Sociology department winter highlights

April 4, 2014

Breckenridge

Brown

Soares

Taplin

Yamane

Saylor Breckenridge is completing his two-year rotation as the director of the National Science Foundation’s sociology program, where he manages the program’s approximately $10 million annual budget. He recently presented on “big data” research at the “The Big (Data) Bang: Prospects and Challenges for the Future” session as part of The Dupont Summit, in Washington D.C.

In March, Hana Brown and her co-researcher from the University of Notre Dame, Jennifer Jones, were awarded $22,954 by the Russell Sage Foundation to research the determinants of state immigration policy in new immigration destinations.

Throughout March, Joseph Soares participated in the discussions of both the first national study of test-optional colleges and the upcoming reforms to the SAT in outlets such as Inside Higher Ed, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News and The New York Times Magazine.

In January, Ian Taplin gave the annual Global Futures Lecture at The Winchester Centre for Global Futures in Art, Design & Media, University of Southampton, England. In February, he was one of the keynote speakers at the N.C. Wine Growers annual meeting in Winston-Salem.

In February David Yamane published, “Becoming Catholic: Finding Rome in the American Religious Landscape” (Oxford University Press) — the first book-length study of Roman Catholic converts in contemporary America.