It is a joy and delight to share with you a list of our ASA and SSSP 2020 honorees. Please join me in congratulating graduate students Nick Smith, Orla Stapleton, and Mai Thai along with faculty members Jennifer Barber, Jess Calarco, Ethan Michelson, and Tim Hallett, who won awards for their outstanding research. We are equally proud of faculty member Brian Powell, co-winner of the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award.
ASA Family Section's Article of the Year Award
2020: Barber, Jennifer S., Yasamin Kusunoki, Heather H. Gatny, and *Jamie Budnick. 2018. The Dynamics of Intimate Partner Violence and the Risk of Pregnancy during the Transition to Adulthood. American Sociological Review 83(5):1020-1047
ASA Section on Medical Sociology's Howard B. Kaplan Memorial Award
2020: Nick Smith, Indiana University
ASA Section on the Sociology of Culture's Clifford Geertz Award for Best Article
2020: Tim Hallett, Orla Stapleton, and Michael Sauder. "Public ideas: Their varieties and careers." American Sociological Review 84, no. 3: 545-576. 2019.
ASA Section on the Sociology of Education's Pierre Bourdieu Award for the Best Book in Sociology of Education
The Pierre Bourdieu Award is for the best book in the sociology of education published in the preceding two years (e.g., 2010 and 2011 for the 2012 award). It is awarded annually.
2020: Jessica McCrory Calarco, Indiana University, Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School, Oxford University Press.
ASA Section on the Sociology of Law Distinguished Article Award
(Honorable Mention) Ethan Michelson 2019. “Decoupling: Marital Violence and the Struggle to Divorce in China.” American Journal of Sociology 125(2): 325-381. (lead article)
ASA Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award, co-winner
Brian Powell, Indiana University- Bloomington
Brian Powell is the James H. Rudy Professor of Sociology at Indiana University-Bloomington. Professor Powell is an exemplary community-oriented scholar-teacher and a tireless supporter of students and the discipline. Dr. Powell is highly deserving of this special recognition for his contributions to teaching beyond his home department, his personal record of outstanding teaching evidenced by his many awards, his scholarship on teaching and learning, and his contributions to the enhancement of teaching at the local, regional, and national levels.
He has received countless awards for his teaching and mentoring excellence, winning virtually every internal departmental and university teaching and teaching-related award offered at Indiana University, including the Sociology Department’s Sutherland Award; Certificates of Distinction awarded by Blue, Golden Key, and Mortar Board; the Indiana University President’s Teaching Recognition Award; the Sociology Department’s Mentoring Award; and the North Central Sociological Association’s Schnabel Teaching Award.
As one of the co-creators of Indiana University’s Preparing Future Faculty Program, Professor Powell has played a critical role in conceptualizing and building the program. The innovative program has helped develop generations of teacher-scholars who prioritize teaching and mentoring and who have gone on to win a raft of teaching-related awards and publish their own scholarship on pedagogy and in the research areas of education, family, and inequality. As one letter writer put it, “Far from just mentoring individuals, Brian is in fact mentoring a family of scholars -- some of whom happen to be ‘family scholars.’”
Powell’s nominator, Bernice Pescosolido, wrote, “Brian’s teaching superpower is really his mentoring.” Another letter writer describes his experience of reaching out to Professor Powell’s mentees as part of building the nomination packet: “What struck me the most was how much their responses illustrate the fact that Brian’s mentoring is completely selfless. This man has no ego. He does have a strong sense of self, a strong sense of professionalism and of professional ethos -- but no ego. Instead the collective responses show that his mentoring approach, while deeply grounded in an effort to help individual mentees find their own way, pursues the collective goal of advancing our discipline.”
One former graduate student who served as a TA for Professor Powell reflected, “Dr. Powell made every class nothing short of magical. The students came to class and did amazing amounts of work because he so inspired them and ignited their interest in sociology and gender. His enthusiasm, breadth of knowledge, ease of rapport, and openness to his students was something I watched in awe as a graduate student. It is fair to say that his teaching is always in the back of my mind as I prepare and deliver my own lectures…. I think I owe my own success in part to the strong start and example I received from Dr. Powell.”
Finally, a nomination letter co-signed by 67 former and current students sums up why the Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award Committee enthusiastically selected Powell for this award: “Professor Powell has had an outsized influence on the development of teacher-scholars in our field. While many senior scholars have trained scores of graduate students who have gone on to conduct sociological research, Professor Powell is unique in his emphasis on teaching and mentorship. His careful attention to classroom pedagogy and curricula, supportive relationships with students at all levels, and research on teaching (and universities, more broadly) has created generations of scholars who genuinely care about teaching and see it as an essential part of our careers as sociologists.”
SSSP EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS DIVISION
Paper Award Honorable Mention: "The Racialized, Classed, and Gendered Logics of School-based Criminal Justice Interventions," Mai Thai, Indiana University, Bloomington
The College of Arts