Page 2

S.A.J.S.

Undergraduate Sociology Student Research Experiences

One of the unusual opportunities available to undergraduate students in our department is the ability to work closely with faculty on original research projects.  Two students, Emily Sly and Holly Riedelbach, worked on such a project with Dr. Debbie Storrs and Dr. John Mihelich last spring.  The research project examined the relationship between the pursuit of higher education and the construction of gender among Mormon college women.  We found that the young college women we interviewed were deeply committed to their religion and perceived the pursuit of high education as an extension of the traditional gender norms prescribed by the church.  College women's continued desire to maintain their membership in the Church was due in part to their successful negotiation of gender ideologies and because of the ability of the Mormon "nomos" to help answer existential questions.
Our two undergraduate students, Emily and Holly, assisted with interviewing and analyzing the data.  The Department of Sociology/Anthropology/Justice Studies provided the two students with a travel grant to help present the research paper to the annual Pacific Sociological Association conference in San Francisco in April 2001.  Emily and Holly attended many research paper sessions, met other scholars, and  experienced the full research process from collecting data to the dissemination of ideas.

Alumni News

Deborah Wilkey, currently working on a M.A., Anthropology, was instrumental in establishing a protocol for rape victims admitted to Kootenai Medical Center in Coeur d= Alene, Idaho.  Kootenai Medical Center is the only facility in Idaho to adopt this program that gives special treatment to the victim admitted to the emergency room while preserving the legal evidence necessary for a criminal conviction.