News and Notes

June 2008

These highlights related to the social, behavioral, and economic sciences at Michigan State University are brought to you by the Office of the Dean. For the latest news, visit our Web site at www.socialscience.msu.edu.

Faculty and staff are encouraged to share news of current research projects, publications, events, and awards. Call 517/432-0746 or send an email to Michelle Strobel.

AWARDS, HONORS, AND RECOGNITION

The Industrial/Organizational Psychology program at Michigan State University has been ranked first in the 2009 graduate rankings edition of U.S. News & World Report. Other College unit rankings announced for 2009 (not all social science disciplines are ranked every year): Social Work, 30th, and Clinical Psychology, 42nd.

Three faculty members are the recipients of awards at MSU. David Bailey (History) received the 2008 Honors College Teaching Award. Marya Sosulski (Social Work) has been selected as one of seven Lilly Fellows at MSU for the 2008-09 year. Esther Onaga (Family and Child Ecology) was awarded the first Curricular Service-Learning and Civic Engagement Award.

Congratulations to graduate student award recipients. Bethany Hicks (History) and Andrea Vicente (History) were awarded Fulbright fellowships. Hicks will study in Germany at the Institute for Migration and International Studies at the University of Osnabruck. Vicente will study in Mexico to conduct research from January through November 2009. Kaumudi Misra (Labor & Industrial Relations) has received the Susan G. Cohen Doctoral Research Award in Organization Design, Effectiveness, and Change to pursue her dissertation research, The Effects of High Involvement Human Resource Practices on Global Team Effectiveness. The award is sponsored by the Academy of Management and the Center for Effective Organizations at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California.

NOTABLES

The College's new strategic plan is now posted to the College's Web site. Please see Sustaining the Momentum and Framing New Solutions: A Strategic Agenda for the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences at Michigan State University (2007-2012).

Walter Hawthorne (History) and Mara Leichtman (Anthropology) participated in a recent seminar on Senegal and Guinea-Bissau—hosted by the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the U.S. Department of State and the National Intelligence Council—to brief the new U.S. ambassador to Senegal.  

Gary Anderson (Social Work) has been elected to a national post with the Council on Social Work Education, representing Graduate Deans on the Nominating Committee for the Council for a three-year term.

Ric Hula (Political Science), Cynthia Jackson-Elmoore (Social Work), and Laura Reese (Global Urban Studies) have been invited to present their paper, The Emerging Role of Faith-Based Organizations in the Low-Income Housing Market. The paper will be presented at a White House Conference on Research Related to the Faith-Based and Community Initiative in late June.

The ninth episode of Africa Past and Present, a podcast about history, culture, and politics in Africa is now available. In this episode, Rita El-Khayat (University of Chieti, Italy)—an anthropologist, psychiatrist, novelist and poet from Morocco—describes her work on North African women, the study and practice of psychiatry, and the importance of breaking down barriers through cultural mixing. Africa Past and Present is hosted by MSU historians Peter Alegi and Peter Limb, and is produced by MATRIX.

The African Studies Center and MATRIX recently hosted a ribbon cutting ceremony to launch new Web sites focused on South Africa. These sites offer to the public interviews with South African activists, more than 100 pieces of video documenting that struggle and many more multimedia resources. Read the story.

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

MSU SURVEYS: JUVENILE OFFENDERS DESERVE SECOND CHANCE
From MSU Today: Michiganians do not support the state law requiring juveniles convicted of homicide and other serious crimes in adult courts to be sentenced to life without parole, according to two consecutive years of surveys by MSU researcher Sheryl Pimlott Kubiak, associate professor of social work at Michigan State University. Kubiak’s research appears in the current edition of Crime and Delinquency. Kubiak also presented the findings recently to the state House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee.

'COMRADE CARS' FROM THE U.S.S.R.
From The St. Petersburg Times: Lewis H. Siegelbaum, professor of history at Michigan State University, sets out to recover a seemingly lost story that associates the automobile with Soviet communism. In his book Cars for Comrades: the Life of the Soviet Automobile, Siegelbaum uses the biography of the Soviet automobile to construct a thoughtful meditation on how cars embodied, encouraged and exacerbated fundamental contradictions in the 70-year experiment of Soviet communism.

ON THE HUNT FOR ONEOTA EVIDENCE
From the Peoria Journal Star: A group of college students will soon unearch artifacts at the Emiquon Preserve to learn about the people who called it home more than 500 years ago. ...Jodie O'Gorman, associate professor of anthropology at Michigan State University, will teach the school. She is bringing 12 undergraduates and two graduate students tow ork at teh Fulton County site. "The site brought me here," O'Gorman says. She expects to find artifacts beneath the soil that will help piece together a puzzle about the Oneota, a group of American Indians who apparently intruded upon another group of American Indians at the site from about 1300 to 1450. See an update in the Peoria Journal Star.

A LIFELINE FOR STUDENTS LEFT BEHIND
From Inside Higher Ed.com: The cards are clearly stacked against children of foster case, many of whom have suffred abuse and about 90 percent of whom never seek post secondary education. The sobering statistics, however, have prompted remarkably few universities to cater specifically to the high risk population of students who "age out" of foster care. John Seita, an associate professor in Michigan State University's School of Social Work, is a rare success story from the foster care system. Scholarships are named in his honor for this three-time Western Michigan University alumnus who was pulled from an abusive home and then moved through 15 different foster homes during his childhood. See a related MSU press release.

SHARING THE WOMB WITH A BROTHER MAY INFLUENCE A GIRL'S DEVELOPMENT
From Science News: Kelly Klump, associate professor at Michigan State University, has spent the past 10 years probing the genetic influences in eating disorders and pondering a stubborn question about why biology makes women more likely targets than men for such illnesses, such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Now, Klump and other colleagues are revisiting that question with a new angle, focusing on a very specific group: females from a male-female twin pair. See related MSU press releases from May and March of 2008.