Current Graduate Students
Chana Barron
Before coming to the University of Iowa to earn my doctorate, I practiced law for eleven years and then taught at Auburn University – Montgomery. My research interests are in sociology of law, gender and theory. I want to design a legal system that will ensure justice for all. I am also interested in capital litigation and how it affects the lives of women. I am currently working with Celesta Albonetti on a long-term study of federal appellate sentencing law.

Publications

1970 Barron, Chana  "A Digest of Three Papers by Dr. Joseph Beasley"   Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 175, No.3

Forthcoming Bailey, C. Suzanne and Chana Barron  "Constitutional Law: A Multi-Disciplinary Narrative"   Thompson Learning, Spring 2005

Presentations

2004 Albonetti, Celesta and Chana Barron  "On the Way to settled Law: An examination of Law making and Law Finding in Federal Appellate Decisions"   Paper to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Nashville, November 2004

2004 Albonetti, Celesta and Chana Barron  "The Development and Dissemination of Federal Sentencing Law"   Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Chicago, May, 2004

2004 Barron, Chana  "The Impact of Gender on Judicial Reasoning and Decision Making in Capital Cases"   Midwest Law and Society Association Retreat, October 2004

2003 Barron, Chana  "A Sociological Approach to Explaining Gender Disparity In Appellate Outcomes of Death Penalty Sentencing"   Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Denver, November 2003

2002 Lovaglia, Michael, Jeffrey Houser and Chana Barron  "Social Development and Human Evolution: Managing the ingroup Boundary"   Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Chicago,August 2002

1998 Barron, Chana  "Miranda Waivers by the Mentally Retarded: Reconciling the Legal and Mental Health Perspectives"   Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, March, 1998

 
Ana Campos
I received my Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Santa Barbara in Fall 2003 with a quadruple major: Anthropology, Chicano/a Studies, Latin American & Iberian Studies, and Sociology. As an undergraduate I produced a qualitative research paper about Chicana/Latina Sexuality, supported by the UCSB Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Grant. I joined the Sociology Graduate Program at The University of Iowa Fall 2004, where I have been given the opportunity to explore my research interest areas: Criminology, Deviance, Social Psychology, and Gender. Also, I am proud to say that I am the second oldest of nine children, whom I miss and love dearly. My parents, Lilia and Andres, have always encouraged me to set high goals and succeed in life, and I am extremely grateful for their unconditional love.
Vita: CamposCV.doc

 
Abigail Darwin
Abigail is originally from Decorah, Iowa. She graduated from the University of Iowa in 1999 with a BA in Sociology and Political Science. She then moved to Washington, DC, and returned to the University of Iowa in the Fall of 2004 to begin her graduate studies. She is currently pursuing a joint graduate sociology degree and a law degree. Her academic interests include social psychology, the sociology of law, and the sociology of religion. Her non- academic interests include racquetball, tennis, and hanging out with friends.

 
Katherine Kramer
The University of Iowa is my fourth college. I went to the University of Toledo for three years majoring in secondary education and sociology. They dropped my program during my junior year, so I transferred down to the University of Cincinnati where I found out after my third day that my program was dropped there as well. I had to decide between sociology and teaching high school. I knew I loved sociology and eventually wanted to teach at the university level, so I changed my major and took a whole ton of classes to be able to graduate in a year. Through the sociology classes I had taken, I especially loved classes that dealt with crime and deviance. If I wanted to do anything with sociology, I knew I had to go to graduate school. I ended up at the University of South Florida in Tampa for two years getting my MA in criminology but realized that criminology as a discipline was too narrow for me. I wanted to go back to sociology and I loved statistics. That is how I ended up here at the University of Iowa. In my spare time, I love to spend time with my husband and work on the house we just bought this summer. If I could watch people and listen to music all day every day, my life would be complete.

 
Kelly Richardson
I received my BA in anthropology from the University of Iowa. I earned an MA in sociology from San Diego State University with an emphasis in applied research methods. I developed an algorithm for determining the appropriateness of aggregating multi-site data in my master’s thesis. Here at the University of Iowa my specialty areas are criminology and methods and statistics. I plan to evaluate the relationship between neighborhood organizations and crime. Specifically, I am interested in determining the mechanisms that lead from organizational participation to crime prevention in a neighborhood. I am interested in reconceptualizing the way organizations are measured in crime research. I would like to focus on political and social approaches neighborhood organizations utilize when addressing issues of crime and disorder. Does neighborhood context matter? For example, is one approach to problem solving more effective in socially organized areas than disorganized areas? Methodologically, I am focusing on advanced techniques for handling missing data with particular emphasis on multiple imputation. I am interested in finding out how multiple imputation can be implemented with complex survey designs, spatial and network analyses and under what conditions, if any, the method should be avoided.
Vita: RichardsonCV.doc

Publications

2005 Baller, R., D. Shin, K. Richardson.  "An Extension and Test of Sutherlands Concept of Differential Social Organization: The Geographic Clustering of Japanese Suicide and Homicide Rates"   Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior

2003 Litrownik, A.J., Newton, R., Mitchell, B.E., & Richardson, K.K. (2003).  "Long-term follow-up of young children placed in foster care: Subsequent placements and exposure to family violence."   Journal of Family Violence, 18(1):19-28

2002 Baller, Robert D., and Kelly Richardson.  "Social Integration, Imitation and the Geographic Patterning of Suicide."   American Sociological Review: Volume 67, Number 6 December 2002, p 873-888.

1997 Hohm, C. F., Gerber J., Castro, J., Richardson, K.  "Analysis of Focus Groups: University Seminar. In Barefoot, B. et. al., Exploring the Evidence: Reporting Outcomes of First-Year Seminars, Volume II, Monograph Series #25."   Columbia, S. Carolina (University of South Carolina): National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition. (p.91).

Under Review Richardson, K., Kolody, B., Litrownik, A, Bangdiwala, S.  "Aggregating multi-site data: Application of a proposed model for determining appropriateness"   under review by Social Science Research

Work in Progress Baller, R. and Kelly Richardson  "The diffusion of suicidal thoughts and attempts: influences of friends and friends of friends."  

Work in Progress Hurlburt, M., Yeh, M., McCabe, K., Wood, P., Garland, A., Richardson, K.  "Estimating Rates of Mental Health Diagnoses Among Youth in Public Services Using the Child Behavior Checklist and Youth Self-Report."  

Work in Progress Landsverk, J., Litrownik, A., Richarson, K.  "Father involvement with Young Children Placed in Out of Home Care."  

Work in Progress Litrownik, A., Newton, R., Richardson, K., Landsverk, J.  "Long-term Follow-up of Young Children Placed in Foster Care: Subsequent Placements, Characteristics of These Placements and Child Behavior Problems at Four Years of Age"  

Work in Progress Richardson, K. and Robert Baller  "Multiple Imputation: Incorporating Missing Data in Spatial and Network Analyses."  

Presentations

2002 Robert D. Baller, Dong-Joon Shin, and Kelly K. Richardson  "The Spatial Patterning of Homicide and Suicide in Japan: 1985 and 1995"   American Society of Criminology Meetings, Chicago, Illinois, November 2002.

1998 Hohm, C. F., Gerber, J., Castro, J., Richardson, K.  "The Freshman Success Programs at San Diego State University: An Evaluation of a Multi-Faceted Model."   Freshman Year Experience-West, Annual Conference, San Diego, California.

1998 Richardson, K.  "The Influence of Academic Programs on Student Success and Retention."   Pacific Sociological Association Annual Conference, San Francisco, California.

1997 Hohm,C. F., Richardson, K., Rustad, S., Boucher, D., Lio, S.  "The Effect of Infant Simulators on Adolescents’ Attitudes Toward Pregnancies: A Preliminary Investigation."   California Sociological Association Annual Conference, San Diego, California

 
Mark Schultz
Well, graduate school sure beats prison. For the past two years I worked for the Minnesota Department of Corrections. I started as a casework intern at the juvenile facility in Red Wing, and finished off my career as a Correctional Officer at the close security, male prison in Stillwater. Quite the experience. I hope to use these experiences and continue my research on the anatomy of and behaviors in prisons. Maybe dabble in gang activity or the effects of the negative environment on Correctional Officers. The possibilities are endless. I received my Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology, with a minor in Corrections, at Minnesota State University, Mankato in 2003. During my time there I developed a real passion for Sociology. Throughout my years at Mankato I studied deviance (particularly obesity as a form of deviance), the effects of the media on body image, and juvenile delinquency. I hope to continue my studies in deviance and criminology and maybe throw some social psychology in the mix. So, here I am…a sensitive guy from Winona, Minnesota who like to lift weights and play racquetball in his spare time. Graduate school is proving to be quite the challenge…but I’m up for it.

 
Stacy Wittrock
I graduated from the University of Iowa in the spring of 1999 with my BA in Psychology and Sociology. My areas of interest are criminology and stratification. My research interests primarily center on examining the relationship between gender and delinquency. My MA project uses the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine how race, gender and ethnicity affect the family context of delinquency. In this work I draw together theory and research in criminology, as well as, sociology of the family, gender studies and developmental psychology. Another project that I am currently working on with Professor Karen Heimer examines racial threat and imprisonment at the state level. Specifically, we are investigating how various economic and political factors affected imprisonment for African-Americans during the period of 1930 to 1980. In future research, I would like to examine the impact of gender on peer influence and delinquency. In addition, I would like to examine the gender difference in the expression of emotions and how that might contribute to our understanding of the gender gap in delinquency.
Vita: WittrockCV.doc

Publications

2005 Heimer, Karen, Stacy M. Wittrock, and Halime Unal.  "Gender, Crime and the Economic Marginalization of Women."   In Gender and Crime: Patterns of Victimization and Offending. Edited by Karen Heimer and Candace Kruttschitt. New York: New York University Press.

Presentations

2004 Heimer, Karen, Joseph B. Lang, and Stacy Wittrock.  "A Multi-Level Analysis of Welfare, Economic Well-Being, and the Gender Gap in Arrests."   Annual Meetings of the American Society of Criminology in Nashville, Tennessee November 2004.

2003 Heimer, Karen, Halime Unal, and Stacy Wittrock  "Gender, Economic Marginalization and the Gender Gap in Arrests: An Examination of U.S. Cities, 1960-2000."   Annual Meetings of the American Society of Criminology in Denver, Colorado, November 2003

2003 Wittrock, Stacy, Karen Heimer, and Joseph B. Lang  "Variations Across Race and Latino Ethnic Groups in Structural Disadvantage and Violent Delinquency."   Annual Meetings of the American Society of Criminology in Denver, Colorado, November 2003

2002 DeCoster, Stacy, Stacy Wittrock, and Karen Heimer.  "Violent Delinquency in Context: Integrating Social Capital and Street Culture Perspectives."   Annual Meetings of the American Society of Criminology in Chicago, Illinois, November 2002.