AWARDS & FUNDING

Assistantships & Scholarships

Financial Support

Many of CSU Sociology’s graduate students are funded by teaching or research assistantships that help support living expenses and cover tuition costs. These experiences are more than just financially beneficial, they help our graduate students integrate into the department and expand their skills. Additionally, we offer our graduate students financial support for professional development, such as participation in professional meetings and conferences.

The Department of Sociology also offers multiple annual grad student awards for outstanding effort and achievement. These awards recognize graduate students for their important academic and professional contributions to teaching, research and the study of social change. Recipients are chosen based on their strong commitment to innovative work in key areas emphasized by the graduate program, the quality and rigor of academic work or teaching support produced by the student, assessment by peers and colleagues and the quality of their written application. The Department of Sociology is pleased to honor the significant accomplishments of our graduate students!

Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Assistant Award

2019 Recipient: Austin Luzbetak, Ph.D. student

Graduate Student Social Change Scholarship

2019 Recipient: Becca Clark-Hargreaves, Ph.D. student

Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award

2020 Recipient: Nefratiri Weeks, Ph.D. candidate and instructor

Nefratiri teaches SOC301: Development of Sociological Thought and is Sociology's Internship Coordinator. Her research focuses on social, environmental, and economic impacts of (neo)liberal economic processes as they intersect with capitalism as an unequal globalizing economic, political, and cultural system.

Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Award

2020 Recipient: Carolyn Conant, M.A. student

Carolyn specializes in environmental sociology, and her winning paper was titled "The Socioeconomic Effects of U.S. National Parks on Host Communities." She was also the 2019 winner of this award for her paper "From Extractive to Nonconsumptive Natural Resource Dependency: Transitions, Traditions, and Traps in Three Southeastern Utah Towns." 

Graduate Student Research Excellence Award

2020 Recipient: Carolina Bañuelos, Ph.D. student

Caro's research approaches the first-generation graduation gap as a network circumstance. She works with Institutional Research, Planning, & Effectiveness and the Collaborative for Student Achievement to help CSU remain positioned as a first-generation student leader.

Sociology Alumni Scholarships

2019 Recipient: Kellie Alexander, Ph.D. student

Kellie's research interests broadly span crime, deviance, law, and green criminology.

2019 Recipient: Azmal Hossan, Ph.D. student

Azmal specializes in environmental sociology, human Dimension of global climate change, and sociology of food and nutrition