Recent Faculty, Staff, and Student Accomplishments

  • Sociology graduate student Eric Porter was awarded a 2011 U-Club Scholarship from Illinois State University. This scholarship provides support and recognition for selected ISU students who enrich the university and/or wider community.
  • Gina Hunter (Associate Professor, Anthropology) and James Skibo (Professor, Anthropology) will be interviewed on October 15 by WJBC (10-10:30 a.m.) radio regarding the ongoing Old Main Project. The project will also be the topic of the October 15 speech by Dr. Hunter at the Alumni Center (1-1:40 pm).
  • Maria Ostendorf Smith (Associate Professor, Anthropology) organized and hosted the Midwest Bioarchaeology and Forensic Anthropology Association Annual Meetings on ISU campus October 7-9. (flyer)
  • Assistant Professor of Sociology Chris Wellin has formed an interdisciplinary campus network on gerontology.
  • Sue Sprecher, Professor of Sociology, is co-organizer of the 2012 conference for the International Association for Relationship Research, to be held in Chicago, July 12-16, 2012.
  • Assistant Professor of Sociology Thomas Burr presented "Spectacular market growth: Macrosocial promotional spectacles influencing total market demand" for the Consumer Studies Research Network preconference at the American Sociological Association meetings, August 19, 2011.
  • Aaron Pitluck, Assistant Professor of Sociology, was appointed in March to the Editorial Board of Sociopedia.isa, a new journal of the International Sociological Association, published by SAGE.
  • Just published: emeritus professor Robert Dirks has authored an ethnohistory of Bloomington-Normal foodways entitled Come and Get it: McDonaldization and the Disappearance of Local Food from a Central Illinois Community (Bloomington, McClean County Histroical Society).
  • Thomas Burr, Assistant Professor Sociology, presented "Governing the trade: bicycle distribution in France and the United States, 1865-1914" for a roundtable at the American Sociological Association meetings, August 20, 2011.
  • Nobuko Adachi, Associate Professor of Anthropology, was (March 2011) an invited speaker at the Japan Anthropology Colloquium (Yale University) and a panelist at the Korean Diaspora Workshop (Augustl 2011) at the University of Iowa. She organized a panel called "Cognitive Frameworks, Sociocultural Norms, and Language-in-Use" at the meetings of the Central States Anthropological Society (April 2011) as well as presented a paper ("Space and Cognitive Differences in Japanese and English Discourse"). She was elected to the Executive Board of the Central States Anthropological Society for 2012-2015.
  • Kathleen McKinney, Professor of Sociology and Cross Endowed Chair in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and Sociology graduate student Melissa Busher presented “A Multi-Institutional Study of Students’ Perceptions and Experiences in the Research Experience Capstone Course in Sociology” at the Midwest Sociological Society meetings in St. Louis, March 2011.
  • Virginia Gill, Professor of Sociology, was recently promoted to Full Professor and awarded a sabbatical for the Fall 2011 semester. She gave a plenary address, "Resources for managing response relevance: The case of patients' explanations for illness and doctors' responses," for the Language, Interaction, and Social Organization conference at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in May 2011.
  • Aaron Pitluck, Assistant Professor of Sociology, was awarded a two year research fellowship by the Political Economy Research Group, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary. CEU is a graduate institution in the social sciences, humanities, law and management.
  • Kathleen McKinney, Professor of Sociology and Cross Endowed Chair in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, presented a keynote address and led an invited workshop at Eastern Michigan University in May 2011. Their titles were, “Making a Difference: Application of SoTL Beyond the Classroom to Enhance Learning" and  “Getting Started in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: An Overview."
  • Virginia Gill, Professor of Sociology, organized a panel and presented a paper, "Exposing the taken-for-granted: An exercise to introduce EMCA," at the International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, University of Fribourg, Switzerland in July, 2011.   
  • Sociology major Jessica Bales has won the Women's and Gender Studies Student Achievement Award for 2011. The award, which is given annually to a graduating senior who minored in Women's and Gender Studies, recognizes academic excellence, service to the WGS program and involvement in women's issues on campus and in the community.
  • Teri Farr-Behnke, Assistant to the Chair and Academic Advisor, was selected as the Illinois representative to the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) Great Lakes Region V steering committee. She will serve through October, 2012.
  • Department Chair Fred H. Smith's Assimilation Model for modern human origins is the focus of renewed attention in light of the recent sequencing of the Neandertal genome. A News Focus article in the journal, Science (Jan. 28, 2011), notes that Smith's model, developed in 1989, presents the most cogent explanation for the finding that modern Eurasian genes have as much as a 4% contribution from Neandertals. Smith's model was based on anatomy and argued that Neandertals and other archaic Eurasians made consistently small contributions to modern populations expanding out of Africa.
  • Chris Wellin, Assistant Professor of Sociology, gave an invited lecture "Integrating cohort analysis and narrative interviewing: The case of the post-WWII G.I. Bill and its role in fostering academic careers" at Eastern Illinois University on January 12 and gave a keynote presentation "Applying Research to Enhance Quality of Life for People with Dementia" for the June 2011 Family Forum of the Alzheimer’s Association of Greater Illinois, in Bloomington, IL.
  • Chris Wellin, Assistant Professor of Sociology, is Chair of the Division on Youth, Aging, and the Life Course for the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP).
  • Winfred Avogo, Assistant Professor of Sociology, is the winner of a 2011 Research Initiative Award from the College of Arts and Sciences at Illinois State University.
  • Teri Farr-Behnke, Assistant to the Chair for Undergraduate Studies, was elected Vice Chair of the Administrative Professional Council at ISU for 2010-2011.
  • Anthropology graduate Student Jenna Carlson was awarded the Ada Belle Clark Welsh scholarship for 2010-2011 from the ISU graduate school.
  • Gina Hunter, Associate Professor of Anthropology, and Ms. Victoria Moré (BA Anthropology, 2010) presented a paper "Co-eds at the Co-op: Student Depression Era Foodways at Old Normal," at the Greater Midwest Foodways Symposium (April 2010, Kendall College). The presentation is available as a podcast from WBEZ, the Chicago NPR radio station.
  • Fred H. Smith, Professor of Anthropology, received a grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for research on Paleolithic skeletal remains at the University of Tuebingen, Germany.
  • Jim Skibo, Professor of Anthropology, received a grant from the U.S. Forest Service for excavations at Grand Island, Michigan this past summer.
  • Ms. Victoria Moré's (Anthropology '10) undergraduate thesis is now an article in the Journal of Undergraduate Ethnography, 2011.
  • Jim Skibo, Professor of Anthropology, will be an invited speaker for a campus-wide talk at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on November 7 and 8.