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The Department of Sociology & Gerontology
Alumni Newsletter - December 2018
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 | Undergraduate student award winners from spring 2018 | |
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| The Department of Sociology and Gerontology provides its students with opportunities and the expectation to be active learners fully engaged in exploring our most important societal issues, including social justice, aging, and criminology.
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| Greetings from the third floor of Upham Hall! We are excited to share the latest news from the Department of Sociology and Gerontology at Miami. It’s been another exciting and productive year here. Our faculty continue to produce groundbreaking research, our alumni doing amazing things, and our students are doing impressive work in and out of the classroom. Our students receive university-wide awards, including several that were awarded the Presidents Distinguished Service Award. As usual, they continue to get accepted to prestigious graduate and law schools. Our faculty are also recognized for their outstanding commitment and contributions. In just this year, Dr. Kate de Medeiros was selected as the O’Toole Family Professor and named University Distinguished Professor for her outstanding record as a teacher and scholar, and Dr. Kristen Budd became a Senior Research Affiliate of the United States Marshals Service. Several exciting developments are underway in the department. In August, Dr. Matthew Regele joined the department as an assistant professor of organizations and sociology. Matt received his Ph.D. in Organizations and Management from the Yale School of Management, and he’ll help launch a new major in Organizational Leadership (pending approval). The Betty Kent Award continues to fund undergraduate research, and now undergraduate internships. The newly formed Ruth Hill Useem scholarship honors an early graduate of our department who went on to a career researching the role that exposure to global culture has on identity and development. The Ruth Hill Useem award provides scholarships to students studying abroad during the winter term in our SJS 399 course: Social Justice in Fiji. As preparing this newsletter, I’ve had the chance to catch up with students and alumni, and continue to be amazed by all of the great work they do. I’d love to hear from as many as you (and those I may not have met!) as possible. Please, drop me a note sometime and let me know what you’ve been up to. Our commitment to our students at Miami does not end when the semester is over. One of the most satisfying aspects of the work we do is seeing what our former students accomplish after they leave the friendly confines of Miami’s campus. I hope you’ll read more about the exciting developments among faculty, students, and alumni in this newsletter, and take the opportunity to reconnect with all of them.
Stephen Lippmann
Professor and Chair
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Student Spotlights: Emily Mueller and Shelby Frye We caught up with two of our current students to ask them about their experiences so far at Miami.
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|  Emily Mueller
Senior gerontology major Emily Mueller was able to contuct her own research in GTY 479: Research on Inequality in Aging and Health, and hopes to apply those skills in graduate school. | |  Shelby Frye
In the summer of 2018, sophomore sociology major Shelby Frye participated in the American Sociological Association’s honors program, and presented a paper at the annual meeting in Philadelphia. | |
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Faculty Spotlights: Kate de Medeiros, Mark Regele, and Michael Loadenthal
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| Kate de Medeiros Kate de Medeiros, associate professor, the O’Toole Family Professor of Gerontology, Scripps Research Fellow, and affiliate of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, is now in her eighth year at Miami University. In her time here, she has become a highly regarded teacher while also continuing to build an impressive body of published research. Her current research interests include the aging self, narratives and life stories, generativity, friendships in later life, and the arts in dementia research. Dr. de Medeiros was also recently invited to be an Associate Editor for the prestigious academic journal The Gerontologist, a significant honor that reflects her status in the field. Dr. de Medeiros completed her doctoral work at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She also holds an MS in Gerontology from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, and a BA in English and American Literature from Northwestern University. Here, Dr. de Medeiros tells us about her current research and teaching activities and experience as a Miami faculty member.
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| Matthew Regele Matthew Regele joined the Department of Sociology & Geronotology in the fall of 2018. In addition to teaching various sociology courses, Dr. Regele is spearheading, with Dr. Stephen Lippmann, an effort to create a new Organizational Leadership major. The major will be housed in the Department of Sociology & Gerontology, but will be interdisciplinary and incorporate courses from throughout the university. The intention is to help students recognize how the broad-based skills they are developing in their liberal arts courses can be used to solve pressing, yet constantly evolving, organizational problems. Dr. Regele comes to Miami from Yale University, where he completed his PhD in Organizations & Management. He also holds an MBA from Babson College and a BA in Economics from Bowdoin College. Dr. Regele’s dissertation work focused on how individuals make sense of tensions and conflicts in organizations, particularly during times of dramatic organizational change. He is particularly interested in such issues in the context of higher education. Moving forward, he plans to build on these interests by examining how individuals make educational and career decisions, and how those choices impact individuals, organizations, and labor markets. Here, Dr. Regele reflects on his transition to Miami and goals as a member of the department.
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| Michael Loadenthal Michael Loadenthal holds a Ph.D. from the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (George Mason University), and a Master’s degree in Terrorism Studies from the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (University of St Andrews). Dr. Loadenthal has published frequently in venues including Critical Studies on Terrorism, Perspectives on Terrorism, Journal of Applied Security Research, Radical Criminology, and the Journal for the Study of Radicalism, which described his work as “the cutting edge of movement Studies” (2016, 10:2; 5). His most recent book, The Politics of Attack (Manchester University Press, 2017), investigates contemporary, clandestine networks of insurrectionary anarchists and the development of the communique. In addition, Dr. Loadenthal serves editorial and directorship roles for several projects including Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest, Interface: A Journal for and About Social Movements, and the Journal of Terrorism Research. Dr. Loadenthal also serves as the Executive Director of the Peace and Justice Studies Association. At Miami, Dr. Loadentual has led a team of dozens of students on The Prosecution Project: a patterned analysis and taxonomy of felony criminal cases involving political violence in the U.S. Recently, Dr Loadenthal sat down with the Miami University communications team to talk about this project.
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Alumni Spotlights: Valerie Bonner, Denise Top, and Ethan Steinberg
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| We reconnected with several departmental alumni, who are doing very different, but very interesting things. - Denise Top (Sociology, ’93) is a founding partner of Top DePaul LLP, and focuses on plaintiff employment law.
- Valerie Bonner (Sociology, ’10) is the survey research Lead at Google.
- Ethan Steinberg (Social Justice Studies, ’13) and worked in a variety of industries before co-founding Propagate Ventures, a venture capital firm focusing on sustainable agriculture and forestry.
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