Karla Erickson
Karla Erickson has been working on revising her dissertation into a book to be published with Cornell University Press next year. The anthology she wrote for and edited with her friends, Jennifer Pierce and Hokulani Aikau, entitled Feminist Waves, Feminist Generations: Life Stories from the Academy will be published by the University of Minnesota Press in April of 2007. In addition to these ongoing projects, parts of her research on gender and labor in the new economy was published in the journal Ethnography, and it will be featured in a new collection of research on international foodways. This summer Erickson plans to begin preliminary work on her next major research project on end of life care. Sociology majors, Jenny Weber and Eszter Csicsai will work with her on a MAP (Mentored Advanced Project) examining care work at the end of life. This will be Erickson's second MAP. Last fall she worked with sociology senior, Anna Moseman on a large scale study of the connections between sexual educati on and practice among Grinnell College students.

This year Erickson had the opportunity to teach Contemporary Sociological Theory for the first time, and she will repeat that course twice next year. She revised the syllabus for her Gender and Society course with the help of sociology major, Jenny Weber, and she taught that course again last fall. She always looks forward to teaching Human Sexuality in the spring, and sociology major, Htike Htike Kyaw Soe has been working with her over the last year on several projects including gathering supplemental materials for Human Sexuality and helping gather resources for her first tutorial course, which she will teach next fall. Sociology majors, Madison Van Oort, Meredith Hughey, and Emily Sipfle offered advice and consultation on tutorial design. With their help, Erickson hopes her first tutorial will be a success.

Erickson enjoyed working with students and getting to know so many new sociology majors in her courses and as advisees. Erickson also benefited from training in Diversity as Practice with Coco Fusco last fall; she attended a special conference on advising in Colorado; and she went to a collaborative conference on assessing student learning last month. She also had opportunities to present her research at the American Sociological Association meetings, and to chair a panel on sexualities research at the Midwest Sociological Society this spring. As the year comes to an end, she is looking forward to cheering the graduates, even though the presence, energy, and leadership of this senior class will indeed be missed. She also looks forward to bringing you all back as distinguished alums sometime in the not too distant future!

Susan Ferguson
Susan Ferguson spends most of her time chasing her two young daughters: Gillian is 5 years old, and Alana will be 3 years old this summer. Ferguson believes that parenting is the best and most important work, and she is looking forward to hot summer days watching little girls splash in the baby pool in the backyard.

For the past two years, Ferguson invested much time and energy in organizing and running a new local preschool called The Learning Garden. In the process, she learned a great deal about starting a non-profit organization and the need for early childhood education in the United States.

This academic year Ferguson prepared two new sociology courses: a seminar on Contemporary Women’s Health Issues and a course on the Sociology of the Body. Both courses enhanced the sociology curriculum’s offerings in gender, inequality, and health.

In terms of scholarship, Ferguson just completed a revision of her family anthology, “Shifting the Center: Understanding Contemporary Families” (McGraw-Hill, Third Edition, 2007). She also is the editor of “Families in the 21st Century,” a new series of short texts on the family, and the first two volumes to be published later this year are on “Families and Poverty” and on “Global Persepectives of Families” (Allyn and Bacon).

This past year Ferguson attended the annual American Sociological Association (ASA) meetings in Philadelphia, the Sociologists for Women in Society winter meetings in Puerto Rico, and the Midwest Sociological Society meetings in Omaha. Ferguson’s other professional work includes leading teaching workshops at the ASA Preconference for Teachers organizing conference sessions on the family, and conducting external reviews of sociology departments.

Chris Hunter
Chris Hunter is trying desperately to hold everything (or at least, himself) together, pulled as he is between classes, and serving as Chair of the Social Studies Division on the Executive Council, and continuing to serve as Chair of the Mid-Iowa Community Action (MICA) Board of Directors. He enjoyed getting lots of emails from sociology alumni/ae in response to a request for their advice about going to graduate school; he would love to hear from other alumni/ae, including those who are working! Chris is looking forward to his daughter’s wedding in October, and to going to Grinnell-in-London in 2007 to teach about nongovernmental organizations.

Kent McClelland
Kent McClelland is co-editor of a new book appearing this summer on research applications of Perceptual Control Theory and other closely related theories. McClelland and Thomas J. Fararo are editors of Purpose, Meaning and Action: Control Systems Theories in Sociology, scheduled for publication in July by Palgrave Macmillan USA. A number of widely known sociologists, such as Peter Burke, David Heise, Neil MacKinnon, Clark McPhail, John Skvoretz, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and Jan Stets, have contributed chapters to the book.

Katherine and Kent McClelland spent last fall in London in the 2005 Grinnell-in-London program, together with 29 students, including sociology majors Lester Aleman, Alvin Irby, and Jenny Weber. Kent taught a course called “British Families and the Welfare State” and served as faculty advisor for students doing internships in British organizations and corporations. London was great fun, and even the weather was surprisingly good!

The McClellands took advantage of their stay in London to visit several times with their daughter Laura and her family, who live in Hamburg, Germany. In addition to grandson Toby, now aged three, another grandson named Liam, was born March 28th.

Recent graduates may remember the McClellands’ son, David, also a Grinnell graduate. He and his wife, Karen Fisher McClelland, are now living in Portland, Oregon. David has just gone back to school to study renewable energy systems at the Portland branch of the Oregon Institute of Technology, while Karen is in her first year as a high school art teacher.

In the fall semester of 2006, Kent will be teaming up again with Jin Feng from the Chinese Department and Liz Queathem from Biology to teach an interdisciplinary seminar on “The Control of Reproduction,” which will bring together students from a variety of majors to discuss questions of central importance to the human condition. The seminar was well received when it was first offered in the spring of 2004, and there is a new faculty initiative at Grinnell that aims to encourage more interdisciplinary teaching.

Kesho Scott
Kesho Scott is ending her two years as a board member of Planned Parenthood of Greater Des Moines and is taking up a board member seat for the Fort Des Moines Memorial Museum for African Americans and Women in Military Service. She continues to work with a NGO in Ethiopia for Adoption of Ethiopian children to American parents and to those in the Heartland in particular. Scott continues to expand her own adoption agency’s role in making international adoption an affordable and easy process for working-class, gay, singles, and ethnically-blended families.

Her public intellectual work still continues through her work as a Diversity Consultant and community activist. She has completed in this academic year of 2005-06, some 10 workshops, speeches, and Unlearning “Isms” programs in the Des Moines area and Grinnell area. Her favorite speeches were: Pathfinder lecture: “We Do it Too!: Colorism, Facialism and Intra-Black Oppression and Self-Hate,” the Hannibal B. Kershaw Dedication at the College, “Re-using the Past: Do the Math on Questions of Inclusion,” and Gay Pride Week Flag Raising Ceremony, “Three Intersecting Histories: The Flag, Gay Pride Week and Making Allies and Coalitions in 2006.”

She will be a panel member of the 2006 Iowa Juneteenth Observance Health Forum: Diabetes and High Blood Pressure Amongst African Americans, sponsored by Wellmark BlueCross and BlueShield and will present two papers at the 36th Annual Conference of the Association of Black Sociologist, in Montreal, Canada on “Twenty Years of Unlearning Racism” and “Female Harassment in Ethiopian Universities.” Finally, she continues her research on The Habit of Surviving Project Two, which looks at the “habits of survival” of African American male graduates at Grinnell College from the late 1950s to 2004.