Department of Sociology & Crime, Law and Justice

A Message from the Department Head

January 3, 2009

Dear Alumnus:

We have had another banner year. Student enrollments are high. Our alumni group is growing and becoming more diverse. Our faculty has continued to grow with John Iceland joining us this past year. We are looking forward to welcoming new faculty member Jenny Trintapoli this fall.

Our faculty’s achievements are impressive. To name just to name a few:

Professor Alan Sica was named editor of Contemporary Sociology, a prominent journal published by the American Sociological Association.

Jeremy Staff received a prestigious Mentored Research Scientist Development Award from the National Institute of Child and Health and Human Development. His study focuses on teenagers who work in paid jobs during their high school years. There is evidence that spending long hours on the job takes time and effort away from activities that foster academic success. Other evidence suggests that youth who limit their hours tend to do better than their peers who work many hours or who don’t work at all. Staff’s research will determine the ways in which involvement in work influences academic achievement and educational goals.

Emily Greenman received a grant from the Spencer Foundation/National Academy of Education to do a study to find out why immigrant youths’ educational outcome decline over time. It is thought that immigrant youth lose their initially positive attitudes toward school due to American students who place less value on education. She will compare immigrant students in schools where there are more and less negative attitudes by other students in the same school.

Progress on establishing a unified alumni group in Sociology & Crime, Law and Justice has started. Once fully underway, this group will initiate and carry out programs especially designed to support the department’s programs and students. The hope is that involvement will be stimulated to facilitate networking and communication among alumni, students and faculty. We anticipate that student enrichment opportunities, such as internships and study abroad, will become more ubiquitous and that alumni will play an active role in mentoring students.

On that note, here are some comments from recent study abroad students:

I went to Rome to study Italian culture and came back a very different person. When I went I was uncertain about many things. My experience taught me that I could do about anything I set my mind to do. I also realized how important it is to know the history of what we experience and study. Jess Welsh, Junior

Last fall I studied in Buenos Aires and took a course in Human Rights that focused on the military dictatorship and the “dirty war” that took place in the 1970s. Opponents were labeled Communists and were put in prisons and tortured. Many never returned. We talked to people who survived these events. I gained a new understanding of the helplessness of the ordinary citizen in dictatorships and why it is so difficult to change the system. Crystal Abramczyk , Senior

I’ve done research in Belize, Sri Lanka, and Ghana. A central focus of my work is the link between men’s gender attitudes and HIV/AIDS. I obtained grant funds to study the paths by which a numbers of Ghanaian men held gender equitable attitudes in a society where the prevailing attitudes of men is conservative with respect to gender attitudes. Unique schools, workplace and church environments, as well as intimate relationships with empowered women lead to equitable attitudes in later life. Ashley Frost, Graduate Student.

We will soon be posting information for Come Back to Campus (CBTC) 2009 on our website (www.sociology.psu.edu). This event enables alumni to meet other alums, interface with students on-on-one to provide career coaching, interact with faculty and attend the awards luncheon for our students. Last year we had a very successful panel where alumni presented their own career trajectories and answered student questions. This year’s CBTC day is April 6. You will be receiving an invitation in the near future.

Last year we sent you a questionnaire from which we gathered information about your career trajectories that we could use to provide valuable advice to our students. To date, over 150 people have returned completed questionnaires. This is a good response. We appreciate and thank you for the effort you put in to filling it out. We have already started to use the information you provided. We’ll be doing a lot more analysis of the data this year and the years to come.

This year we are participating in a year-long celebration in honor of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the College of Liberal Arts. A number of events and activities will mark the year and we’d love to have you join in. A list of events can be found at http://www.la.psu.edu/CLA-Alumni/centennial/events.shtml.

If you have news or comments on our program, I would very much like to hear from you.

Cordially,

John D. McCarthy
Professor and Head
Department of Sociology

Email: sociology@la.psu.edu