Donna Jean Eder, Professor Emeritus: I now live in Berea, KY--a small college town. David and I were the community support family for a student from Afghanistan for the past three years. We love our visits with grandsons in Knoxville--ages 4 and almost 2. Retirement is bliss!
Since retiring last year Distinguished Professor Scott Long has been working on restoring a 1947 Delta Rockwell 6” jointer. For fun, he published papers “Sociological Methods and Research” with Sarah Mustillo, “Sociological Methodology” with Trent Mize and Long Doan, and “Survey Research Methods” with Liz Zack and John Kennedy.
Bill Corsaro, Professor Emeritus: I took my 18-20 retirement from Indiana University after 39 years in the Department of Sociology starting January 1, 2013. I moved to Mesa, Arizona and live near one of my older brothers, my niece, my nephew and his wife and their son (he is in second grade and like a grandson to me). I did expect to keep active, but I have been much more active than I expected. Since my arrival in Mesa I finished two new editions of my text The Sociology of Childhood (the latest the 5th edition and during this time several editions have been translated into Portuguese, Farsi, and Chinese and the 5th edition will be translated into Italian next year). I have published a number of short pieces as forwards in several edited volumes, in handbooks (including a short biographical entry on my mentor Allen Grimshaw), two journal articles, and a long chapter for a major handbook that is in press. I have done a lot of traveling and consulting in Oslo, Norway and Ningbo, China and presenting at conferences in Italy, Norway, and Sweden. I just finished a two-year term as a Visiting Professor (20% time) at Uppsala University, Sweden in May 2019. I much enjoyed my time in Uppsala and worked with great colleagues and graduate students on many projects and lectured and taught classes on the sociology of childhood, comparative early education, and qualitative research methods. I am now trying to slow down and be more or less really retired.
I have received two major honors since leaving IU. I was awarded an honorary Ph.D. from Uppsala University in 2015 and I received the Cooley Mead Award from the Social Psychology Section of the ASA in 2019. I will present my address, “Big Ideas from Little People: What Research with Children Contributes to Social Psychology,” at the ASA meetings in New York on August 13, 2019. I am honored by both these awards and must say the Cooley Mead award was a big surprise and send thanks to many former students and colleagues from the Department of Sociology who nominated me for the award or sent letters of support.
Personally, I am very happy that my daughter, Veronica, after serving in the Peace Corps in Mongolia for over two years has now found the great job she sought for several years in New York. She lives and works for an NGO in Brooklyn using her legal skills to help low income people find and keep affordable housing. More good news for Veronica is that her partner of over two years, Lynne, who lived and worked in Boston has now found a great job in the New York City area and they will be living together in Brooklyn beginning in August.
Finally, my consulting trip to Ningbo, China turned out to be very fateful as I met my fiancée, Lanfen Jiang, and we were engaged in December 2018 here in Mesa. We began the long immigration process but have made good progress and Lanfen will have her interview in the American consulate soon and then her marriage visa so she can travel to Mesa. Her daughter, Yvette, graduated from Bucknell University in civil engineering in May 2019 and will begin her MA studies in computer engineering at the Silicon Valley campus of Northeastern University beginning in January 2010. Lanfen and I expect to be married in September 2019 and live in Mesa. She lives in the exciting city of Chongqing, China where I have visited, and we will return often after we marry.
The College of Arts