Faculty Awards, Honors, Presentations of Note, and Grants

Spring 2007, Volume 29, Number 1

Awards, Honors, and Presentations of Note

Social psychologist Thomas D. Cook gave several keynote speeches over the fall and winter. He spoke on “Empirical Estimates of the Marginal Advantage of Conducting Randomized Clinical Trials: Results from Experiments and Non-Experiments in Education and Job Training Interventions” on September 14 at the first annual conference on Randomized Controlled Trials in the Social Sciences: Challenges and Pros-pects, York Trials Methods Group, University of York, U.K. He gave two keynote talks on U.S. educational research methods on October 18 at the XI Congreso Nacional de Pedagogía in Colima, Mexico, and on November 8 to the Open Network in Paris. He also delivered lectures on November 18 in Paris: the first on “Evaluations of Programs Using Educational Technologies” to the Tematice interdisciplinary network and a second on empiricism in the social sciences at the Laboratoire d’Education at the Sorbonne. Cook is Joan and Sarepta Harrison Chair in Ethics and Justice and an IPR faculty fellow.

IPR Faculty Fellow Greg Duncan, Edwina S. Tarry Professor in Education and Social Policy, was elected president of the Population Association of America and will start his one-year term in January 2008; he is currently serving as its vice president. He also was elected president of the Society for Research in Child Development and will serve starting in April 2009 for two years. (See the related article .)

Larry V. Hedges, Board of Trustees Professor of Statistics and Social Policy and an IPR faculty fellow, co-organized the invitational meeting of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness in Lansdowne, Va., held from December 10 to 12. More than 150 members attended. Hedges is a co-founder of the organization.

Christopher Kuzawa

Christopher Kuzawa, assistant professor of anthropology and an IPR faculty fellow, gave a plenary lecture on “Evolutionary Constraints on Human Infancy” at the Fourth World Congress of the International Society for Developmental Origins of Health and Disease in Utrecht, Netherlands, on September 14.

Nancy MacLean’s book, Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (Harvard University Press and Russell Sage Foundation, 2006) won an outstanding book award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in Boston. She is professor of history and African American studies and an IPR faculty fellow.

Jennifer Richeson, associate professor of psychology and African American studies and an IPR faculty fellow, was named one of 25 MacArthur Fellows in 2006, receiving a $500,000 no-strings-attached award. Fellows are named for their “creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future.” (See the related article .)

On October 11, James Rosenbaum, professor of human development and social policy and an IPR faculty fellow, made a presentation with Stefanie DeLuca of Johns Hopkins University on “How Housing Can Affect Family Outcomes” at the National Housing Conference Policy Summit in Chicago. He spoke to the Spencer Foundation on November 29 on “The Impact of Research on Social Policy: How Can We Improve the Usability of Research?”

The Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences named Police and Community in Chicago: A Tale of Three Cities (Oxford University Press, 2006) by Wesley G. Skogan, professor of political science and an IPR faculty fellow, its 2007 Outstanding Book. On November 11, Skogan was part of a panel discussing “The War on Crime” at the Chicago Humanities Festival.

Skogan and Bruce D. Spencer were appointed to the National Academy of Sciences panel to review programs of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in December. The bureau collects, analyzes, publishes, and disseminates statistical information on crime, criminal offenders, victims of crime, and the operations of the justice system at all levels of government. Spencer is professor of statistics and an IPR faculty fellow.

IPR Faculty Fellow James Spillane, Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Professor in Learning and Organizational Change, gave the opening address, “The Practice of School Leadership and Management,” at the British Educational Leadership, Management, and Administration Society’s annual meeting on October 6 in Birmingham, England. He was a visiting scholar at the Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique in Lyon, France, this winter.

Kathleen Thelen

Kathleen Thelen, Payson S. Wild Professor in Political Science and an IPR faculty fellow, was elected president of the American Political Science Association’s organized section on politics and history. Her term will begin in September.

Sandra Waxman, professor of psychology and education and an IPR faculty associate, received a James McKeen Cattell Fellowship through the Association for Psychological Science for 2007-08 and a 2007 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.

Recent Grants

Social psychologist Thomas D. Cook, Joan and Sarepta Harrison Chair in Ethics and Justice and an IPR faculty fellow, received funding from the Spencer Foundation to run three week-long workshops on quasi-experimental design analysis during summer 2007 with William R. Shadish of the University of California, Merced. (See the related article.)

Greg Duncan, Edwina S. Tarry Professor in Education and Social Policy and an IPR faculty fellow, received four grants, including a major grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to launch a study on the long-term effects of neighborhoods on low-income youth. (See the related article.) He also received a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts for research on the economic costs of early childhood poverty.

The Administration for Children and Families has awarded a dissertation grant for graduate student Amy Claessens, whose advisor is Greg Duncan, to look at child care during the first year of school, specifically investigating how frequency of use, type, and quality relate to child well-being.

Duncan received a one-year grant for the National Forum on Early Childhood Program Evaluation from the Buffett Early Childhood Fund. The forum is a collaborative effort between four universities, including Harvard and Northwestern, and will include the analysis, synthesis, translation, and dissemination of findings from program evaluation studies to learn more about which early childhood interventions work best and for whom. The forum is under the aegis of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child.

Eszter Hargittai, assistant professor of communication studies and sociology and an IPR faculty associate, received a two-year grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to study college students’ Internet use, skills, and participation. The award will be administered through the School of Communication.

Christopher Kuzawa, assistant professor of anthropology and an IPR faculty fellow, received a grant from the National Institutes of Health for a research project on obesity development and risk-factor clustering of cardiovascular disease in Filipino women and their offspring. It is a subaward through the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Charles F. Manski received an award from the National Science Foundation for a project investigating identification and empirical inference. He is Board of Trustees Professor of Economics and an IPR faculty fellow.

Dorothy Roberts, Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law, professor of African American studies and sociology, and an IPR faculty fellow, was granted an award from the National Science Foundation for her work on race consciousness in law, biotechnology, and the political order. (See the related article on p. 9.)

The Spencer Foundation is supporting research by IPR Faculty Fellow James Rosenbaum, professor of human development and social policy, on implementing “college for all” by using information sources, plans, and actions in the senior year of high school.

Burton Weisbrod, John Evans Professor of Economics and an IPR faculty fellow, received a grant from the Searle Fund for Policy Research that will support research on how changes in tuition, government grants, and voluntary contributions from individuals and corporations affect each other in financing higher education.