News and Events

Sociology in the News

Recent press releases from the
Office of News and Information.

Center for Research on Educational Opportunity names new director

Mark Berends, director of the National Center on School Choice (NCSC), has joined the University of Notre Dame's Institute for Educational Initiative (IEI) as the new director of its Center for Research on Educational Opportunity (CREO).

Berends, who most recently served as associate professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University's Peabody College, succeeds Maureen Hallinan, who has directed CREO for ten years.

Berends has done extensive research on school organization and classroom instruction as they relate to student achievement, paying special attention to disadvantaged students.  He has participated in numerous U.S. Department of Education national evaluations and has conducted studies investigating the causes and sources of black-white and Latino-white achievement gaps.
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Notre Dame professor explores the science of generosity

The University of Notre Dame has launched the Science of Generosity, a project funded by a $5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Christian Smith, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology and director of the University’s Center for the Study of Religion and Society.

“The goal of the project is to mobilize top-quality research across various disciplines on the origins, expressions and effects of generosity,”Smith said, noting that the project defines generosity as the spirit and practice of giving good things to others freely and abundantly.“This includes time, aid, attention, blood, possessions, encouragement, emotional investment and more. In countless ways, the world wants for significant growth in the virtue of giving.”

The grant is one of the largest ever received by a faculty member in Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters. Notre Dame is supporting the project with additional funding of approximately $200,000.
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Sociologists’ paper explores gender differences in religious practice

Though not quite the stuff of a Norman Rockwell painting, a husband reluctantly heeding his wife’s request to abandon the couch and go to church is an appropriate scene to depict what two University of Notre Dame sociologists call “one of the most consistent findings in the sociology of religion”: Women are more religious than men. But why?

Jessica Collett and Omar Lizardo, assistant professors of sociology, believe the risk-aversion hypothesis developed by the late Alan Miller and Baylor University’s Rodney Stark is the best explanation. It draws on a considerable amount of data that indicates women aren’t as likely as men to engage in high-risk behavior, such as committing a crime. Miller and Stark applied the same principle to people’s attitudes about faith, arguing that the more prone someone is to follow society’s rules, the less inclined he or she will be to ignore religion and risk losing the supernatural rewards associated with it.
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Magazine ranks ND among “Top 25 Colleges for Hispanics”

Hispanic Magazine has ranked the University of Notre Dame 16th on its 2009 list of “Top 25 Colleges for Hispanics,” the seventh year the University has made the list since its debut in 1999.

The magazine based its evaluations on academic excellence, Hispanic enrollment and achievement, selectivity, graduation rates, student-to-faculty ratio, percentage of Hispanic faculty, financial aid, cultural programs, and support for Hispanic students. It gathered information from numerous sources, including the universities, Hispanic scholarship organizations, U.S. News & World Report’s annual survey “America’s Best Colleges,” and Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education, which publishes a list of the top 100 institutions that award bachelor’s degrees to Hispanics.
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Sociologist Hallinan named AERA fellow

Renowned University of Notre Dame sociologist Maureen T. Hallinan has been elected into the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) newly established Fellows Program, which honors education researchers with exceptional scientific or scholarly contributions.

One of the world’s foremost scholars in the sociology of education, Hallinan is Notre Dame’s William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of Sociology and director of the University’s Center for Research on Educational Opportunity.  She is the author or editor of eight books and more than 120 peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals.  In addition, she is the lead investigator of “Comparative Analysis of Best Practices in Public and Private Elementary and Secondary Schools,” a federally funded study that is revealing new insight into the comparative achievement of public and Catholic school children.
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Study provides insights into U.S religious giving to developing world

A new survey by the University of Notre Dame’s Center for the Study of Religion and Society and the Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Prosperity (CGP) has found that U.S. congregations of all denominations are giving record amounts in relief and development assistance to poor countries.

The survey, which was part of a comprehensive center congregational survey supported by the John Templeton Foundation, found that religious organizations gave $8.8 billion in 2006. A 2005 CGP study had reported religious giving at $5.4 billion for that year, but was based on limited data. The new study is the first national random sample of U.S. religious giving to the developing world.
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The Great Brain Suck: A virtual life, or a real life

Brain rinsing–a kinder, gentler form of brainwashing–takes only a nickel or dime's worth of our souls at a time, says University of Notre Dame sociologist Eugene W. Halton.

The Soviet Union, he points out, controlled people by torture and punishment. The West, he says, found a way to control people with pleasure.

Materialism and consumption in America are the subjects of Halton's new book of essays, "The Great Brain Suck," published by University of Chicago Press.

Rampant consumption has turned the average American into what Halton calls "Big Zombie."
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New study examines Catholic guilt among U.S teens

“I’m an Irish Catholic and I have a long iceberg of guilt,” Irish writer Edna O’Brien once said.

The existence of a Catholic sense of guilt, the tendency to feel bad for a variety of sins committed or contemplated, is firmly entrenched in popular culture. Surprisingly, however, the extent of guilt among Catholics never has been systematically tested and analyzed.

A new study by Christian Smith, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology and director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame, empirically investigates the extent of guilt among one segment of the Catholic population: U.S. teens.
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President Bush appoints Cardenas to commission

President Bush recently appointed Gilberto Cardenas, Julian Samora Chair in Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame, to a commission that will study the potential creation of a National Museum of the American Latino.

The White House announced the appointment of seven people,  including Cardenas, to be members of a commission that will give the president and Congress recommendations about the direction of the project. It will consider the presentation of art, history, politics, business and entertainment in American Latino life in addition to the location and cost of the project. One crucial question for debate is whether the museum will be part of the Smithsonian Institute.

Cardenas, assistant provost and director of Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies, twice has been named by Hispanic Business Magazine as one of the 100 most influential Latinos in the country. He received his doctoral degree from Notre Dame in 1977.
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“Soul Searching” documentary on work of ND sociologist to premiere at DeBartolo

“Soul Searching,” a new documentary film on the spiritual and religious life of teenagers, will be shown for the first time at 7 p.m. Wednesday (April 18) in the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center’s Browning Cinema.

The hourlong film is based on seven years of ongoing research by Christian Smith, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame and director of the Center for the Study of Religion in Society.  Smith collaborated with Michael and Timothy Eaton of Revelation Studios in Santa Barbara, Calif., to produce a video portrait of the lives of the American teenagers who were the subjects of his study.

Smith, who also is the author of a recent book, “Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers,” will attend the screening and lead a discussion afterwards.
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New book analyzes World Social Forum

Jackie Smith, associate professor of sociology and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame, is the co-author of a new book recently released by Paradigm Publishers.

“Global Democracy and the World Social Forums” offers an analysis of one of the most important political developments of our time - the huge annual gatherings of social change activists collectively known as the World Social Forum (WSF).

The book “is a real contribution to the worldwide struggle for global justice,” according to Yale University sociologist Immanuel Wallersteen. “It offers readers . . . insight into what WSF has been, what its internal debates and difficulties are, and how we might move forward.”
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ND Expert: Drop in SAT scores not all bad

The recently reported drop in SAT scores nationwide has many educators worried, yet a University of Notre Dame sociologist regards the underlying issues that could account for the scoring dip to be positive.

“The good news outweighs the bad here: Our pool of college applicants is becoming more diverse, both racially and socio-economically, and that is a good thing, given the recent challenges to affirmative action programs at post-secondary schools,” said William Carbonaro, associate professor of sociology.

Carbonaro’s research focuses on how inequality in student outcomes is affected by different learning opportunities between and within schools.  He also researches how students’ relationships with their families and peers affect their education.

“The drop in test scores is very small, and we shouldn’t worry about it too much because the SAT is not very good at measuring achievement trends over time,” Carbonaro said.
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Sociologist Spillman named chair of ASA’s Section on Culture

Lyn Spillman, associate professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, was inaugurated as chair of the American Sociological Association's (ASA) Section on Culture at the group’s annual meeting this month.

Spillman specializes in cultural sociology, social theory and economic, political and comparative historical sociology.  She is the author of “Nation and Commemoration: Creating National Identities in the United States and Australia,” editor of “Cultural Sociology,” and has authored numerous articles and chapters on cultural theory, theories of nationalism, collective memory and causal reasoning.  Her current research, supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship and an ASA/NSF Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline Award, investigates the ways trade associations invest economic action with meaning.

A graduate of the Australian National University, Spillman earned her master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of California at Berkeley.
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