I have served our dynamic and growing department as department chair and graduate program director for a total of 24 years. As chair, in collaboration with colleagues, I have led our department’s academic quality reviews and the development of our PhD Program and our Survey Research Certificate Program. An AQUAD Self-Study Report provides an in-depth portrait of our department.
My major recent service roles for the university have included serving as Chair of the Faculty Council’s Budget and Long-Range Planning Committee, membership on the Academic Affairs task force of the University’s Strategic Planning Committee (2010), co-chairing the Enrollment and Financial Subcommittee of the Chancellor’s Strategic Planning Task Force (2006-2007), serving on the University’s NEASC Accreditation Steering Committee (2003-2005) and chairing the graduate program task force of that committee and writing the program review in that area. I have also served as a Liberal Arts faculty representative to the Faculty Council. For two years, I served on the search committee for a dean of Liberal Arts and in 1999-2000, served as the chair of that committee. I have also served on promotion committees for faculty in other departments as well as on the Collegiate Personnel Committee.
My projects in the community have focused on issues of concern in the urban environment and have included research collaborations with the Center for Teen Empowerment, Massachusetts Mental Health Center, local homeless shelters, the Veterans Administration, the Department of Public Health, Boston University’s Sargent College of Rehabilitation and its Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation, Impact Employment Services, and the Changing Lives through Literature alternative probation program.
These projects have all led to applied research reports designed to answer key policy questions or guide program development and I have often published. Graduate students have been supported as RAs in each project and several have received jobs as a result.
Service to the profession of sociology has included 1998-2000 Secretary of the Eastern Sociological Society and 2014-2015 Chair, American Sociological Association Major Awards Committee for Distinguished Career Award for the Practice of Sociology. From 2018-2021, I have been honored to serve as chair-elect, chair, and then past chair of the Evolution, Biology, and Society section of the American Sociological Association. You can read my Thoughts from the Chair in the 2019-2020 issues of the EBS newsletters: Issue 1, Issue 2, Issue 3.
Other details are available at the site for the 2007 Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Service.