Page 31 - Arts & Sciences 2012

Social scientists in the department and their students are addressing diverse social, cultural and economic forces that impact peoples’ lives close to home and around the globe. “They are asking incredibly interesting questions about life in the 21st century as well as searching for answers found in ancient historical sites,” said Yung-mei Tsai, Ph.D., professor of sociology and interim department chair.

For example, Jeff Williams, Ph.D., professor of anthropology, recently completed a two-year project to preserve the Comanche language. He collaborated with a colleague at Comanche Nation College in Lawton, Okla., where only about two dozen of the 13,000 members of the Comanche Nation are fluent in the heritage language.

A $213,000 two-year grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was used to plan, design and create multimedia language learning tools to teach the language to a new generation.

Another issue being studied is caregivers of patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Charlotte Dunham, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology, and Bernadette Dietz, Ph.D., assistant professor of sociology and psychology at University of Cincinnati Clermont College, conducted a series of one-on-one interviews with women who were caring for a family member with dementia and employed in the labor force. The research was supported by the Texas Work and Family Clearinghouse at the Texas Workforce Commission.

The data were used to make recommendations for employers on how best to accommodate the needs of employees who are caregivers. Recommendations included the importance of flex-ibility, including the need to adjust work hours and the need to be available to family members in case of emergencies. “We also found that work is an important source of support and respite from the stresses of providing dementia care,” Dunham said.

The faculty in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work also are studying the relationship of religion, deviance and well-being; immigration status and the economic crisis in Spain; pain through a study of self-flagellation in the Philippines; the impact of husband-and-wife age differences on marriage; the southern plazas at La Milpa, Belize; Roman burials in Aquinum, Italy; service learning through work with hospice patients; and a model for teaching inclusion in policy-making.

With almost 1,000 undergraduates, psychology is among the largest bachelor’s degree majors on campus. Psychology also continues to have the largest doctoral program in one campus department with 129 students in 2011-2012. In addition, 43 percent of the psychology faculty members currently are in the Texas Tech University Teaching Academy, which is a prestigious teaching honor.

Several faculty members have received outside grant funding recently. For example, Patricia DeLucia, Ph.D., professor of psychology, is a co-principle investigator on a study assessing the effect of a handheld decision-support device in reducing medication errors. She is part of a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional research team funded by the Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center, US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command. Smoking cessation is the focus of two grant-funded projects of Lee Cohen, Ph.D., professor and department chair; Susan Hendrick, Ph.D., Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of Psychology, and Darcy Reich, Ph.D., associate professor. The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas grant underwrites the training of physicians, nurses, psychologists and other front-line healthcare and mental health providers in a comprehensive but brief smoking cessation intervention program. The researchers also received a grant from the Laura W. Bush Institute for Women’s Health to examine the efficacy of confectionary chewing gum and exercise for women trying to reduce tobacco use and dependence.