet has won one of the 2012 Marinus Smith Staff/Faculty Recognition Awards, which recognizes faculty "who have shown caring and concern for their students ... [and] who have had or are having a significant, positive impact on the lives of one or more CU-Boulder undergraduates." The honor is given by the CU Parents Association, and will be formally presented at a luncheon on April 21.
On March 1, 2012, Amanda Giguere, Philip Sneed and Timothy Orr of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival and Linda Cunningham of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence presented a workshop on Shakespeare and Anti-bullying at the annual Shakespeare Theatre Association's Shakespeare Here and Everywhere in Orlando, Fla. The two departments of the University of Colorado have been working in collaboration to bring a tour of Twelfth Night to K-12 schools in Colorado. The tour features a performance, materials from the Center and anti-bullying workshops led by the actors. All of the materials (study guide, script, workshop outline, and bullying prevention fact sheets) were made available at no cost to all of the theatres in attendance in the hopes that Shakespeare theatres across the world will replicate this program. The audience members (mostly Education Directors and Artistic Directors from Shakespeare theatres across the world) were eager to learn more about this program and several have already requested information to begin a similar program at their theatres. In the 2011-2012 school year, 49 schools participated and 11,594 students (twice what was anticipated) saw the performance. More than 3,500 students participated in the workshops and 85% of those students indicated that they would be more likely to report bullying after seeing the performance.
Sarah Lake and Josh LePree are recipients of the Beverly Sears Award, a $1000 financial award given by the Graduate School.
Elizabeth Lawrence successfully defended her Master's thesis, "School Influences on Parents' Educational Expectations."
Chris Jochem, one of our Population Program graduate students, has been awarded a very prestigious fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). This provides 3 years of support during his PhD program and includes tuition, fees, and a stipend. In his research, Chris is interested in understanding the social and environmental factors that influence geographic patterns of human health and disease. In hia application to the NSF he has proposed to study the health effects of arsenic exposure from contaminated drinking water in rural Bangladesh. Arsenic is a potent toxin and carcinogen that contaminates groundwater in areas of the U.S. and around the world. Bangladesh experiences some of the highest levels of contamination in the world, but arsenic exhibits high spatial variability because of local geology. At the same time exposure to arsenic is uneven due to social factors. Therefore an understanding of human-environment interactions is necessary to understand this exposure and to examine the spatial variations in health outcomes. This work will build from Chris' involvement in the Matlab Health and Socioeconomic Survey 2 which is being led by researchers at IBS and the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B). Websites: http://www.nsfgrfp.org/ and http://www.nsf.gov/grfp
Mike Radelet learned this week that he is among the winners of the 2012 Boulder Faculty Assembly Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarly, and Creative Works, one of the top research awards on the Boulder campus. He was nominated for the Award by Professor Jane Menken. Mike also won a BFA Award (for Service) in 2008.
Congratulations to Nitika Sharma, who was invited to present some of her dissertation findings to The Open Society Foundation Conference in New York City this week. Her presentation was titled, "Menstrual Identity Management among Hindu Women of Nepalese Origin."
Several IBS colleagues are on the program of the Pacific Sociological Association meeting, being held this weekend in San Diego: Joanne Belknap, Josh LePree, Adelle Monteblanco, and Stefanie Mollborn.
Sarah Lake passed her prospectus defense this week. The title of her project is "The Shock of Natural Disasters: Disasters as a Source of Contested Governance in Global Commodity Chains and the Implications for the Environment."
IBS is honored to be hosting three ICPSR summer short courses in 2012. The ICPSR Summer Program is recognized throughout the world as the preeminent forum for basic and advanced training in the methodologies and technologies of social science research. Most sessions are held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI, but a few are hosted by qualifying institutions around the country.
This is a great opportunity for students, staff and faculty at the University of Colorado to participate in this prestigious program without the extra expense of travel and accommodations. If you would like to attend, you need to register through ICPSR at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/sumprog/
The short courses hosted by IBS are:
July 9-13 Applied Multilevel Models Using SAS and SPSS
July 9-13 Item Response Theory
Aug 6-8 Hierarchical Linear Models for Longitudinal Data
John Tribbia successfully defended his dissertation this week, "What's So Local About Global Climate Change?", which uses data drawn from this nation's counties and its 100 largest metropolitan areas to examine the determinants of local variation in energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. John has been offered a post-doc position at the University of Washington and is also interviewing with local companies in the Boulder area. Congratulations, Dr. Tribbia!
Congratulations to Nitika Sharma, who defended her dissertation proposal this week. Nitika's proposal was titled, "Menstruation Taboos and Rituals among Women of Nepalese Origin."
Tim Wadsworth and economics professor, Don Waldman, received a $36,345 grant from the University of Colorado Innovative Grants Program for their new project, "The Influence of Reference Groups on Assessments of Subjective Well-Being." Just 21 applications were funded out of 122 submissions this year, and our department received 2 of them! ABSTRACT: Over the past few decades, a growing body of literature on the correlates of subjective well-being, has emerged in the social sciences. Coming primarily out of the subfields of "happiness economics" and "positive psychology" the research demonstrates that a number of social and psychological factors (e.g. income, marital status, and sexual activity) are influential in shaping happiness and life satisfaction. Exactly how and why these and other characteristics matter has been less explored. Recently, scholars have demonstrated that the effect of income on happiness has a significant relative component. More income makes people happier in part because it encourages a positive assessment of their life when their success in this domain is compared to their reference group. The role of reference group comparisons in life assessments appears to be an essential, yet often overlooked factor in understanding subjective well-being. To our knowledge the role of reference group comparison in the study of subjective well-being has been limited to income. We suggest that the process by which other correlates of happiness and life satisfaction are influential may partially depend on the role of reference group comparison. The proposed work aims to both extend and refine our understanding of the process by which reference groups influence individuals' levels of self-reported happiness and life satisfaction. To do so we explore the creation and influence of reference groups using existing data, apply network analysis to the study of reference groups, and develop and test a pilot survey aimed at determining how individuals create and use reference groups.
Jane Menken traveled to South Africa for three weeks, returning in February. At the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, she served as consultant to a faculty/administrator group which is working to establish interdisciplinary research institutes and wanted to learn more about the CU model. She then attended the Agincourt Scientific Meeting in Bushbuckridge, where Wits has its Wits/MRC Rural Health Transitions Unit. CU was well represented by current postdoc Nicole Angotti, CUPC Assistant Director Brian Houle, former postdocs Sam Clark (UW) and Enid Schatz (Mizzou) at the meetings, all of whom, including Jane, gave research presentations.
Joanne Belknap was the key note speaker at a symposium this week at Duke Law School, and presented a paper entitled, "The Roles of Phones and Computers in Threatening and Abusing Women Victims of Male Intimate Partner Abuse," that will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Duke Journal of Gender & Law and Policy. Her paper is co-authored with Ann T. Chu and Anne P. DePrince.
Wee-Kiat Lim's paper (co-authored with a PhD student, Fenn Faber, based in Germany) has been accepted to a highly refereed conference, European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) Colloquium, to be held in Helsinki, Finland this July. Title: "Hiding in plain sight: Revealing institutions and institutionalization through neoinstitutionalism in organizational risk research."
Good news--Lori Hunter is back home after surgery on Monday, Feb 13th. It was a 13-hour ordeal, with 3 nights in the hospital, and recovery will take several weeks. She's more comfortable with each passing day, thanks to big pain pills, and she'll be back on email as of Monday, Feb 27th. This is the final stage of this 8-month journey and she's looking forward to returning to a more regular life.
Christie Sennott just returned from participating in the Sixth Annual PopPov Conference on Population, Reproductive Health, and Economic Development held in Accra, Ghana from January 18-21. She attended the conference as part of her Hewlett/IIE Dissertation Fellowship. The PopPov conference brings together current and past Hewlett/IIE Fellows, senior researchers, and policy makers - most with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa - to share their research results and work together to effectively inform policy. After the conference, Christie headed to rural South Africa (Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance Site) to train field workers with co-Principal Investigator, Nicole Angotti (Hewlett Post-Doc Fellow at IBS). They are beginning a new data-collection project entitled, "Conversations about HIV/AIDS", which uses local field workers as ethnographers to learn more about everyday conversations about HIV/AIDS occurring in the study site. The trip was funded by the Hewlett Foundation/IIE, CARTSS, and UGGS.
Erin Trapp, former IBS grad student, just accepted a prestigious position at Metro State University in Denver as VP of advancement and external relations. Read about that here: http://www.mscd.edu/~collcom/artman/publish/VPTrappTWV9010612.shtml
2011
Lori Hunter's research on gendered migration patterns and climate change was reported in Arts & Sciences Magazine at: http://artsandsciences.colorado.edu/magazine/2011/12/as-climate-changes-men-and-women-likely-to-migrate-in-different-patterns/
Stefanie Mollborn's research on subjective age was written up in Arts & Sciences Magazine at: http://artsandsciences.colorado.edu/magazine/2011/12/kids-facing-hardship-grow-up-faster-feel-older/
Bethany Everett has accepted a tenure-track assistant professor position in the department of sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago beginning in Fall 2012. Bethany was recruited to UIC to contribute to the department's PhD program concentrations in quantitative methods and gender and sexuality. UIC is a Research I university located in downtown Chicago. Congratulations to Bethany!
Christie Sennott's mixed-method evaluation of Boulder County's Housing First program to address homelessness has informed the recent debates about the program's future. She conducted the research for a SOCY graduate health seminar in 2007, and it is referenced here as a "2008 study" of the program: http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-county-news/ci_19533089
Joanne Belknap has been nominated and approved to appear on the 2012 election slate for the position of President of the American Society of Criminology. Only five women have been presidents of ASC since the society's inception in 1939. Elections will be held this summer.
Joanne Belknap has been active in advocating for former CU Honors student, Molly Bowers, who is currently serving a 16-year prison sentence:
http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-county-news/ci_19172482?IADID=Search-www.dailycamera.com-www.dailycamera.com
http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_19367545?IADID=Search-www.dailycamera.com-www.dailycamera.com
http://www.dailycamera.com/ongoing-coverage/midyette-baby-death/ci_19392370?IADID=Search-www.dailycamera.com-www.dailycamera.com
Together with Beth Whalley, Joanne organized a vigil for Molly Bowers, and there was strong graduate student turnout:
http://www.dailycamera.com/ongoing-coverage/midyette-baby-death/ci_19493260?IADID=Search-www.dailycamera.com-www.dailycamera.com#.TuFt3y-3kD4.mailto
Brandi Gilbert and Liesel Ritchie (Assistant Director of Research at the Natural Hazards Center) recently attended the American Evaluation Association (AEA) Conference in Anaheim, CA, where they presented a paper entitled "Assessing the Needs of Youth in the Aftermath of the Gulf Oil Spill." Brandi also presented on a panel for recipients of the 2011 AEA Presidential Strand Student Travel Award, where she discussed her essay "Addressing Values and Valuing through a Culturally Responsive Evaluation Framework." This year Brandi will be serving as the Chair of AEA's Disaster and Emergency Management Evaluation Topical Interest Group.
Beth Whalley and Joanne Belknap presented their paper entitled "Parricide and Filicide Sentencing: Children Who Kill Their Parents and Parents Who Kill Their Children" at a panel entitled Sentencing Offenders Convicted of Homicide and Sex Offenses at the American Society of Criminology in Washington DC.
On October 17-19, Mike Radelet participated in a symposium funded by the Spanish government on "The Death Penalty in the Caribbean," in Madrid, Spain. On Friday, October 21, he served as Moderator for the "Overview and Recommendations" Session at the Fourth Annual Health Disparities Institute, University of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas, USVI.
A huge congratulations to Joanne Belknap, who has been given the 2011-2012 Student Affairs Faculty Member of the Year Award! This is a great honor.
Kudos to faculty member Tim Wadsworth, whose promotion and tenure were highlighted in CU-Boulder's 2011 "Celebration of Faculty Achievement" brochure.
Rick Rogers presented his research, "Alcohol Consumption and Mortality," to the Rice University Department of Sociology and Kinder Institute for Urban Research, and the University of Houston Center for Drug and Social Policy Research, September 21, 2011. While in Houston, Rick was able to visit with past CU graduates (and former IBS GRAs) Justin Denney and Jarron Saint Onge, who are both doing quite well.
We have good news from Ali Jordan, who recently started a position as Senior Consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton in the Washington DC metro area. While finishing her dissertation, Ali will be working at Booz Allen full time, consulting for the federal government on issues related to emergency management and homeland security. Additionally, the firm will be supporting the completion of her PhD through their Academic Assistance Program. Booz Allen was recently rated one of the top ten commercial and government consulting firms to work for in 2011 by Consulting Magazine and remains on Forbes list of "100 Best Companies to Work For" for the sixth consecutive year in a row. Ali and her husband, Chris, have enjoyed their transition so far, and are getting settled in their new home in Rockville, MD.
Kudos to Brandi Gilbert, who was awarded the Presidential Strand Student Travel Award ($1000) from the American Evaluation Association (AEA) to attend this year's AEA conference to be held in Anaheim, California November 2-5.
The Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence is to lead a five-year, $6.5 million effort to reduce youth violence in Denver's Montbello neighborhood. CSPV Director Del Elliot is the leader on the project, which is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CSPV will work closely with the residents of Montbello and a special community board to reduce levels of youth violence among those aged 10 to 24 during the five-year period beginning Sept. 30. The project aims to reduce rates of serious violent crime and gang-related violence, in addition to self-reported rates of drug and alcohol abuse, gang participation, fighting, and bullying or being bullied in schools.
The Boulder Camera and CU News both have feature articles about the project. Read the CU article here. Read the Boulder Camera article here.
The American Sociological Association's annual meeting was held in Las Vegas earlier this week. Participants from IBS included: Jennifer Bair, Casey Blalock, Jason Boardman, Liam Downey, Bethany Everett, Lori Hunter, Joshua LePree, Sanyu Mojola, Stefanie Mollborn, Christie Sennott, and Kathleen Tierney. At ASA, Lori Hunter chaired two award committees for the Environment and Technology section and presented the awards for the Allan Schnaiberg Distinguished Contribution and the Marvin E. Olson student paper competitions. Also at ASA, Stefanie Mollborn and coauthor Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson received the 2011 Outstanding Publication Award from the American Sociological Association's section on Aging and the Life Course. The award, for which any book or article published in the past 3 years was eligible, was given for their 2009 Social Psychology Quarterly article, "Growing Up Faster, Feeling Older: Hardship in Childhood and Adolescence."
Kudos to Kathleen Tierney, who has been appointed to the National Academy of Sciences Committee to Advise the US Global Change Research Program. The USGCRP consists of 13 federal agencies that sponsor research on global change and its impacts, including climate change and environmental impacts of globalization. Among the tasks of the committee are to provide ongoing advice to the USGCRP on program-wide issues; to provide a forum for interaction between the USGCRP and relevant scientific communities; and to identify issues of importance to the global change research community.
Congratulations to Liam Downey, who has accepted an invitation to be a Consulting Editor for the American Journal of Sociology, for a two-year term from September 1, 2011 to August 31, 2013.
The July 20 Colorado Daily features the APS short course being taught by Jill Williams,
Jani Little, and Jane Menken, with teaching assistants Casey Blalock, Laura Patterson, and Christie Sennott. Read the article here:
CU-Boulder data course helps to improve research in Africa
The 7/11/2011 Boulder Daily Camera features the research of Kathleen Tierney and the Natural Hazards Center, along with the 36th Annual National Hazards Research and Applications Workshop. The article is at: http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_18452508?IADID=Search-www.dailycamera.com-www.dailycamera.com
Wee-Kiat Lim has been accepted to participate in the 2011 Summer Institute for Advanced Study of Disaster and Risk (SIASDR) at Beijing Normal University. It will be from August 1 to 12, 2011, in Beijing. More about the summer workshop: The primary goal is to attract and train young scholars who have both background and strong interest in the field of hazard and risk study, and through which, to improve and strengthen education, research, as well as international communication and cooperation capacity in China in the field of disaster and risk sciences. Prominent international risk scholars will helm the lectures, such as Drs. Roger Kaspersons, Carlo Jaeger, and Otwin Renn. Details are available at http://www.espre.cn/111/newsview.asp?id=6 .
Jason Boardman was in Stanford in early June as a faculty member in the 3rd annual Biodemography Workshop. The workshop is offered by the Stanford Centers for the Demography and Economics of Health & Aging, and Population Research. The workshop covered methods and theory from demography, evolutionary ecology, quantitative genetics, and genetics. Click on this link to see a flyer for the workshop: https://iriss.stanford.edu/sites/all/files/shared/images/WorkshopAnnounce2011_3%20%282%29.pdf
Kelly Knight successfully defended her dissertation, "Assortative Mating and Partner Influence: Problem Behavior Across the Life Course," on June 29. In August she will start a tenure-track assistant professor position at Sam Houston State University in Texas.
On June 7, 2011 Jennifer Bair was in Montreal where she was one of three plenary speakers at an international conference organized by CRIMT (the Interuniversity Consortium for Research on Globalization and Work). The theme of the conference was "Multinationals, Global Value Chains and Social Regulation," and the title of Jenn's plenary address was "Global Value Chains: Concepts, Measures, Consequences."
Richard Jessor was featured in an article about his life in the June 1, 2011 issue of Coloradan Magazine. Read the article here: http://www.coloradanmagazine.org/2011/06/01/summit-of-youth/
Joanne Belknap gave a presentation, "Judges' Experiences with and Opinions of Restorative Justice in First Nation Communities' Intimate Partner Abuse Cases in Canada," at the National Association of Women Judges at their mid-year meeting conference aboard an Alaskan cruise ship the last week in May, in a panel on "Ethics: Hot Topics on the Horizon."
IBS New Building Dedication Symposium, 4/28/2011
Mike Radelet is the recipient of the 2010-2011 William Chambliss Award, "for Outstanding Life Achievement in Law and Society," Society for the Study of Social Problems. The Award will be formally presented at the SSSP meetings in Las Vegas in August.
Joanne Belknap received a student-nominated faculty recognition award from CU-LEAD (Leadership,Excellence, Achievement, Diversity) at the Equity and Excellence Banquet this week.
Mike Radelet's recent alumni award from Purdue University was highlighted in the April 20, 2011 Faculty and Staff Newsletter. See the article at: https://www.cusys.edu/newsletter/2011/04-20/people.html
Jane Menken is featured in the April 20 Faculty and Staff Newsletter. See the article at: https://www.cusys.edu/newsletter/2011/04-20/.
Lori Hunter travelled to the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, where she was invited to present her research on AIDS and livelihoods in rural South Africa. She presented to a diverse, interdisciplinary audience of both faculty and graduate students - and reports that the azaleas are blooming wildly.
Liesel Ritchie was interviewed about the Gulf oil spill for KGNU's "How On Earth" program. See the article here: http://howonearthradio.org/
Liesel Ritchie was interviewed in a top story in the CU News Center on the Gulf oil spill. See the article here: http://www.colorado.edu/news/r/07cc7b7906ee86aae9c04631caa6c3c5.html
Joanne Belknap was a keynote speaker at the 75th Anniversary celebration of the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University April 15, 2011. Her talk was "Herstory in the Making: Feminist Contributions to Criminology and Criminal Justice."
On April 8, Jennifer Bair was invited to give a talk at Colorado State University's Center for Fair and Alternative Trade (CFAT). A description of her talk, "From Varieties of Capitalism to Varieties of Activism: The Anti-Sweatshop Movement in Comparative Perspective," can be found here: http://www.cfat.colostate.edu/%E2%80%9Cfrom-varieties-of-capitalism-to-varieties-of-activism-the-anti-sweatshop-movement-in-comparative-perspective%E2%80%9D/. Jenn was also invited to join CFAT's team of research associates.
Tim Wadsworth's research on immigration and crime rates was one of just a handful of research highlights from the social sciences featured in the most recent issue of Colorado Magazine.
In early April, Jennifer Bair was in Washington D.C. as an invited panelist for a multi-stakeholder symposium organized by the Fair Labor Association. The topic of the symposium was "Enhancing Social Protection in the Apparel and Footwear Industry in Central America" and included participants from the Inter-American Development Bank and the U.S. Department of Labor: http://globalaction4fairlabor.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/enhancing-social-protection-in-the-apparel-footwear-industry-in-central-america/.
The Population Program, Health & Society Program, & CUPC had an outstanding showing at this year's 2011 Population Association Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. Included on the program were: Jason Boardman, Lori Hunter, Jane Menken, Sanyu Mojola, Stefanie Mollborn, Fred Pampel, Rick Rogers, Mike Roettger, Jill Williams, Kari Alexander, Bethany Everett, Rob Kemp, and Christie Sennott.
Stefanie Mollborn received funding from the National Science Foundation's Sociology Program for a two-year grant titled "School Readiness among Children of Teen Parents." Principal Investigator: Stefanie Mollborn, Co-Investigator: Paula Fomby, CU-Denver.
Congratulations to Erica Kuligowski! On Friday, March 11th, Erica successfully defended her dissertation entitled "Terror Defeated:Occupant Sensemaking, Decision-making and Protective Action in the 2001 World Trade Center Disaster"(Kathleen Tierney, Chair). Abstract (shortened): This dissertation is a qualitative study of occupant behavior in response to the 2001 World Trade Center (WTC) disaster. Through analyses of transcripts from 245 face-to-face interviews with survivors from both WTC towers, collected by Project HEED, I investigate the pre-evacuation period in what became the largest full-scale building evacuation in history. The objectives of this study are to understand the types of actions performed before occupants began evacuation via stairs and elevators and why those actions were taken to improve techniques used and to address inadequacies in evacuation modeling tools. Drawing on social psychological theories of human action in normal times, collective behavior and sensemaking during normative crises, and emergency decision-making and protective action in response to hazards and disasters, and research on decision-making under uncertainty, I examine how interviewees made sense of environmental cues, interpreted the situation and danger to themselves and others, and decided upon pre-evacuation actions, either to seek confirmation or achieve protection. Subsequently, I developed a predictive conceptual model of pre-evacuation actions by identifying the linkages between occupant-and situationally-based factors and the actions performed. I argue that occupant pre-evacuation behavior in the WTC disaster can be conceptually modeled by understanding both the disaster environment and the meanings individuals assigned to that environment.
Wee-Kiat Lim presented his research last week at the Pacific Sociological Association. He was also just notified that his sole-authored paper has been accepted for the Academy of Management (AOM) Meeting 2011 - the ASA-equivalent for management and organizational researchers. AOM has double-blind review and a stringent acceptance rate for presentations. Abstract: Few studies have turned their gaze on the everyday technological convenience afforded by IT support work. Instead, research has been preoccupied with senior executives, discrete implementation projects, and high-level strategic IT management. Through a case study of a system administrator team in a campus IT agency, this paper therefore makes visible the neglected enterprise of IT support work. Just as important, it surfaces a different conception of knowledge as a perishable product with limited shelf life, and elaborates its attendant knowledge management strategies. As this team operates as an internal vendor to other campus departments, this study further provides insights on outsourcing relationships, specifically from the vendor perspective.
Christie Sennott was awarded an UGGS travel grant ($300) to help with travel costs for attending the 1st International HIV Social Science and Humanities Conference in Durban, South Africa from 11-13 June 2011.
Liesel Ritchie was interviewed in a Fox31 piece on the earthquake and tsunami in Japan March 13. See the broadcast here: http://www.kdvr.com/news/kdvr-cu-program-works-to-make-us-cities-tsunami-ready-20110313,0,7375600.story
John Wiener presented a paper at the Ninth Climate Prediction Applications Science Workshop, Des Moines, Iowa, March 2, entitled "Climate Information Applications for Resilience: Opening Wedge or Just Plain Sledge?" (presentation posted to www.colorado.edu/ibs/es/wiener/). He also presented a poster for a group of co-authors at that meeting, entitled "Puzzling the Pieces: Achieving Effective Conservation in and of Agricultural Productivity: Climate Responsiveness is Necessary But Not Sufficient". The group has a chapter in a forthcoming book which may influence US Department of Agriculture policy on conservation.
In March, Jennifer Bair was invited back to her undergraduate alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, to give a talk in the sociology department's spring colloquium series. Her talk, which was entitled, "Commodity Chains in Context: The Limits of Development through Upgrading" and reported fieldwork she conducted in Mexico and Nicaragua, examined the developmental implications for local firms and workers of participating in global production networks, especially in the context of preferential trade regimes.
Andrei Rogers, Jani Little, and James Raymer's book, The Indirect Estimation of Migration: Methods for Dealing with Irregular, Inadequate, and Missing Data, has recieved a very nice review in the Journal of Population Research. The review concludes, "Overall, and as would be expected from these authors, this is an impressive volume. It brings together in a single source a wealth of methods and examples from previously published research as well as new work. The Indirect Estimation of Migration should provide an excellent reference for any researcher or practitioner involved in migration and projections research who has to deal with imperfect migration data."
The review in its entirety can be accessed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/bhu77v2r25385006/
On Saturday, February 26, Mike Radelet presented the keynote address at the meetings of the Michigan chapters of Amnesty International, in Detroit.
Jason Boardman was one of eight invited speakers to the NICHD Vision Workshop on Behavior entitled "Growing Up Healthy: Developmental Theory to Models to Interventions." The vision workshops were developed by Alan Guttmacher (the new director of NICHD) to initiate discussions about the next decade of research at NIH. Over 60 researchers participated in the 2 day workshop that was structured around the 8 initial talks. Jason's talk was in Plenary Theme 2: Impact of environmental factors on behavioral development.
Liesel Ritchie gave two presentations entitled "Rapid Response Research in Haiti: An Investigation of Post-Earthquake Housing Issues", both based on her NSF-funded research in Haiti. On February 7, she presented to students in fourth year studio at the College of Architecture and Planning at CU Boulder. These students are working on entries for the “Haiti Ideas Challenge”, a national design competition sponsored by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. On February 24, she presented at the Center for Environmental Journalism to the 2010-2011 Ted Scripps Fellows.
On February 17th, Chuck Howe served on a panel of three Australian and three U.S. water experts in presenting a comparative assessment of Australian and western U.S. water policies for selected members of Congress and their Staff members. The panel was organized by the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress and focused on mechanisms for transferring existing water supplies among changing priority uses. Australia, partly as a result of their climate extremes, has long been a source of innovations in water management. Some of their lessons are highly applicable to evolving water scarcities in the western U.S..Chuck presented lessons learned from Colorado's experience with water markets while identifying Australian institutional innovations that could be applied to the western U.S.
Congratulations to Mike Radelet, who is a featured speaker at a conference this weekend of some 800 death penalty attorneys, sponsored by the California Public Defenders Association, in Monterey, California. His presentation is entitled "Using Empirical Data on Class and Race in Death Penalty Cases."
John Wiener presented some current work to the E&S group on the 14th of February, and gave a 45 minute invited talk at the Ditch and Reservoir Company Alliance (DARCA) Annual Meeting, Loveland, CO, on the 17th of February, on a less social science and more agricultural policy and management basis. The talk was entitled "Colorado Agriculture: the BIG picture, the long view, and the alternative (or at least one…)".
On Friday, February 11, Mike Radelet presented a public lecture at Vermont Law School in South Royalton, Vermont. The title of his address was "Overriding Jury Sentence Recommendations in Florida Capital Cases: An Update and Possible Half-Requiem."
Liesel Ritchie had an article featured in the Public Entity Risk Institute website February, 2011. Article is here: https://www.riskinstitute.org/peri/component/option,com_deeppockets/task,catContShow/cat,86/id,1086/Itemid,84/
Liesel Ritchie is interviewed in an on-line article about the Hazards Center in PlanItNow, January 18, 2011. Article is here: http://www.planitnow.org/january2011_article1/
Lori Hunter was an invited panelist at the National Academies of Science in DC, for a meeting on environmental migration convened by the NAS Committee on Climate, Energy, and National Security. Her talk was entitled "Migration, Environmental Change, and Natural Capital: Linkages through Livelihoods." Although the "intelligence community" comprised much of the audience, Lori reports that the meeting was not at all scary.
Congratulations to Kelly Knight, who has landed a terrific job! She will be a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Sam Houston's School of Criminal Justice. Sam Houston has strong programs that match her research interests.
Tim Wadsworth was quoted in an article reporting on a Gallup poll that found Boulder to be the happiest and healthiest city in the U.S. See: http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_14404187?source=most_viewed
Liesel Ritchie gave a presentation entitled “Emerging Research Needs and Opportunities in Post-Earthquake Haiti: Highlights from the Social Sciences and Information Technology” at the NSF CMMI (Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation) Conference on Wednesday, January 5, 2011. Her presentation was part of the “Research Needs Emerging from the 2010 Haiti and Chile Earthquakes” session.
