Faculty

Kenneth Couch is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics. He earned his Ph.D. in economics in 1992 from the University of Wisconsin . His research focuses on a broad set of issues related to low-income workers and labor markets. The topics he has studied include the impact of workfare programs on welfare recipients, the effects of the Earned Income Tax Credit and Minimum Wages, inter-generational mobility, income inequality, racial discrimination, and the impact of job displacement on workers. His work has received support from the Sloan Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, the U.S. Department of Labor, the Connecticut Department of Labor, and the National Insitute on Aging. His work has appeared in professional journals such as the Journal of Labor Economics , the Journal of Human Resources , and the Gerontologist.

Graduate Students

Representative Publications

Mary J. Fischer is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut . She earned her PhD in demography and sociology in 2003 from the University of Pennsylvania . Her research interests broadly defined concern processes of stratification, particularly by race and ethnicity. Some of the topics she has studied include minorities in higher education, residential segregation, and immigration. She is currently working on a project funded by the Russell Sage Foundation profiling new immigrant destinations.  She is a co-author of The Source of the River (2004) and the author or co-author of numerous articles appearing City and Community, Dubois Review, Ethnic and Racial Studies, EurAmerica, International Migration, Journal of Higher Education, Social Problems, Social Science Research, Sociological Perspectives, and U rban Affairs Review.

Graduate Students

Representative Publications

Preston A. Britner, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and the Associate Department Head of the Department of Human Development & Family Studies. He also holds joint appointments in the Department of Educational Psychology, Neag School of Education, and the Ph.D. program in Public Health (Social and Behavioral Health Sciences), University of Connecticut Center for Public Health & Health Policy. He earned his Ph.D. in Community Psychology and Developmental Psychology from the University of Virginia . Prof. Britner serves as the Editor for The Journal of Primary Prevention and as an Editorial Board member for Child Abuse & Neglect: The International Journal and the Journal of Child and Family Studies . He is a University of Connecticut Teaching Fellow , the highest teaching honor at the university. Prof. Britner has published in the areas of youth mentoring, child maltreatment prevention and the child welfare system, child-parent attachment/caregiving relationships, and social policy and law affecting children and families. He is Co-Chair of the Families with Service Needs Advisory Board, State of Connecticut . He was the national Chair of the Social Policy Committee for the Society for Community Research & Action (SCRA; American Psychological Association, Division 27) for 2005-2006, and is now an elected Member-at-Large & Executive Committee member, APA Div. 37 ( Society for Child and Family Policy and Practice) , Section 1 (Child Maltreatment). He is a Fellow of APA.

Graduate Students

Representative Publications

Thomas J. Cooke earned his PhD from Indiana University prior to joining the Geography Department at the University of Connecticut in 1994. He is primarily interested in how geographic processes contribute to economic differences across social groups. One strand of research considers how the concentration of poor African Americans in central city neighborhoods is linked to residential segregation, the shifting location of job opportunities, and job search behavior. This research has been published in such journals as Urban Geography , Urban Studies , and The Professional Geographer . He is currently serving as a consultant to the Brookings Institution on a project related to the growth of high-poverty neighborhoods in inner-ring suburbs. The other strand of research concerns family migration, with the support of the NSF , Sloan Foundation , and the Social Science Research Council . This research is focused on how the migration decision-making behavior of married-couple families constrains women's career development. Journals in which this research has been published include The Annals of the Association of American Geographers , Environment and Planning A , Economic Geography , Social Science Quarterly and Demography .

Graduate Students

Representative Publications

Professor Ross is a leading figure in the study of housing and mortgage lending discrimination.  His research also focuses on racial segregation, urban labor markets, and urban education.  His work has been published in Review of Economics and Statistics, The Economic Journal, Social Problems, Journal of Urban Economics, as well as a recent book on mortgage lending discrimination published by MIT Press.

Delia Furtado, assistant professor in the Department of Economics, completed her Ph.D. in Economics at Brown University .  Her research focuses on immigration, marriage, family, and education. Interested in the ways ethnic and racial minorities interact with each other and with the general population, she studies topics that range from the causes and consequences of interethnic marriage to the effects of school segregation on future labor market outcomes.  She is affiliated with the Institute for the Study of Labor, IZA, in Bonn , Germany .

David Weakliem is a Professor in the Department of Sociology. He received his PhD in 1987 from the University of Wisconsin , and taught at Cornell and Indiana Universities before coming to UConn. He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the Australian National University . His research interests include public opinion, quantitative methods, and social stratification. He has been a member of the editorial board and Deputy Editor of the American Sociological Review and currently serves on the editorial board of Sociological Methods and Research. His major current project is a book tentatively entitled Model Selection and Hypothesis Testing in the Social Sciences.

Representative Publications

Michael Wallace is a Professor in the Department of Sociology. He received his Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1983. He previously held faculty positions at Yale University , Ohio State University, and Indiana University . His primary areas of research interest are the sociology of work and organizations, social stratification and inequality, and the political economy of U.S. capitalism. Recently, he has initiated a new line of research in urban sociology that uses metropolitan areas as arenas for the exploration of inequality in the U.S. political economy. He is past editor of Research in Social Stratification and Mobility and has served on the editorial boards of the American Sociological Review and Social Forces. He is a co-author of Global Inequalities (1996) and has published in such journals as American Sociological Review , American Journal of Sociology , Cambridge Journal of Economics , Industrial and Labor Relations Review , Research in Social Stratification and Mobility , Sociological Focus, Social Forces , Sociological Forum , Sociological Quarterly , Social Science Research , and Work and Occupations .

Graduate Students

Representative Publications

Bradley Wright studies religion from a social psychological perspective. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, he examines issues such as why do people leave religion, how statistics about religion are constructed, and what is the effect of education upon religion.

Representative Publications