The John and Lyn Lofland Undergraduate Research Award honors excellence in undergraduate research in sociology.
Undergraduate research gives students an opportunity to apply sociology to questions about social life. Through research, students can demonstrate skills in formulating questions, drawing conclusions from findings, and fine-tuning arguments. Undergraduate research can give students a valuable first experience in conducting an original, in-depth scholarly investigation.
The Lofland Award celebrates John and Lyn Lofland's contributions to sociology and in particular to the undergraduate sociology program at the University of California, Davis. John joined the UC Davis faculty in 1970, and Lyn arrived the following year. They were instrumental in creating many of the defining features of our undergraduate program. They helped establish the Sociology Honors Program, the research assistant program, undergraduate seminars, and the Davis-based Upsilon chapter of Alpha Kappa Delta, the International Sociology Honors Society. The Undergraduate Research Award celebrates these and the many other improvements that John and Lyn made to the Sociology program at UC Davis.
There are two categories for the Lofland Award:
· “Best Thesis Award” – examples: honors theses, McNair theses or other independently written thesis papers
· “Best Term Paper Award” - examples: upper division seminar papers, theory papers or term papers - Must be written as part of UC Davis Sociology course
The winner(s) of the award receives a prize of $500. In addition, the winner(s) is invited to attend the Department of Sociology Honors Reception, where the award is presented and the winner(s) are publicly recognized before an audience of faculty, staff, and students. One or more additional papers may be awarded an honorable mention, and their authors will be invited to the celebration for public recognition.
- Eligibility Criteria
- - Paper must be authored by a Sociology/Sociology – Organizational Studies major
- Papers must be based on original research
- Papers must be formatted per American Sociological Association guidelines
- Papers may not be nominated twice - Lofland Award Recipients
- 2018 - Thalia Tom:
2018 - Matt Hanna:
2017 - Caroline Staudenraus:
2015 — Ruthie Rothstein:
2014 — Shadd Cabalatungan:
2013 — Shannon Carter:
2012 — Ashlyn Jaeger:
2011 — Laurel K. Phelan: "Is Alcoholics Anonymous a Religious Organization? Comparing Alcoholics Anonymous to Evangelical Christians" (faculty nominator: John Hall)
2010 — Victor Martinez: - Previous Award Winners
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These are the winners of the Undergraduate Research Award Winners prior to the naming of the Lofland Award.
2009 — Badiah Haffejee: "Turning Point for Youth: Events that Lead to Desistance" (faculty nominator: Bill McCarthy)
2008 — Kristina McKibben: "Negotiating Care: Emotion Work Strategies of HIV/AIDS Workers" (faculty nominator: Natalia Deeb-Sossa)
2007 — Hayley E. Steffen: "Rockers or White Kids? Comparing Boundary Work and Racial Awareness in High School Cliques" (faculty nominator: Kerstin Lueck)
2005 — Jason K. Logan: "The Extremes of Customer Service: An Ethnography of a Retail Boutique" (faculty nominator: Lyn H. Lofland)
2004 — Nichole Zlatunich: "Prom Dreams and Prom Reality: Girls' Resistance and Accommodation to Dominant Representations of the High School Prom" (faculty nominator: Laura Grindstaff)
2004 — Kathleen P. Feehan: "What Happens to Freshmen's Political Orientations During Their First Year: A Quantitative Evaluation of Factors Associated With Student Attitude Change" (faculty nominator: Eric Grodsky)
2003 — Robin Pleau: "Studying While "Old": How Midlife Women Students Experience and Cope with Age Difference in the University" (faculty nominator: Kimberlee Shauman)
2001 — JoAnne Delfino: "Navigating Obstacles with Limited Commitment: Understanding Why Women Leave Engineering" (faculty nominator: Sean O'Riain)
2000 — Stephanie Welch: "Advocating for the De-Stigmatization of Mental Illness: Ideological Foundations, Framing Tactics, and Possibilities of Forging a New Social Movement" (faculty nominator: Laura Grindstaff)
1999 — Carey Gray: "Maybe to You We're Disabled, but Not to Us: Ability, Disability, and the Construction of Deaf Identity" (faculty nominator: Patrick Carroll)
1998 — Sarah Knofel: "Gendered Organizations: A Comparative Study of The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts" (faculty nominator: Vicki Smith)
1996 — Michael E. Ezell: "Modeling the Recidivism Among Young Parolees With Varying Ages: The Applicability and Utility of the Cox Proportional Hazards Model" (faculty nominator: Larry Cohen)
1995 — Amy Mannila: "Envy and Competition in Same-Sex Friends" (faculty nominator: John Hall)
1994 — Milmon F. Harrison: "Greater Than the Former…: Observations on the Construction of Community within the Pentecostal Tradition" (faculty nominator: Lyn Lofland)
1993 — Ronald Ruggiero: "Reform in Retreat: France, 1981–83." -
Make a gift
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John and Lyn Lofland, along with current and former members of the UC Davis Department of Sociology, generously donated funds to establish and endow this award. Please consider joining us in contributing to the Lofland Undergraduate Research Award by filling out the online gift form.