Mary Bernstein, Professor of Sociology, has accepted the offer to serve as Associate Dean of The Graduate School. In this role, she follows Kathy Segerson, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Economics, who began her tenure as Interim Associate Dean in 2017 and continued as Associate Dean in 2018. Kathy will return to Economics on 24 August, and Mary will assume her new role on the same day.
Mary is a distinguished interdisciplinary scholar and educator, and her work encompasses a wide range of issues concerning social movements, race, politics, gender, and law with a particular focus on LGBTQ social movements and on gun violence prevention. Her work appears in a wide variety of disciplinary outlets that include the humanities, social sciences, sociology, sexualities, women’s studies, political science, law, history, health, and public policy, and Mary has received support for her work from a wide variety of external funding agencies and foundations, including the National Science Foundation, the Williams Institute of the University of California – Los Angeles, and the American Sociological Association’s Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline. She has received several national awards for her work, most notably the Simon & Gagnon Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Sexuality (2016). She has also been named as the winner of the 2022 Provost’s Distinguished Scholar Research Award for Excellence in Community Engaged Scholarship.
In addition to her scholarly accomplishments, Mary has made substantial contributions to graduate education at UConn. As Interim Head of the Department of Sociology, she led the effort to develop an accelerated 4+1 MA program in Sociology that is now providing talented UConn undergraduates with the opportunity to receive an advanced degree with only one year of study beyond the bachelor’s. She has chaired or served as associate advisor for 24 PhD dissertations and 24 MA theses, with several more currently in the pipeline. More than a third of her publications include graduate student co-authors. While many of her graduate students now hold faculty positions in various universities, many others are engaged in other research and social justice-related careers.
Please join The Graduate School at UConn in welcoming Mary to The Graduate School as Associate Dean.
