2021 Sociology Newsletter

SOCIOLOGY NEWSLETTER | Issue #6 Campus, the Community, and Collaboration As we emphasize throughout this newsletter, this past year has been difficult for our entire campus community. Relocating to a new state and starting a new job can be stressful under normal circumstances, but doing so amid a global pandemic is particularly challenging. We checked in with our newest department member, Dr. Jared Fitzgerald , to talk more about his first year at Oklahoma State University. Dr. Fitzgerald joined the Department of Sociology this past fall after earning his Ph.D. from Boston College in May 2020. He previously graduated from the University of Utah (M.S. in Sociology) and Boise State University (B.A. in History, minor in Sociology). Dr. Fitzgerald ’ s research focuses on the political economy of environmental change and sustainability, and he is particularly interested in understanding pathways to sustainability that protect the environment as well as improve human wellbeing. Although new faculty normally arrive to welcome parties and lots of coffee meetings, Dr. Fitzgerald ’ s experience was far from the norm. Nearly all department members have been working remotely due to the COVID - 19 pandemic, but Dr. Fitzgerald told us that colleagues have been extremely supportive and that he has been impressed with the resilience of the students at OSU. Despite the difficulties of starting a job during a pandemic, Dr. Fitzgerald hit the ground running this past year, co - authoring two articles on environmental and public health outcomes. He also began collaborating with Assistant Professor of Political Science, Dr. Kristin Olofsson, on an exciting new project focusing on sustainability in rural Oklahoma, with an emphasis on Harmon and Tillman counties. This mixed methods project, which is funded by Oklahoma State University ’ s Rural Renewal Initiative, links global sustainable development goals to the rural Oklahoma context. Through both quantitative and qualitative approaches, the project aims to equip local residents with the tools they need to build local organizational capacities, create policy change, and maintain healthy, vibrant, and self - sustaining local economies. Drs. Olofsson and Fitzgerald write that effective policies “ are typically best crafted with participatory and deliberative processes that directly engage community members, recognize the complexity of problems in rural areas, and make use of that complexity to craft effective policy interventions. ” Although local organizations and leaders typically spearheaded this process in the past, since the 1970s local political party organizations have slowly been replaced by “ media - driven and mass audience - based persuasion tactics. ” This has had dire consequences for rural communities “ where there are typically few or no other local organizational structures present to absorb communities ’ vulnerabilities and channel community actions toward policy interventions. ” The project has proceeded in stages. The first stage involves collecting quantitative data measuring, among others, public health, environment and natural resources, education and economic outcomes. The second stage, which will begin this summer, involves community engagement and interviews in Harmon and Tillman counties. Dr. Fitzgerald told us that this project “ involves interdisciplinary collaboration not only between faculty members but also with graduate and undergraduate students from both departments as well. ” In addition to undergraduate students from political science, sociology PhD students Belal Hossain and Martha Sibley will have major roles in both data collection and analysis this coming summer. When asked about what most excites him about this project, Dr. Fitzgerald remarked that it is “ the ability to connect global sustainability efforts to efforts in local and rural areas. The global issues can often be disconnected from local issues (particularly in rural areas) in the sustainability discourse. This is an exciting opportunity to think about how sustainability efforts operate at smaller scales and how local and global efforts can complement each other. ” Dr. Kristin Olofsson of the Department of Political Science. Dr. Jared Fitzgerald of the Department of Sociology.