SOCIAL SCIENCE PhD PROGRAM

Alumni

Social Science graduates, now approaching 500 in number, live in all corners of the globe and hold a variety of professional and academic positions. While the majority of graduates hold academic appointments, others work in public agencies, private firms, NGOs and other non-profit organizations as researchers, consultants, administrators and leaders. Shown below are some examples of alumni and their careers, and some senior alumni reflections on the role of the program in their later work.

Social Science Ph.D.'s  teach in a diverse array of departmental and interdisciplinary programs. The most common academic positions are in interdisciplinary programs and departments of Sociology or Political Science. However, graduates can also be found in departments of Economics, Communications, Education, International Relations, Anthropology, Geography, History, Public Affairs, Religion, African-American Studies, Women's Studies, Social Work, Conflict Studies and Public Administration, among other fields.

The selection of universities with faculty from the Social Science program is wide and diverse, and includes or has included Colgate University, Princeton University, the University of Washington, the University of Pennsylvania, Indiana University, Dartmouth College, Rutgers University, San Francisco State University, Rochester Institute of Technology, Washington State University, St John Fisher College, the University of Maryland, Northern Illinois University, Howard University, the University of Hong Kong, the Central European University, Cornell University, Salisbury University, Nova Southeastern University, the University of Colorado, Kent State University, the University of Connecticut, the University of Michigan, Syracuse University, and various campuses of the State University of New York (Cortland State University, the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and the Upstate Medical University of New York).

In addition, Social Science graduates hold or have held important administrative positions in higher education. They are also well represented in non-academic fields, where they conduct research, formulate and implement policy, lead and administer agencies and programs, and serve as consultants and advisors to officials and organizations. In government, graduates can be found working in the U.S. State Department, the New York State Education Department, as the Associate Director of the National Education Goals Panel, as Program Associate for the J.B. Snow Foundation, as Director of the Swedish Gerontology Center, as President of Medex Management Systems, and as a psychotherapist in private practice. A number of Social Science graduates come from countries outside the United States. Some now work overseas; living and working in Australia, Brazil, England, India, Japan, Thailand, Israel, Korea, South Africa, Indonesia, Bosnia and Turkey among other places. These scholars serve, for example, as the Representative of UNICEF in Brazil, as Professor of Social Science at the University of Tabriz in Iran, as Deputy Secretary of the Economic Division in Malaysia, and as Professor of History at the University of the Philippines. Some examples, in no particular order, of alumni careers follow.

 

Donna Shalala, currently President of the University of Miami, served as Secretary of Health and Human services during the Clinton administration. Before this she was a university professor and administrator, and then Chancellor of The University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

 

 

 

 

 

Astrid Merget is currently Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Louisiana State University. Her previous position was as Dean of the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University-Bloomington. She had previously served in a number of important posts in academia and the federal government, most recently as Associate Dean of the Maxwell School and Head of its Department of Public Administration, as well as holding the Louis A. Bantle Professorship in Business and Government Policy, before being recruited to Indiana.

  

 

                                                          

Deborah Alexander is a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State.  She has worked on a  variety of challenging assignments, including voter registration in Bosnia, and currently serves in Afghanistan on projects ranging from school construction to election planning.

 

 

 

 

 

Colin Irwin is a Professor in the Institute of Governance, Public Policy and Social Research, Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland. He received his  doctorate in Social Science with a dissertation on the nature of human conflict and how the Inuit developed a culture and society without war. After working for Canadian Native organisations he produced the report Lords of the Arctic: Wards of the State which led to a Royal Commission on the state of Canada’s First People and an Inuit land claim settlement that established the Territory of Nunavut. He was the principal investigator on the 'Peace Building and Public Policy in Northern Ireland' project funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, and in support of the negotiations of the Belfast Agreement he conducted eight public opinion polls in collaboration with the political parties elected to the Stormont Talks. This work is reviewed in his book, The People’s Peace Process in Northern Ireland (2002).

 

Ralph Ketcham is Maxwell Professor Emeritus of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He recieved his Social Science doctorate with a thesis on American political thought. He was named national Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, has been a Fulbright Fellow to Japan, India and the Netherlands and has recieved the Chancellor’s Citation for Exceptional Academic Achievement. He has written a number of award winning books, among them James Madison (1971,1991), The Idea of Democracy in the Modern Era (2004), Framed for Posterity: The Enduring Philosophy of the Constitution (1993), Individualism in Public Life: A Modern Dilemma (1987) and Presidents Above Party: The First American Presidency, 1789-1829 (1984).

 

 

Margaret Goertz is a Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania where she studies state and federal education finance and governance policy.  She has conducted extensive research on state education reform policies, state teacher policies, and state and federal programs for special-needs students. She currently studies standards-based reform in elementary schools and high schools, the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and the interface between the Act and state accountability policies. She is a past president of the American Education Finance Association and was a member of the National Research Council’s Committee on Understanding the Influence of Standards in Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education. Prior to joining the University of Pennsylvania faculty, she taught at Rutgers University, Princeton University and the College of New Jersey. She has spoken and published extensively on areas of state education reform.

 

Michael Schoonmaker is Chairman of the Television-Radio-Film Department at Syracuse University's Newhouse School. He began his production career at MTV, then moved to NBC’s Olympic Unit for their coverage of the 1988 Games. He teaches courses in TV and film production, and is author of the book Camera in the Classroom: Educating the Post-TV Generation.

 

 

 

Todd Sodano is an Assistant Professor of Communications at St. John Fisher College. His current research examines the production, distribution and reception of the HBO series The Wire and the influence of television critics during its five-season run. His general areas of  research interest are in the social impact of mass media and include cable television's fragmentation of the TV viewing audience and how this has influenced television industrially, artistically and socially.

 

 

 

 

Carol Brownstein Evans is Associate Professor of Social Work at Nazareth College and the State University of New York at Brockport. Her research deals with maternal substance abuse and child welfare issues and more generally with women's and children's health, substance abuse, and their interaction with race, class, and gender.

 

 

 

 

Rachel Goldberg is Associate Professor of Sociology and of Conflict Analysis and Dispute Resolution at Salisbury University.  She is an award winning mediator and mediation trainer. Her research and professionsl practice include the areas of individual, organizational and multi-party interventions; controversial issues like pro-life/pro-choice activism, police accountability, and Native American land claim conflicts, and includes the study of incipient and active gang related activities, the ways in which worldview and values affect practice, identity effects on data collection, and best practices in environmental and inter-cultural conflict.

 

 

 

Christopher Morley is Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at the Upstate Medical University of New York. His main research interests are in health disparities in primary care. He is also active in medical education, and maintains secondary interests in psychiatric genetics, research design, practice-based research networks, and medical ethics.

 

 

 

Christine McKenna is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Emmanuel College.   Her research interests are mainly in the area of social policy, particularly as it bears on child care issues. She has studied the consequences, both intended and unintended, of federal and state policies related to child care and afterschool programming in the postwar United States.

 

 

 

   

Jack Manno is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Environmental Studies, at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF).  He has received both the ESF Community and Public Service Award and the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Professional Service. He is particularly interested in the issues of sustainability and environmental degradation.  He is has published numerous scholarly articles and book chapters, and is author of two books, Privileged Goods: Commoditization and its Implications for Environment and Society (2000) and (with T. Princen and M. Finger) Environmental NGOs in World Politics: Linking the Local and the Global (1996).

 

 

Louise Quijano is Assistant Professor of Social Work at Colorado State University. Her principal areas of research interest are gerontological social work and social factors affecting the mental health of elderly persons, Hispanic mental health services research and issues in clinical mental health practice. Before joining the CSU faculty in 2007 she was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Primary Care Research, Department of Family and Community Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine. She is author of several scholarly articles and the recipient of a number of grants and awards.

 

 

 

Tamara Steger is Assistant Professor and Programs Director in the Center for Environmental Policy and Law at the Central European University. Her research interests are in environmental justice, environmental racism and environmental rights and current projects include studies of environmental movements, environmentalism and political regimes, environmental governance and the role of civic networks.

 

David Van Arsdale is Assistant Professor of Sociology at SUNY Onongaga Community College. He works in the fields of political and economic sociology and is interested in urban studies, race, class and gender studies, and labor and globalization. He has methodological interests in qualitative and ethnographic research methods.

 

 

 

 

Michael Messina-Yauchzy is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology/Criminal Justice at Keuka College. His research interests include gender studies, sexual/domestic violence, social deviance, collective behavior and social movements.

 

 

 

Priti Ramamurthy is Associate Professor of Women Studies at the University of Washington. She is the Director and Chair of the South Asia Center in the Jackson School of International Studies, and is an Executive Board Member of the Simpson Center for the Humanities.  Her research interests include Feminist critiques of international economic development, agrarian transitions, and consumption and commodity cultures, areas in which she has published extensively. She won the university's Distinguished Teaching Award in 2002, and held a Senior Research Fellowship from the American Institute for Indian Studies during 2006-2007.

 

 

Craig Watters is Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurial Practice in the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University. He works with SU's South Side Entrepreneurial Connect Project, advising teams of undergraduates and MBAs as they help small business owners and minority entrepreneurs on Syracuse's South Side grow their ventures. Watters was formerly dean for advancement in SU's School of Information Studies and director of its economic stimulus center, the I-Launch Pad. His research and community work led to his nomination for an economic development award from Senator Hillary Clinton in 2003 and travel to Ireland as part of Clinton's trade mission in 2002. His dissertation researched the impact of infrastructure on economic development in rural areas.

 

Tim Hentschel is Assistant Professor at the US Army's Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where he is curriculum author for the operational level of war course of instruction, which bridges strategic plans and objectives to tactical execution. This curriculum is studied by all US Army majors and selected Air Force, Navy, Marine and interagency officers, as well as military officers from over 100 other nations. He is also a Lt. Colonel in the US Army (Retired).

 

 

 

Lynne Whorley is Associate Professor of Sociology at Mount Mary College. Her principal areas of research interest are in peace and conflict resolution studies and social justice. Her books include Contesting Patriotism: Culture, Power, and Strategy in the Peace Movement (with Patrick Coy and Gregory Many) and her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation. In 2004 she (along with Coy and Many) carried out an NSF grant project titled "Harnessing and Challenging Hegemony During Three Wars: The U.S. Peace Movement, 1990-2004,"  which was a comparative and longitudinal analysis of the discourse of 15 U.S. peace movement organizations during the Gulf War, 9/11 and the Afghanistan War, and the Iraq War. Most recently, she was co-author of a prize winning paper based on this research (see details in Pat Coy's section below).

 

 

 

Some Longer Term Alumni Reflections on the Program

Patrick G. Coy, Associate Professor, Center for Applied Conflict Management and Department of Political Science, Kent State University, 1997 Ph.D. In 1990, I came to the Maxwell School and Social Science Ph.D. program after earlier careers, one of which included a graduate degree in theology, followed by service as a lay campus minister at St. Louis University. When I started looking for a doctoral program I had been around academia long enough to know that I did not want a Ph.D. program designed just to ground me in a single body of particular, discipline-based knowledge.

On the contrary, I wanted a flexible interdisciplinary program that would allow me to build a program around my established and long-term interests in peace and conflict studies, politics and religion, and social movements. At the same time, I also knew that a competitive academic job market meant that if I wanted to get a university appointment, I needed a degree program that would be respected notwithstanding its interdisciplinary character. An international search eventually lead me to choose the Maxwell School at Syracuse, and I never regretted it.

The Social Science Program owes its success largely to the fact that it resides within the Maxwell School. It is effective primarily for two reasons: the Maxwell School attracts some of the best faculty and students in the nation, and the School itself is uncommonly interdisciplinary in its orientation, providing a congenial home for the Social Science Program.

I studied in small seminars with leading scholars in a surprising variety of areas, and I learned so much more about various approaches to social science research than I would have in other programs. I think I did better research and wrote a stronger dissertation as a result, and my current research agenda continues to be positively influenced by that training.

The eclectic methodological training I had has paid off in both my teaching and research. My Kent State appointment requires that I teach classes in three different degree programs: Applied Conflict Management, Political Science, and Public Administration. Due in no small part to the Social Science Program, I was more of less able to hit the ground running when I first arrived at Kent State. I've seldom looked back, but when I have, I am always thankful that I chose the Maxwell School's Social Science Program.

News: Professor Coy and two colleagues (Lynne Woehrle--Maxwell Social Science PhD 1995, now Associate Professor of Sociology at Mount Mary College, and Gregory Maney of Hoftsra University) received a National Science Foundation grant in 2004 for a research project: "Harnessing and Challenging Hegemony During Three Wars: The U.S. Peace Movement, 1990-2004." The project is a comparative and longitudinal analysis of the discourse of 15 U.S. peace movement organizations during the Gulf War, 9/11 and the Afghanistan War, and the Iraq War.  Most recently, a paper by Professors Coy, Whorley and Maney, Discursive Legacies: The U.S. Peace Movement and 'Support the Troops',  Social Problems, 55(2), 2008, p. 161-189, just received the “Outstanding Published Article of 2008 Award” by the American Sociological Association’s Section on Peace, War and Social Conflict.

 

Ruth A. Charles, Professor of Sociology and Social Work, Winona State University, 1997, Ph.D. I am acutely aware of the advantages of an interdisciplinary social science education. It has been of value to me in all that I do. I teach in a school of Social Work (I also hold an MSW degree) and find that I have a depth of knowledge beyond the traditional social work paradigms, which enhances my teaching. My training in interdisciplinary study pushes my class content beyond disciplinary boundaries. My students are challenged when they have to resurrect knowledge from their history, political science or economics classes and connect this information with social work policy and practice. This holistic approach makes a solid foundation for their future careers as social workers through the principle we try to teach them--that there is always more to a story or situation than is at first apparent if you approach it from multiple interpretive perspectives. My interdisciplinary training has also been valuable outside the academic classroom. For example, I have facilitated community issue teams and writtten grant proposals for initiatives aimed at welfare reform, for which we have recieved over $200,000 in grant support. I believe this could not have been done without the skills and knowledge I gained through the Social Science Program. For example, my training in qualitative interviewing and social policy, and the ensuing ability to clearly present people's life narratives in a policy framework, often made our grant applications particularly compelling.

My current research, with funding from the US Election Assistance Commission and the office of Minnesota Secretary of State, involves engaging students directly in the electoral process. With a colleague, we trained and qualified 75 students to serve as poll workers during the 2008 election (currently the average age of poll workers is 72 years). The outcomes were very promising, and nearly all of the students plan on continuing this work in the future. This work will soon be expanded to other universities in the area.

 

 

Bill Warters, Assistant Professor, College of Urban Labor and Metropolitan Affairs, Associate Director, Program on Mediating Theory and Democratic Systems, Wayne State University, 1993 Ph.D. The Social Science Program has worked well for me. I was drawn to the program because I had already established an interdisciplinary educational approach, having attended the Social Ecology Institute at Goddard College, and then going on to create my own major in conflict resolution at the University of California at Santa Cruz. My two areas of special emphasis, violence prevention/intervention and conflict resolution are both inherently interdisciplinary and apply several areas of theory, research and practice. Having access to the full range of the graduate faculty in the Maxwell School provided a wonderful opportunity to fill in gaps in my knowledge, to get to know various faculty and to construct a course of study that built on my strengths and interests. At Syracuse I was able to work closely with the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts and find support I needed to apply for and receive a Guggenheim Fellowship to fund my research on men's violence prevention efforts. I also was able to help found and direct both the Syracuse University Campus Mediation Center, and the program Alternatives: Building Non-Violent Relationships Batterer Intervention Program affiliated with the Vera House Women's Shelter.

After graduating from the Social Science Program I got my first faculty position at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, in the School of Social Systemic Studies. I was one of the first faculty hired to help build a new Masters and Ph.D. program in Dispute Resolution. For a time I was director of the Ph.D. program, where I was able to draw on my experience with interdisciplinary study in very direct and meaningful ways. On a more personal front, I had the good fortune to meet and eventually marry a Canadian academic, but was faced with the challenge of finding a university where both my wife and I could productively work. I think my flexibility as an interdisciplinary scholar really helped us in this quest. We now both work at Wayne State University in a unique job share situation. The current arrangement leaves us each time for raising our young son and advancing our own writing and research. My wife and I are quite happy with the way things turned out. For me, the story thus far is really one of personal satisfaction and success, and I attribute a lot of it to the freedom, and my willingness, to take advantage of the self-directed approach to learning offered by the the Maxwell School's Social Science PhD Program.