The Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline (FAD) is a competitive small grants program funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the American Sociological Association.
Keri Burchfield, assistant professor, was awarded a FAD Grant for $6,975 to continue her survey research of registered sex offenders' experiences in their local communities. Dr. Burchfield is interested in exploring registered sex offenders' access to local social capital, including their experiences finding and maintaining housing, relationships, and employment and their management of harassment and stigma. Starting in the summer of 2006, she and Will Mingus, a sociology grad student, conducted interviews with 23 registered sex offenders in northern Illinois . Their co-authored paper, "Not in My Neighborhood: Assessing Registered Sex Offenders' Experiences with Local Social Capital and Social Control," was recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Criminal Justice and Behavior. Currently, Burchfield and Mingus are administering a related survey to sex offenders around the northern Illinois area.
Carla Goar, associate professor, was also awarded a FAD Grant along with co-investigaor Jane Sell from Texas A&M University for $3,500 in partial support for the conference titled "Expanding Experimental Investigations of Race/Ethnicity in Sociology," held at Texas A&M in College Station, TX on March 1 and 2, 2008. For more information, see FAD Conference 2008.