Welcome to the fall semester 2008.  As we begin the new academic year we have added some new faces to our faculty roster.  We were very fortunate to recruit three outstanding young faculty members.  Michael Borer, whose specialties include urban sociology and the sociology of religion, received his Ph.D. at Boston University and was teaching at Furman University. Shannon Monnat comes via the University of SUNY at Albany where she completed her Ph.D.; she has a variety of interests, among which are demography, methods and statistics.  Andrew Spivak is an expert in the sociological areas of crime and delinquency and hails from Oklahoma University, where he received his Ph.D.

For the time being we still have two of our faculty members fulfilling administrative duties, Ron Smith as Vice President for Research and Graduate Dean and Kate Hausbeck as Senior Associate Graduate Dean.  We lost Matt Wray, who decided to remain on the East Coast. Dmitri Shalin will be on sabbatical for the year.  We welcome back from a very productive sabbatical year Robert Futrell and Simon Gottschalk.

This past year was an eventful one for our department.  Bo Bernhard was promoted to associate professor and received tenure. He received four new grants supporting his gambling research and was awarded two distinguished awards, one for research and the other for teaching. Batson, Brents and Futrell received, among their many achievements,   a President’s Research Award to study metropolitan Las Vegas.  Borer published a book, Faithful to Fenway, with the NYU Press. The rest of the faculty members were equally productive by publishing numerous articles and presenting papers at a variety of academic conferences.

A number of students completed their professional papers for the M.A. and our ABDs made substantial progress toward completing their doctoral research.  The new graduate coordinator, Simon Gottschalk, will now oversee them.

If you have any questions please e-mail us or phone us.  If you are in the vicinities please come to visit us; we will be delighted to see you.