First, our faculty and alumni continue to produce top notch research. I could fill this entire newsletter with summaries of great research, but I will give you two examples. Hyeyoung Kwon published a book called Language Brokers: Children of Immigrants Translating Inequality and Belonging for Their Families, which documents how immigrant children help their parents survive by acting as translators and helpers. Jamie Kucinskas graduated in 2014 and her second book is coming out, The Loyalty Trap: Conflicting Loyalties of Civil Servants Under Increasing Autocracy. It discusses how Trump administration officials were torn by their loyalty to the president and their commitment to public office. Anna Muller’s book, co-written with Seth Abrutyn, Life under Pressure (Oxford University Press) has been selected as the winner of the 2025 ASA Sociology of Mental Health Best Book Award.  If any alumni publish books, please send a copy to our office and we will proudly display them

Second, we congratulate Pam Braboy-Jackson for winning the 2025 Leonard I. Pearlin Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Sociological Study of Mental Health, awarded by the ASA Section on Mental Health.

Third, we welcomed two new faculty to our community in this academic year: Brian Kelly and Spencer Headworth. They both previously taught at Purdue University and they definitely made the right choice by coming here. We will also welcome in Fall 2025 Peter Harvey. He completed his doctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania and has spent the last two years in post-doctoral positions at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs and Harvard’s Inequality in America Initiative.

This is also a good time to appreciate three colleagues who will be leaving at the end of Spring 2025. Jane McLeod and Clem Brooks will retire, and Tim Hallett will take up a position at the University of Notre Dame. We thank them for their service, and we will miss them.

I also have some excellent alumni news. Bill Corsaro, B.A. ‘70, will be the first recipient of Indiana University’s distinguished alumni scholar award, which goes to a graduate of IU who has achieved scientific prominence. Wisdom Ibikunle, BA ‘24, was just awarded an NSF GRFP, and she is off to Princeton to complete her PhD in Sociology. Below, you can find more excellent alumni reports – there is much to admire.

Please remember to put the Department Alumni Night on your calendar. This year’s DAN will be held on August 9th 6:00 to 8:00 at Lizzie McNeill’s Irish Pub, right along the Chicago River, 400 N McClurg Ct. If you are attending the American Sociological Association conference, or you happen to be in Chicago, please come by and say hello.

I am also proud to announce that the US News & World Report released its recent rankings of sociology graduate programs. IU sociology achieved a rank of #14 in the nation, tied with Duke, Cornell, and UT-Austin. I am very proud of our department. It’s humbling to know that our colleagues in the profession appreciate the quality of our work.

I could fill up the entire newsletter with excellent news, but this partial listing gives you a sense of how lucky I am to be working in this department.

Fabio Rojas
Department Chair
Virginia L. Roberts Professor of Sociology
Department of Sociology
Indiana University Bloomington