The nearly 80,000 immigrants older than 65 who arrive in the U.S. each year are often overlooked by society because they don't hold paid jobs or speak fluent English, says UC Irvine sociology professor Judith Treas. "Elderly immigrants remain in the shadows," says Treas, whose research on them was recently published in Generations, a journal of the American Society on Aging. "They never win spelling bees. They don't join criminal gangs. Nobody worries about Americans losing jobs to Korean grandmothers." Over the last 15 years, Treas and her students have interviewed many foreign-born seniors and their relatives and friends. The immigrants have come from a wide range of countries, including Iran, Mexico, Korea, Pakistan and Cambodia. Treas hopes her research will raise awareness of the issues facing elderly immigrants.   More »

Network analysis models can be used to predict the spread of HIV or the collapse of the U.S. economy, and two UCI researchers are at the forefront of this rapidly expanding field. Sociologist Carter Butts (pictured) and anthropologist Douglas White recently published articles in Science magazine stressing the need for researchers and policymakers alike to regard network analysis as an evolving science. "As we learn more about networks in a wider range of contexts, we are discovering sometimes surprising things about what does and does not matter for understanding social systems," says Butts. Papers are available here: www.sciencemag.org/content/vol325/issue5939/index.dtl.   More »

UC Irvine sociologist Andrew Penner's research has shown that, over time, changes in social standing - such as income level, employment and incarceration status - alter the way people racially categorize themselves and others. Now Penner and University of Oregon colleague Aliya Saperstein are expanding the study, thanks to a $35,000 grant from the Russell Sage Foundation to explore how thinking about race as fluid provides insight into inequality. "By recognizing that perceptions of race are fluid and connected to stereotypes about social status," Penner says, "we hope to be able to explain some of the reasons that racial inequality persists in today's society and inform policies aimed at addressing it."   More »

People looking for love on Internet dating sites often follow racial stereotypes, according to a new study by UC Irvine sociologists. Cynthia Feliciano (pictured) and Belinda Robnett collected data from Yahoo personals between September 2004 and May 2005, randomly selecting profiles of people ages 18-50 in the Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Atlanta metropolitan regions. While white men were more open to dating outside their race than white women, both had specific racial preferences. White men preferred Asian and Latino dating partners to African Americans; white women were more likely to exclude Asian men. According to Feliciano, negative portrayals of African American women and Asian men in popular culture could contribute to these preferences   More »

Wang Feng, UC Irvine sociology professor and chair, recently received a $500,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation to study China's controversial one-child per couple birth control policy. Wang and colleagues will study the policy's social and economic implications in light of the country's looming healthcare and labor shortage crisis. "With China's low fertility level, we're certain to see the number of new entrants to the workforce cut in half within the next 10 years," he says. "We also will see the median age of the entire country increase to 50 years old by 2050 if the current demographic trend continues."   More »

Networking is seen as necessary to succeed in business, and Latina professionals are no exception. According to a recent study by UC Irvine sociology graduate student Jody Agius Vallejo, ethnic professional associations are key to a Latina businesswoman's ability to thrive in Orange County's corporate world. Previous research suggested Latinas lack involvement in professional organizations. Agius Vallejo found this is not the case. "These organizations and associations help Latinas develop skills that aren't learned in a classroom - like business etiquette and socializing through golf – which are very important in the area’s corporate culture," she says. Agius Vallejo will present her work at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in Boston Aug. 4. The study will be published in the association's City & Community journal.   More »

Each year, the nation’s top law firms spend 3 to 5 percent of their time on pro bono work. That figure has inspired UC Irvine sociology graduate student Steven Boutcher to study the influence law firms have on social movements through the causes they choose to represent. Boutcher has received a $10,600 award from the National Science Foundation to analyze pro bono cases taken on by top firms over the past 10 years and determine whether patterns exist in the types of causes firms represent. "A significant chunk of social change is driven by elite lawyers in large law firms," says Boutcher, who notes that pro bono work has more than doubled across the nation's top 200 firms since 1998.   More »

David Snow, Chancellor's Professor of Sociology at UC Irvine, will receive the 2008 Lee Founders Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems at the society’s annual meeting in Boston Aug. 1. Snow is widely recognized for his work on homelessness and social movements. His 1993 book, Down on Their Luck: A Study of Homeless Street People, co-authored with Leon Anderson, received a number of awards, including Best Book of the Year from the Pacific Sociological Association. He’s now studying homelessness in Los Angeles, Paris, Tokyo and Sao Paulo, and plans to publish his findings in a book.   More »

Edwin Amenta, UC Irvine sociology professor, has received a $150,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study the rise, decline and persistence of social movement organizations throughout the last century. Armenta will track changes within and across social movements using coverage from national newspapers to determine which movements and organizations have received the most media attention and what accounts for their media coverage. Armenta's study will serve as the first long-term mapping of social movements that have impacted public sentiment over the last 100-plus years. The program will cover a two-year period.   More »

Arab American women, while highly educated, often have lower levels of employment than women of other racial or ethnic groups, according to a new study by UC Irvine sociologist Jen'nan Read. Read's findings suggest that cultural and familial traditions -- rather than career aspirations -- are a driving force behind Arab American women's motivation to obtain college degrees. "Arab Americans place a strong emphasis on higher education for women," Read said. "However, they stress education not as a means toward achieving a high-powered career as is often the case with U.S. women, but more as a resource to ensure that women can properly teach their children while caring for the family and maintaining their religious and ethnic identity." The study will be published in the April issue of the American Sociological Review.   More »

Barbara Sarnecka, cognitive sciences professor at UC Irvine, has been awarded a two-year, $152,000 grant from the National Institute of Health to study early childhood education. Sarnecka and her research team will work with preschool-age children and direct different education games in which the youngsters perform cognitive tasks such as counting different objects and grouping them into different boxes. Their goal is to determine how and when children start learning number concepts. "Children learn to count at a very young age," Sarnecka said, "but the conceptual understanding of what the number words actually mean comes later." Parents with children under age four who are interested in participating may visit www.cogsci.uci.edu/cogdev/index.html, call 949-824-5492 or e-mail cogdev@uci.edu.   More »

Jeanett Castellanos, a lecturer in UC Irvine’s Social Sciences and Chicano/Latino Studies and director of the Social Sciences Academic Resource Center, was named recipient of the Samuel M. Turner MENTOR Award by the American Psychological Association. MENTOR stands for Minority Education, Nurturing, Training, Organizational advocacy and Research. The award honors a psychology faculty member who has demonstrated a commitment to teaching and training clinical psychologists to work more effectively with ethnic minority clinical populations. Castellanos, who earned bachelor's degrees in psychology and sociology from UCI in 1994, will receive the award during the APA convention in San Francisco this August.   More »

Annette Burgueno, a UC Irvine alumna who graduated in June with a bachelor’s in sociology, was recently named a Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Graduate Scholarship recipient. Designed to help young people of exceptional promise reach their full potential, the scholarship program awards up to $50,000 annually for up to six years of graduate study. Recipients are chosen for their academic achievement, financial need, will to succeed and leadership and community involvement. Burgueno grew up around neglect, poverty and drug abuse. She found hope through her deaf/mute grandmother. The first in her family to graduate from high school and college, Burgueno will pursue a master’s in social work at USC in the fall, and eventually work as an advocate on behalf of at-risk children and families. UCI’s first Jack Kent Cooke scholar, Burgueno is from Whittier, Calif.   More »

Jen’nan Ghazal Read, sociology assistant professor, has won a scholar-in-residence grant from the Albert and Elaine Borchard Foundation that will send her to a castle in the French countryside for scholarly work. Read will spend fall 2007 completing publications about her research on Muslim-American political incorporation in the idyllic setting of Chateau de la Bretesche in Missillac, France. She is one of just two scholars selected annually for this prestigious program, which aims to give faculty a home base for completing research and writing for scholarly publications. Read spent last year as a Carnegie Scholar analyzing national data on Muslim-American political incorporation.   More »

Jen'nan Read, assistant professor of sociology, has won a scholar-in-residency grant from the Albert and Elaine Borchard Foundation that will send her to a castle in the French countryside for scholarly work. Read will spend fall 2007 completing publications about her research on Muslim-American political incorporation in the idyllic setting of Chateau de la Bretesche in Missillac, France. She is one of just two scholars selected annually for this prestigious program, which aims to give faculty a home base for completing research and writing for scholarly publications. Read spent last year as a Carnegie Scholar analyzing national data on Muslim-American political incorporation.   More »

Sociology lecturer Chuck O’Connell was recently selected as the graduating senior class’s Outstanding Professor in the social sciences. This marks the ninth year O’Connell has been named Outstanding Professor, quite an accomplishment for a lecturer who has only been with the university for 12 years. Other honorees include Catherine M. Famiglietti, mathematics lecturer; Jennifer J. Fisher, dance assistant professor; Michael Franz, computer science associate professor; Michael McCarthy, mechanical and aerospace engineering professor; Lauren M. Steimer, film and media studies lecturer; Cameron J. Talley, criminology, law and society lecturer; and Arthur Weis, ecology and evolutionary biology professor.   More »

While considering comprehensive immigration reform, Congress called on UC Irvine sociology professor Rubén Rumbaut, a leading scholar on assimilation of immigrants and their children. He testified Wednesday, May 16, before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law at a special hearing, “Becoming Americans – U.S. Immigrant Integration,” in Washington, D.C. Rumbaut is the author of the award-winning Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation, and is currently leading a major study about social mobility of immigrants in Los Angeles.   More »