Graduate Student Awards and Accomplishments
Our graduate students continue to accrue honors, grants, fellowships, and publications.
Here are just some of their recent accomplishments:
Jared Peifer was awarded a NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant, the Religious Research Association Jacquet Award, and the Robert S. Hatfield Award for the Study of Ethics in Business to support his dissertation research "Religion and the Financial Market." Jared won the 2008-2009 Robin Williams Jr. Best Paper award and was a co-winner of the 2007-2008 Department Citation for Excellence in Teaching for his work in Sociology 301, Evaluating Statistical Evidence. Jared's article "The Sociology and Economics of Religious Giving: Instrumental Rationality or Communal Bonding?" is forthcoming in Social Forces.
Emily Hoagland won the 2008-2009 Department Citation for Excellence in Teaching for her exemplary work as a teaching assistant in Sociology 362, Inequality and the Workplace.
Michael "Trey" Spiller received the 2008-2009 Robert McGinnis Best Paper Award for his paper "Regression Modeling of Respondent Driven Sampling Data." Trey's paper with Doug Heckathorn and Joan Jeffri, "Social Networks of Aging Visual Artists" was published in Jeffri's edited volume, Information on Artists III: Special Focus on New York City Aging Artists.
Matt Hoffberg was awarded the Buttrick-Crippen Teaching Fellowship to develop and teach a new freshman writing seminar entitled "Keeping It Real or Selling Out: The Role of Authenticity in Post-Industrial Society." Drawing on literature from sociology, existentialism, social psychology, and critical theory, the seminar invites students to explore the topic of authenticity academically and experientially through their own written work.
Michael Genkin won the ASA's Mathematical Sociology Section 2008 Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Award for his co-authored paper with Alexander Gutfraind "How Do Terrorist Cells Self-Assemble? Insights from an Agent-Based Model." He also presented this work at the 2007 Risk Analysis Conference in San Antonio, Texas.
Youngjoo Cha was awarded a 2008-2009 NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant for her project "Overwork and the Persistence of Gender Inequality in the U.S. Labor Market." This research is featured in an article in the Cornell Chronicle, and an article from this project is forthcoming in the American Sociological Review. Youngjoo is also a past recipient of the departmental award for excellence in teaching and past winner of the Robin Williams Jr. Best Paper award. Her article with Steve Morgan, "Rent and the Evolution of Inequality in Late Industrial United States," appeared in the January, 2007 issue of American Behavioral Scientist and an article co-authored with graduate student Sarah Thebaud, entitled "Labor Markets, Breadwinning, and Beliefs: How Economic Context Shapes Men's Gender Ideology" appears in the April 2009 issue of Gender and Society.
Cyprian Wejnert was a co-winner of the 2008 Robin Williams Jr. Best Paper Award and awarded a 2007 NSF Dissertation Improvement grant for his proposal, "Networks and Norms: Enforcement through Association" to use respondent driven sampling to study how norms map onto the social network of two undergraduate populations. Cyp's article "Web-Based Network Sampling: Efficiency and Efficacy of Respondent-Driven Sampling for On-line Research" was recently published in Sociological Methods and Research. Cyp has been elected the student representative of the Mathematical Sociology section of the ASA.
Esther Quintero was a co-winner of the 2008 Robin Williams Jr. Best Paper Award for her paper, "Gender-Based Double Standards for Evaluating Job Applicants in a Natural Setting." Esther was awarded a 2006 NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement grant for her project, "Gender and the Evaluation of Job Applicants in Interactive Settings." Esther recorded and observed 80 oral service examinations in Spain, and is using these data to show whether and how interactions between interviewees and employers in a "real life" interview setting contribute to sex segregation.
Laura Ford was a co-winner of the 2007-2008 Department Citation for Excellence in Teaching for her exemplary work as a teaching assistant to Professor Richard Swedberg in Sociology 395, Advanced Economic Sociology.
Diana Hernandez won a Law and Social Sciences Dissertation Fellowship from the American Bar Foundation to support work on her dissertation "Litigating Health Risks." Diana's project examines the effectiveness of legal services as a resource tool for low-income families in the prevention and intervention of child and family health risks. As a recipient of the fellowship, she will spend two years in residence at the American Bar Foundation to complete her dissertation.
Jenny Todd's co-authored paper with Stephen Morgan, entitled "A Diagnostic Routine for the Detection of Consequential Heterogeneity of Causal Effects" was published in a recent issue of Sociological Methodology and another paper co-authored with Stephen Morgan, entitled "Intergenerational Closure and Academic Achievement in High School: A New Evaluation of Coleman's Conjecture" appears in Sociology of Education.
Jung Mee Park won a Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship from the East Asia Program at Cornell. The FLAS fellowship will cover Jung Mee's tuition and stipend for one year. Jung Mee's co-authored article with Danielle Kane, "The Puzzle of Korean Christianity: Geopolitical Networks and Religious Conversion in Early Twentieth-Century East Asia" was published in the American Journal of Sociology.
Kelly Patterson won a 2007-2008 Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship to support his dissertation, "Vetting the Entrepreneur: A Multi-dimensional Study of Information, Trust, and New Ventures." Kelly's project explores the relative importance of social information used by commercial credit agents to evaluate the reliability of new business owners, comparing credit rating trends to actual failure, insolvency and bankruptcy rates. Kelly's article, co-authored with Martin Ruef, "Credit and Classification: The Impact of Industry Boundaries in Nineteenth-century America" appears in the September 2009 issue of Administrative Science Quarterly.
Kyle Siler's paper with Neil McLaughlin, "The Canada Research Chairs Program and Social Science Reward Structures" appeared in the July 2008 issue of the Canadian Review of Sociology.
Sarah Thebaud was awarded a 2008 NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant for her proposal "A Cross-National Study of Entrepreneurship, Instituions and Cognitive Bias" and a Kauffman Dissertation Fellowship for her proposal "Entrepreneurship, Institutions and Cognitive Bias: A Cross-National Study of Gender Inequality in Venture Creation." Her project uses cross-national survey data and experimental studies to evaluate a multilevel theory of gender inequality in the business start-up process. Sarah was a co-winner of the 2007 Robin Williams Jr. Best Paper Award and winner of a Michele Sicca Graduate Fellowship from the Institute for European Studies. Sarah's paper with Shelley Correll and Stephen Bernard, "An Introduction to the Social Psychology of Gender" appears in Advances in Group Processes and Sarah's article co-authored with graduate student Youngjoo Cha, entitled "Labor Markets, Breadwinning, and Beliefs: How Economic Context Shapes Men's Gender Ideology," recently appeared in Gender and Society.
In Paik's paper with Shelley Correll and Stephen Bernard "Getting a Job: Is there a Motherhood Penalty?" appeared in the American Journal of Sociology paper and received the 2008 Best Article Award from the ASA's Sex and Gender Section. Another paper (with Correll and Bernard), "Cognitive Bias and the Motherhood Penality" appeared in the Hastings Law Journal. In Paik served as the 2007 Coordinator of Feedback Diversity Initiative for Cornell's Deputy Provost office.
Cate Taylor was awarded a 2007 NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant from the Decision, Risk, and Management Sciences program for her project, "Stress, Status, and Gender." Cate's research examines the experiences of women and men working in occupations that are non-traditional for their gender using national survey data and biological markers of stress response.
Ecehan Koc won a Cornell-Heidelberg Exhange Fellowship, and an International Research Travel grant from the Mario Einaudi Center for International Stuides to support her project, "Why and How Did Veiling Become a Human Right? The Headscarf Controversy in Turkey."
Chris Yenkey was awarded an NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant for his project "Transplanting and Translating Stock Markets into the Developing Countries of sub-Saharan Africa." Chris presented a paper, "Exploring the Origin and Evolution of Transparency: 70 Years of U.S. Securities Market Regulation," at the 2006 International Conference on Financial and Economic Sociology, in Sao Paolo, Brazil.
Erik Williams won a national competition to be a Presidential Management Fellow with the CDC in Atlanta. He just started a two-year gig as a public health analyst in the Office of the Director of Policy and Planning in the National Center for HIV/Aids, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention. While there, he'll collect data for his dissertation.
Pi-Chun Hsu won a Starr Fellowship from the Cornell East Asia Program for her project on the household division of labor in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. The Starr Fellowship will pay for Pi-Chun's tuition and stipend for one semester of dissertation work. (Pi-Chun also won a Starr Fellowship in 2005.)
Miles Garrett has been awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Miles is interested in labor markets and economic sociology, and his fellowship-winning proposal asks how norms affect the wage-setting process.
Four of our students won 2008-2009 seed grants from the Center for the Study of Inequality and the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center:
- Emily Hoagland, "Supporting Women Candidates: The Effects of Fundraising Organizations on the Political Success of Women"
- In Paik, "Developing a Diverse Academy: Examining Women and People of Color in the Ph.D Pipeline"
- Jared Peifer, "Religion in the Financial Market: The Case of Religious Mutual Funds"
- Chris Yenkey, "Financial Illiteracy as a Contributor to Wealth Inequality in Developing Countries: A micro-level analysis of shareholding on the Nairobi Stock Exchange"
Finally, 14 students presented papers at the 2009 American Sociological Association annual meetings in San Francisco:
- Youngjoo Cha, "Overwork and the Persistence of Occupational Segregation"
- Matthew Hoffberg, "Culture, Cooperation, and Perceived Intention in Intra-Organizational Exchange"
- Christin Munsch, "Responsibility Attributions of Domestic Violence in Response to Threatened Masculinity"
- Jung Mee Park, "From Suzerainty to Sovereignty: the Shifting Norms of International Relations in 19th century East Asia"
- Kelly Patterson, "Asymmetries in Experiential and Vicarious Learning: Lessons from the Hiring and Firing of Baseball Managers"
- Jared L. Peifer, "Are Religious Investors More Faithful? A Comparative Analysis with Religious Mutual Funds"
- Kyle Siler, "A Structural Content Analysis of Administrative Science Quarterly, 1956-2007" and "Institutionalizing Academic Hinterlands: The Development of Science and Technology Studies"
- Michael "Trey" Spiller, "Regression Modeling of Respondent-Driven Sampling Data"
- Chan S. Suh, "Contextualizing Trust in Government: Explaining Contemporary Social Cleavages in South Korea" and "Gender into Politics: The Institutionalization of the Women's Movement in South Korea"
- Catherine J. Taylor, "Glass Ceiling or Glass Escalator? The Social Environments of Tokens in the Workplace"
- Sarah Thebaud, "Gender, Cognitive Bias, and Innovation in the US and the UK: Are Women Entrepreneurs Penalized?" and "Gender, Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the US and UK: Do Self-Assessments of Entrepreneurial Ability Matter?"
- Jennifer J. Todd, "Teacher Expectations and Student Achievement: How Much Do Teacher Expectations Matter?"
- Chris Yenkey, "The Social Construction of Investor Capitalism: Explaining the Dramatic Rise in Retail Investing in Kenya, 2006-2008" and "The Social Construction of Investor Capitalism: Explaining the Rise in Retail Investing in Kenya, 2006-2008"
- Ningxi Zhang, "The Urban Underclass Dispute: Formulations of Empirical Testing of Theories"
Contratulations to all!
Please send new award announcements to hirsh@cornell.edu.