2025 Sociology Newsletter
Message from the Chair
Greetings to our alumni and friends of the Sociology Department!
I hope all of you are doing well. The Department of Sociology continues to thrive with a growing number of students majoring in our programs and impactful research by faculty members during another year of transitions. Dr. Steve Tuch, professor of sociology and public policy and public administration, retired in fall 2024. His accomplishments are highlighted in this newsletter.
Additionally, I am excited to announce the transition to new leadership. Starting July 2025, Dr. Ivy Ken will take on the role of chair. I have every confidence that Ivy will lead us into an exciting new chapter. It has been an honor to work alongside such dedicated faculty, engaging students and resourceful staff members.
As a department, we remain committed to engaging with the pressing issues of our time. As always, thank you for your generous support and for continuing to engage with the GW community!
Sincerely,
Dr. Hiromi Ishizawa
Chair, Department of Sociology
Department Spotlights
Dr. Steve Tuch’s Retirement
Dr. Steve Tuch, professor of sociology and public policy and public administration, retired in fall 2024. Over his long career at GW, Dr. Tuch has left a powerful imprint on the discipline of sociology through his research and teaching. Dr. Tuch’s research and teaching interests are expansive, and they include race and ethnic relations; stratification, inequality and mobility; comparative stratification examining the post-communist states of Central and Eastern Europe; public opinion; survey research; and quantitative methods.
Across these diverse topics, Dr. Tuch has effectively applied the sociological imagination. His work demonstrates a commitment to the strengths and potentials of quantitative methodology and, importantly, an overriding concern with the relationship of that methodology to the discovery and expression of social truth. At a moment in history, when we find people so uncertain about what information they can actually trust, sociological research rooted in empirical evidence and rigorous methods of analysis remains at the heart of discovering the shape and character of our attitudes and institutions.
Dr. Tuch has worked with colleagues in the discipline of sociology to further the understanding of vital topics, often anticipating the significance of subjects before they became part of mainstream discourse. Consider some of the books he published, including:
- Race and Policing in America: Conflict and Reform (2006) with Ronald Weitzer;
- The Other African Americans: Contemporary African and Caribbean Immigrants in the United States (2007) with Yoku Shaw-Taylor; and
- Religion, Politics and Polarization: How Religiopolitical Conflict is Changing Congress and American Democracy (2013) with William V. D’Antonio and Josiah Baker.
As these titles suggest, Dr. Tuch was doing early and important work on problems that are at the forefront of American society today—police brutality, the growth of a minority majority society as demographics shift and the profile of the nation changes and the place of religion in the politics and governance of U.S. institutions.
He has also contributed his expansive knowledge of teaching and learning of quantitative methods to the recently published textbook, The Fundamentals of Social Research (2022), co-authored with Paul M. Kellstedt and Guy D. Whitten.
Dr. Tuch’s interests have not been limited to U.S. society. In the 1990s, Dr. Tuch began a long-standing personal and academic relationship with Eastern Europe, in particular Poland, where he was a visiting scholar at the Institute of Sociology at Jagiellonian University in 2003- 04 and 200-11. He developed active and fruitful collaborations with Polish sociologists in Cracow, as well as other cities around the country. He worked with Polish scholars to complete comparative studies of various forms of inequality in the U.S. and Poland.
He has also shaped the academic experiences of his students over many years of teaching: under his guidance, master’s students have gone on to successfully complete their theses, and many have taken their skills, including knowledge of advanced statistical methods, into fruitful careers around and outside of the District of Columbia.
Dr. Tuch also taught thousands of undergraduate students in courses like Racial & Ethnic Relations and Techniques of Data Analysis. He instructed his students with commitment and care, pioneering the first semesters of a new capstone course, SOC 4195: Senior Research Seminar, in which sociology majors had an opportunity to develop an original senior thesis to draw together curiosities and four years of study.
Dr. Tuch will be deeply missed and his impact will be felt for generations to come.
Alumni Spotlight
Congratulations to GW Sociology alumnus Kenneth Sebastian León, MA ’13, who was recently tenured and promoted to associate professor of Latino and Caribbean studies and criminal justice at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.
Sebastian reflected on how GW shaped his academic and professional trajectory:
My GW story began in April 2011. I was at “Club Stroz”—the main library at Florida State University, when I received a phone call with a 202-area code. On the line was Director of Graduate Studies for the GW Sociology Department Ivy Ken. She informed me that I was accepted to the MA criminology program. The feeling that I had won the lottery was sincere.
Being a TA was invaluable for building my confidence for public speaking and learning what it takes to manage both large and small classrooms. Fran Buntman’s syllabi formed the basis of my own approach to syllabus design and student-centric course policies. Ivy Ken and Dameon Alexander were each role models in how they used the available space in the classroom, varying their voice, facial expressions and intentional movements around the room to bring course materials and class discussions to life.
The coursework in the program empowered me to grow in planned and unplanned directions. I was able to take a forensic pathology course taught by Victor Weedn, where, for me, the “rubber met the road” for thinking about what scientific paradigms can and cannot offer in mulling over the profound dignities and indignities of my experience observing autopsies at the DC Medical Examiners Office. Michelle Kelso’s Qualitative Methods course gave me permission to hang out at McPherson Square at the peak of the Occupy Wall Street movement to test an interview instrument.
Hiromi Ishizawa made statistics less intimidating and more enjoyable. Ron Weitzer’s seminars helped me understand criminological perspectives in a broader and more enriching sociological context. Bill Chambliss would matter-of-factly assume that I would continue to pursue a PhD, even though I had no idea what that was about, or whether it was for me. Octavia and Maureen (Mo) kept the place running and had a constant presence of kindness and encouragement.
My experience writing the MA thesis under the direction of Ron Weitzer and Fran Buntman was so pleasant that I finally saw the light: If I could convince some institution to pay me to continue reading, writing and typing up papers, I would like to do that. So I applied to doctoral programs, and I had another stroke of luck and privilege to keep that going.
Now tenured at Rutgers–New Brunswick, I continue to benefit from the mentorship, friendship and collegiality of GW faculty, alumni and staff—both past and present. My career shows the positive influence and formative role of GW Sociology in shaping who I am, how I think and the kinds of questions I like to ask. My first publications were with Ron Weitzer, and then with Dan Martinez. Ivy Ken and I continue to build a shared research program around food systems and structural inequality, resulting in both intramural and extramural funding. This longstanding collaboration has been central to why I genuinely love my job.
As I’m sure is the case with so many of us, we can all reflect and point to the people and places that shaped us. I owe so much to those who made my experience at GW Sociology so profoundly positive, and I continue to try to be to others what so many GW faculty have been to me.
Faculty Kudos
- Fran Buntman was chosen to participate in the AY 2024-2025 Civic Engagement and Voting Rights Teacher Scholars hosted by Clemson University and supported through the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She also completed her term as the Sociology Department’s director of graduate studies in June 2024.
- Michelle Kelso and her colleague Jennifer Fox of the Elliott School received a $220,00 grant to conduct an impact evaluation for the nonprofit Zoe Empowers. The comprehensive three-year program focuses on youth (15-19) living in extreme poverty, empowering them with entrepreneurship skills, training in areas like health and child rights and small grants so they can transform their lives. The Kelso-Fox team began their research in 2024 in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Rwanda. The project will conclude in December 2025.
- Ivy Ken and alumnus K. Sebastian León, MA ’13, were awarded funding from the National Science Foundation for a two-year project focused on multinational meatpacking companies. The funding allows them to investigate why these companies have increasingly opened facilities in remote, rural areas of the United States where there are few workers. Nearly half of front-line workers in this industry, where Black and Latinx people are disproportionately employed, are identified as women. Conceptually, the project integrates socio-legal understandings of corporate personhood within a framework of settler colonialism to understand the harms to sustainable food production that occur when companies use rural US land and federal immigration law to accomplish their economic goals. Professors Ken and León published a related article on this topic in 2024 in the journal Crime, Law, and Social Change called “Capture, Commodify, Kill: Legitimized Harms and Industrial Meatpacking in the United States.”
Professor Ken also presented papers at the Eastern Sociological Society meeting in Washington, D.C., and at the Sociologists for Women in Society meeting in Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico in 2024. The presentations focused on the Indigenous and matrilineal roots of sociology, with attention to the Acoma Pueblo, the longest continually inhabited community in North America. Professor Ken and Cynthia Deitch, associate professor emerita, visited the Acoma Pueblo together in March.
In addition, Professor Ken developed a new course with support from the Global Food Institute, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Students in the course, called Food and Workers of the World, work in teams to chart and analyze the commodity chains of specific foods, focusing on the characteristics of work and workers at each node.
Professor Ken was also invited to serve as discussant for the thematic session, “Opening Doors and Building Community: The University as a Site for Building Intersectional Solidarity and Research,” at the American Sociological Association meeting in Montréal, Québec, Canada, in 2024. The theme of the annual meeting was Intersectional Solidarities: Building Communities of Hope, Justice, and Joy.
- Mohana Mukherjee was honored to be selected as one of the top six finalists for Professor of the Year at GW. She also co-authored a paper on experiential learning and university teaching and learning grants evaluation (2022-2023, University of Calgary) in December 2024.
Alumni Class Notes
- Tessa Campbell, BS ’07, is in her 10th year working for Deloitte as a newly promoted manager. She is part of the Digital & Analytics team supporting talent innovation & solutions. She spends her free time with her husband Cristian and their 2-year-old son Rio.
- Jacqueline Hazlett, MA ’17, is a senior analyst at FINRA and resides in Charleston, S.C. She is also the founder of a local animal outreach program dedicated to wildlife rescue and providing emergency placement for dogs and cats in need.
- Pamela Howard, BA ’96, has been supporting moms in finding joy in parenthood and fostering extraordinary relationships with their kids through her podcast, book, counseling and coaching.
- Zoerina Ledwidge, BA ’18, is a RN and a doula experience specialist with Mae, a healthcare startup.
- Lawrence Levine, BA ’63, is proud that her granddaughter is a sophomore at George Washington University.
- Greggor Mattson, BA ’97, released an expanded version of Greggor Mattson’s book Who Needs Gay Bars? Bar-Hopping through America's Endangered LGBTQ+ Places (Redwood). He is still professor and chair of sociology at Oberlin College & Conservatory in Ohio.
- Nicole Norkin, BA ’05, is a therapist in private practice in New York City.
- Sofia Salazar, MA ’24, went from junior analyst in open source intelligence to a senior analyst and is now manager of intelligence, overseeing the largest team at Hetherington Group.
- Brian Shively, BA ’93, works at Beavercreek Schools in Ohio. His son, William, is a Freshman Clark Scholar at GW studying civil engineering.
- Douglas Vander Wal, BA ’84, worked several accounting jobs in the aerospace field and has great memories from playing for GW basketball team 1981-84.
- Hazel Weiser, BA ’70, having completed the first statewide survey of the status of voting while detained in county jail for the League of Women Voters of New York State, is working to enact the Democracy During Detention bill to ensure access to the ballot.
- Sara Wolf, BA ’12, serves coaches and athletes in Annapolis Maryland as an area representative with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. She helps coaches reach their fullest potential and discover their God-given purpose.
- Patrick Woodward, BA ’07, serves as the development director for the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, a nonprofit organization that empowers local climate action through a network of local governments and community partners.