These are among the major awards, research grants and fellowships that UC Davis sociology graduate students have earned.
Awards by Year
- 2019
- Kristin McCarty selected for 2019 Grad Studies Travel Award
- 2018
- - Hunter Savannah: National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program Award
- Chendong Pi: Dean's Distinguished Graduate Fellowship
- Aliyah Middleton: UC Davis Provost's First-Year Fellowship in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
- Jingjing Chen: UCD Humanities Graduate Research Award
- Amara Miller: Frank and Carolan Walker Fellowship - 2017
- - Kristin McCarty: Leon Mayhew Award
- Zeke Baker: Provost's Dissertation Year Fellowship in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
- Sarah Combellick: UC Davis Provost's First-Year Fellowship in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
- Beth Hart A Grant to Attend #realcollege
- Asia Ivey: UC Historically Black Colleges and Universities Initiative Fellowship
- Jess Kolber The DHI Working Group Grant
- Robin Savinar: Provost's Dissertation Year Fellowship in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Center for Comparative Immigration Studies CA Immigration Reserech Initiative Fellowship
- Alana Stein and Roy Taggueg The Mellon Public Scholars Fellowship - 2016
- - Ethan Evans: The Quality, Safety, and Comparative Effectiveness Research Training (QSCERT) Postdoctoral Fellowship, UC Davis Health System
- Joanna Hale: Schwall Dissertation Year Fellowship
- Joanna Hale: Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
- Sean Arseo: Leon Mayhew Award
- Bridget Clark: Leon Mayhew Award
- Jonathan Jordan: UC Davis Provost's First-Year Fellowship in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
- Kelsey Meagher: Provost's Dissertation Year Fellowship in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
- Emerald Nguyen: ASA Congressional Fellowship Award
- Jeremy Prim: UC Historically Black Colleges and Universities Initiative Fellowship
- Krysti Ryan: Graduate Student Travel Award
- Robin Savinar: California Immigration Research Initiative Fellowship
- Roy Taggueg: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Fellowship, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health - 2015
- - Eli Alston-Stepnitz: UC Davis Provost's First-Year Fellowship in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
- Ezekiel Baker: Graduate Student Travel Award, Graduate Studies
- Angela Carter: Leon Mayhew Award
- Ali R. Chaudhary: Marie Curie ITN Early Career Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Oxford
- Ali R. Chaudhary: Social Sciences Dean's Doctoral Fellowship for Excellence
- Joanna Hale: Graduate Student Travel Award, Graduate Studies
- Brian Halpin: Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award, Graduate Studies
- Brian Halpin: Provost's Dissertation Year Fellowship in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
- Christopher Lawrence: UC Davis Provost's First-Year Fellowship in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
- Kelsey Meagher: UC Davis and Humanities Graduate Research Award
- Gillian Moise: Cota-Robles Fellowship
- Emerald Nguyen: ASA Minority Fellowship Award
- Julianne Smith: Leon Mayhew Award
- Jennifer Tyree-Hageman: Dissertation Grant from the National Center for Sustainable Transportation - 2014
- - Lauren Acosta: UC Davis Provost's First-Year Fellowship in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
- Ali Chaudhary: UC Davis Dissertation Year Fellowship
- Samantha Felice: UC Davis Provost's First-Year Fellowship in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
- Charlotte Glennie: Cota-Robles Fellowship
- Joanna Hale: Leon Mayhew Award
- Brian Halpin: UC Davis and Humanities Graduate Research Award; Social Science Dean’s Doctoral Fellowship for Excellence Award
- Krysti Ryan: UC Davis Provost's Dissertation Year Fellowship - 2013
- - Elizabeth Boylan: UC Davis Provost's First-Year Fellowship in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
- Ali Chaudhary: UC Center for New Racial Studies Graduate Research Grant
- Ali Chaudhary: Visiting Study Fellowship, International Migration Institute, University of Oxford
- Valerie Feldman: UC Davis Dissertation Year Fellowship; UC Davis Professors for the Future Fellowship
- Elizabeth Hart: Cota-Robles Fellowship
- Jennifer Haylett: UC Davis Social Sciences Dean's Doctoral Fellowship for Excellence Award
- John Kincaid: UC Davis Dissertation Year Fellowship
- Kelsey Meagher: Leon Mayhew Award
- Zachary Psick[JM1]: UC Davis Provost's First-Year Fellowship in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
- Mai Thai: National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program - 2012
- - Ali Chaudhary: Leon Mayhew Award
- Cara Chiaraluce: UC Davis Medical Humanities Research Fellowship
- Cara Chiaraluce: White Family Graduate Student Research Award, John Muir Institute for the Environment, Environmental Justice Project, UC Davis
- Valerie Feldman: UC Davis Consortium for Women and Research Graduate Student Research Award; UC Davis Poverty Center Summer Fellowship
- Daniel Herda: UC Davis Dissertation Year Fellowship; Winner of the Pacific Association of Public Opinion Research (PAPOR) Graduate Student Paper Competition; UC Davis Dean's of Social Sciences Student Research Achievement Award
- Phyllis Jeffrey: UC Davis Graduate Travel Award
- Rachel Nickens: UC Davis Provost's First-Year Fellowship in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
- Julianne Smith: UC Davis Provost's First-Year Fellowship in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
- Monica Williams: University of California Humanities Research Award - 2011
- - Jaime Becker: Fahs-Beck Scholar, Fahs-Beck Fund for Research and Experimentation
- Ali Chaudhary: Center for Canadian Studies in the United States Project CONNECT Award/Participant
- Nate Freiburger: National Science Foundation Science and Technology Studies Dissertation Award; Societe de Chinie Industrielle of the Chemical Heritage Foundation Fellowship; Wenner Gren Foundation Dissertation Fellowship
- Tim Gutierrez: Henry Jastro Research Fellowship, College of Agricultural and Environmental Studies, UC Davis
- Brian Halpin: Leon Mayhew Award
- Daniel Herda: UC Davis Humanities Research Grant
- Phyllis Jeffrey: American Research Institute in Turkey Fellowship for Intense Advanced Turkish Language Study
- John Kincaid: Leon Mayhew Award
- David Orzechowicz: UC Davis Dean of Social Sciences Student Achievement Award
- Mindy Romero: Summer Research Fellowship, UC Davis Center for Regional Change
- Robin Savinar: Summer Research Grant, UC Davis Gifford Center for Population Studies
- Monica Williams: National Science Foundation Law and Society Dissertation Award - 2010
- - Ali Chaudhary: Gifford Center for Population Studies Fellowship
- Jennifer Haylett: Leon Mayhew Award
- Melanie Jones: Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Award, Honorable Mention for “Gaining Respect: Negotiating Race and Class in Black Student Relations with School Officials,” American Sociological Association Children and Youth Section; Postdoctoral Fellowship, Center for Research on Educational Opportunity at the Institute for Educational Initiatives, University of Notre Dame
- Raoul S. Liévanos: Lisa Marie White Graduate Student Award, Environmental Justice Project, UC Davis
Bill McCarthy and Teresa Casey: Outstanding Paper Award, American Society of Criminology for “Love, Sex and Crime: Adolescent Romantic Relationships and Offending,” American Sociological Review, 2008
- Nathalie Millier: Graduate Research Fellowship, National Science Foundation
- David Orzechowicz: Dissertation Fellowship, UC Davis Humanities Institute
- Robin Pleau: Dissertation Fellowship, American Association of University Women; Dissertation Research Award, UC Davis Consortium for Women and Research; Dissertation grant, UC Davis Institute for Governmental Affairs - 2009
- - Roxana Bahar: Leon Mayhew Award.
- Fred Block and Matthew Keller: Best article award from Socio-Economic Review for “Where do innovations come from? Changes in the U.S. economy, 1970–2006,” Socio-Economic Review, 7(3): 459–483
- Fred Block and Matthew Keller, Economic Stimulus and Innovation Capacity at the Department of Energy, Science of Science and Innovation Policy Program, National Science Foundation
- Sarah Ovink: Dissertation Grant, American Educational Research Association (AERA) and National Science Foundation
- Michael Peter Smith and Matt Bakker: Winner of the Society for the Study of Social Problems' 2008 Outstanding Book Award, Global Division, Citizenship Across Borders, for "The political transformation of el migrante" (Ithaca: Cornell University Press)
- Yifei Zhu: Graduate Fellowship, UC Davis East Asian Studies - 2008
- - Brian Dick: Dissertation Writing Fellowship, Spencer Foundation
- Dina Okamoto and Kim Ebert: Research Grant, Russell Sage Foundation, Immigration Program
- Dina G. Okamoto and Melanie Jones: Supplemental Award for Junior Scholars of Color, William T. Grant Foundation
- Melanie Jones: Dissertation-Year Fellowship, University of California Office of the President
L. Owen Kirkpatrick: Graduate Student Paper of the Year Award from the American Sociological Association, Community and Urban Sociology Section, for “The two ‘logics’ of community development: Neighborhoods, markets, and community development corporations,” Politics and Society, 35(2)
- Raoul S. Liévanos: Graduate Student Fellowship and Research Grant, University of California Toxic Substances Research and Teaching Program; Pre-dissertation Fellowship, University of California Community Forestry and Environmental Research Partnerships Program
- Robert Moorehead: Dissertation Award, UC Davis Institute for Governmental Affairs
- David Orzechowicz: Thesis Fellowship, University of California Labor and Employment Research Fund
- David Orzechowicz and Shelly Gilbride: Supplementary Research Grant, Andrew Mellon Foundation
- Sarah Ovink: Dissertation Improvement Grant, National Science Foundation; UC Davis Humanities Dissertation Research Award; UC Davis Institute for Governmental Affairs Graduate Research Award
- Robin Pleau: Leon Mayhew Award - 2007
- - Brian Dick: Leon Mayhew Award
- Melanie Jones: Dissertation Fellowship, University of California All Campus Consortium On Research for Diversity
- Dina Okamoto and Kim Ebert: Pilot Project Grant, American Sociological Association/National Science Foundation Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline
- David Orzechowicz: Winner of the Pacific Sociological Association Award for Distinguished Graduate Student Paper for “Elite emotion managers: The case of novice and semi-professional actors”
Leon Mayhew Prize
- About
- The Leon Mayhew Prize for the Best Qualifying Paper in Sociology recognizes student scholarly achievement and celebrates Mayhew's contributions to sociology and to the UC Davis graduate program.
Leon Mayhew was a scholar's scholar. His published work includes four books and more than a dozen journal articles on topics as diverse as discrimination, social influence, law and institutions. He devoted much of his energy to administration. In addition to chairing the sociology department, he served as chair of the Committee on Academic Personnel; UC Davis vice chancellor for Academic Affairs; dean of the College of Letters and Science; and senior advisor to the Chancellor.
Professor Mayhew was born in Utah in 1935, attended public school in Berkeley, and graduated with a B.A. in sociology from UC Berkeley. He earned both an M.A. and a Ph.D. degree in social relations from Harvard and worked in the sociology departments at the University of Michigan and UC Berkeley before joining the UC Davis sociology faculty in 1969. He died in May 2000 at age 64.
He was a man of wide interests who enjoyed discussing Japanese poetry, contemporary economic policy, or piano compositions as much as he enjoyed debating the contributions of Parsons, Habermas, and other social theorists. He also was a man of great integrity. He approached all dimensions of his academic work — teaching, research, administration — with a strong sense of his responsibilities to others. He was deeply concerned about the development and recognition of UC Davis as institution of higher learning. Embedded in that sense of integrity, that concern for the institution, was a strong commitment to a set of fair rules, to mechanisms for ensuring that all relevant parties knew the rules, and to procedures that ensured the just application of the rules.
Mayhew donated money to the department to establish a yearly award for the best graduate student qualifying paper. These funds paid for a yearly award but could not sustain the award beyond 2012. However, a UC Davis sociology faculty member and family donated funds in 2011 to perpetuate a prize in honor of Mayhew's contributions. The award received matching funds from the UC Davis Soderquist Matching Fund Initiative for Graduate Student Support.
The winner of the award receives a prize of at least $500.
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Submission Instructions and Eligibility
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To be eligible for the award, papers must be completed within the time period specified for satisfactory progress in the Department's Graduate Handbook — that is, by September 15 of the end of a student's third year of full-time enrollment in the program.
Deadline for submitting the papers to the graduate program coordinator is September 15. The Department of Sociology's Graduate Program Review Committee members review the papers and determine the winner(s) at their annual meeting. Winner(s) are announced in fall quarter of each year (per rules revised May 7, 2015).
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Previous Recipients
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2017
Kristin McCarty: “Welcome to the Family: Polyamory and Kinship in the U.S.”
2016
Sean Arseo: “Accountable for what? Organized by whom?: Divergent Outcomes in California Conventional Public, and Management-Organized and Freestanding Charter High Schools.”
Bridget Clark: “Rising Tides or Sinking Ships? Evaluating Business Incentives for the Economic Development in US Counties, 1999-2013.”
2015
Angela Carter: "Shifts in Adolescent Gender Ideology, 1976–2011: Persistent Race and Gender Differences"
Julianne Smith: "I'm Not Gonna Be Another Statistic: The Imagined Futures of Former Foster Youth"
2014
Joanna Hale: "The Silver Tsunami: Early-Life Deprivation, Lifetime Social Inequalities, and Memory Disease"
2013
Kesley Meagher: "Attitudes About Welfare and Participation in Food Assistance Programs"
2012
Ali Chaudhary: "Unequal Entrepreneurship: Race, Generational Status and the Social Organization of Self-Employment"
2011
Brian Halpin: "Culinary Consent: Control and Cooperation of Undocumented Workers in the Food Service Industry"
John Kincaid: "Examining the Rise of a New Religious Right in Texas Politics"
2010
Jennifer Haylett: "One Woman Helping Another: Family and Motherhood in Egg Donor Narratives"
PRIOR RECIPIENTS
2009: Roxana Bahar
2008: Robin Pleau
2007: Brian Dick
2006: Jesse Rude
2005: Jonathan Mermis-Cava
2004: Marcy Sowa
2003: Heather Kohler Flynn