News and Notes

October 2008

These highlights related to the social, behavioral, and economic sciences at Michigan State University are brought to you by the Office of the Dean. For the latest news, visit our Web site at www.socialscience.msu.edu.

Faculty and staff are encouraged to share news of current research projects, publications, events, and awards. Call 517/432-0746 or send an email to Michelle Strobel.

AWARDS, HONORS, AND RECOGNITION

Congratulations to principal investigators in the College of Social Science who were awarded grants and/or contracts from July 1 through September 30, 2008. See the grants and contracts list.

Professor Merry Morash (criminal justice) has been honored as a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology (ACS). Individuals are awarded based on significant contributions to the field through the career development of other criminologists and/or through organizational activities within the ACS.

Associate professor Jinhua Zhao (economics) has won the open research paper competition of the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements. Zhao's paper, "A Proposal for the Design of the Successor to the Kyoto Protocol," was selected based on its innovative and realistic approach to post-2012 global climate policy. Zhao describes how an international agreement could include several design features that would encourage participation and compliance. Read the paper.  

Graduate student Carolina Santos (geography and ESPP) has won a $30,000 Earth Systems Science Fellowship. The award, granted by NASA, will run for two years, in which Santos will pursue her research on Complex Land Use & Cover Trajectories in the Northern Choco Bioregion of Colombia. The fellowship supports training of interdisciplinary scientists to support the study of the Earth as a system, with a particular emphasis on using observations and measurements from NASA's Earth orbiting satellites. 

EVENTS

History professor Samuel J. Thomas presents, "No Holds Barred: Political Cartoons of the Gilded Age," an exhibit of original late 19th century political cartoons with commentary and other teaching/learning ancillaries, to run now through December 31, 2008 in the MSU Museum, West Gallery, second floor. Thomas, who has used these political cartoons in MSU classes and seminars for a number of years, was inspired to create a special exhibit at the MSU Museum during the 2008 election season. The exhibit features 40 original political cartoons from his personal collections.

The Department of History annual speaker series runs through the 2008-09 academic year. See the poster for speakers, topics, dates, and times.

 

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

New institute to focus on helping kids, caseworkers
From the Detroit Free Press: Gary Anderson remembers those middle-of-the-night runs to the emergency room, trips to the police station, and breaking families apart to keep children safe — experiences he called "rewarding, meaningful and horrifying." Now, the former child protective services caseworker is part of the new National Child Welfare Workforce Institute, a federally funded agency charged with reducing caseworker burnout, finding the best ways to serve children and families, and strengthening systems that are plagued with low morale and high caseloads. "We need to make sure the frontline workers have the knowledge and skills to keep children safe, move them to care, move them back to their homes, and move them to adoption when necessary," says Anderson, now the head of Michigan State University's School of Social Work. "These workers have a lot of things to juggle."
For a related story, see the Lansing State Journal.

The role of place in the world
From the Los Angeles Times (commentary): In recent years, the notion that the world, if not flat, is rapidly flattening as a result of the forces of globalization having gained currency to the point of becoming a platitude. So mobile, so interconnected, so integrated is this new world that historic barriers are no more, interaction is global, ever-freer trade rules the globe, the flow of ideas (and money and jobs) accelerates by the day, and choice, not constraint, is the canon of the converted. Join the 'forces of flattening' and you will reap the benefits, say Thomas Friedman and others who advance this point of view. Don't, and you will fall off the edge. The option is yours. ... Harm de Blij, professor of geography at Michigan State University, is the author, most recently, of The Power of Place Geography, Destiny, and Globalization's Rough Landscape.

Girls have harder time than boys adjusting in language-learning environment, study finds
From Science Daily: Girls who don't share a common language may have more difficulty adjusting socially than boys, according to surprising new Michigan State University research. ... “In early childhood, we know from previous research that girls are more verbal and more social than boys, generally speaking, but what we found in this study is that girls had a tougher time with social adjustment in the classroom,” says Anne Soderman, professor emeritus of family and child ecology at MSU and lead researcher on the project. See a related story in Africa Leader.

MSU recognized for innovative approach to faculty diversity with $3.98 million grant
From the Wisconsin Ag Connection, MSU has been awarded a five-year, $3.98 million ADVANCE grant from the National Science Foundation to increase the representation and advancement of women in academic science and engineering careers. The initial focus of MSU's ADVANCE project will be on the development and advancement of policies and practices in the colleges of Engineering, Natural Science and Social Science, with the intent that changes shown to be effective will eventually be applied to all units on campus.

MSU Research institute expects increased Latino votes
From the Lansing State Journal: Participation by Michigan's Latino voters in the upcoming presidential election is expected to top 80 percent while, nationwide, it is Latino voters who may play a decisive role in determining who occupies the White House next January, according to the Julian Samora Research Institute at Michigan State University. ... Researchers at JSRI project that, based on historic voting patterns and trends, about 83 percent of the state's registered Latinos will cast votes in the upcoming November presidential election. “This number may rise if the presidential campaigns have successfully registered citizens who are eligible, but were not registered,” says Rubén Martinez, director of JSRI.

Family ties and the ballot box
From the Detroit Free Press, What makes a person a Democrat or a Republican? MSU political scientist William Jacoby, one of the authors of a new book, “The American Voter Revisited,” adds that income, racial, ethnic and geographic influences also play a role, and that “once the sense of party attachment develops it doesn't change much over their lives. Each voter enters the election campaign with this preconceived bias and it pushes them pretty consistently in one direction or another.” Read the related press release.