Alumni Update Archives

If you are a UMaine sociology department alum, let us know what you are doing now so we can post it on the Alumni Update web page!

  • July 22, 2015: Michael Rocque ’05 and Professor Steve Barkan  are quoted in an article from the Portland Phoenix “Manhunts, murders, and armed robberies: Maine’s crime trends flip with spring, summer mayhem.”
  • June 10, 2015: Michael Rocque ’05, along with Professor Steve Barkan and their colleague Chad Posnick, have an opinion piece in the Bangor Daily News – ‘4 Reasons to Doubt the “Ferguson Effect” and the Claims of a National Crime Wave.’ Barkan, Rocque, and Posnick are members of the Scholars Strategy Network and regularly contribute to the BDN.
  • January 2015: Michael Rocque ’05, Chad Posick, Steven E. Barkan, and Raymond Paternoster. 2015. “Marriage and County-Level Crime Rates: A Research Note.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 52:130-145.
  • December 24, 2014: Michael Rocque ’05 has an Op Ed in the Bangor Daily News. The Invisible Racism: What critics of the Ferguson protests are missing.
  • November 24, 2014: Michael Rocque ’05, Assistant Professor at Bates College, is quoted in the online Daily Dot article “Why are almost all active shooters men?”
  • November 21, 2014: Jason Houle ’05, Assistant Professor at Dartmouth College, is quoted in a Huffington Post Article on a photographic essay on debt and people in their 20s.
  • October 18, 2014:  Sage Oliver Stacey was born at 2:37 p.m. to Jennifer Moulton Stacey ’12 and Adam Stacey. He weighed in at 7lbs, 15 ozs., 21 inches long. Both Mom and baby are doing great. (posted 10-23-14)
  • September 17, 2014: Bates College article welcomes Michael Rocque ’05 as a new assistant professor.
  • August 20, 2014: UMaine News has an article Recognizing Sexual Harrassment about the work of Professor Amy Blackstone and Jason Houle ’05 (see July 9 below).
  • July 2014: Dawn Norris ’05 has 2 updates for the U ME alumni page: 1) She has signed a contract with Rutgers University Press for her book tentatively titled Job Loss, Identity, and Mental Health.  2) She was nominated for a teaching excellence award at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse in my first year.  (posted 8-15-14)
  • July 9, 2014: Professor Amy Blackstone and Jason Houle ’05 have an article in Sociological Spectrum: Mid-South Sociological Association Volume 34, Issue 4, 2014“I Didn’t Recognize It as a Bad Experience until I was Much Older”: Age, Experience, and Workers’ Perceptions of Sexual Harassment. Jason is an assistant professor of sociology at Dartmouth. (posted 8-15-14)
  • July 13, 2014: UMaine sociology alum Linda Fogg ’14 and our very own administrative specialist Laurie Cartier were in the news in a story on the Charlie Howard Memorial, the man who was murdered in Bangor in 1984 for being gay. Linda spoke about restorative justice, a topic she became expert in as a result of the internship she completed with Belfast Restorative Justice in the spring.  News coverage here. (Posted 8-15-14)
  • June 2014: Linda Fogg ’14 is now working as a case manager for Wings for Children and Families Inc. in Bangor. (posted 8-14-14)
  • April 15, 2014: Michael Rocque ’05 has an Op Ed in the Bangor Daily News: “Were you mature at 18? Jails get it wrong by treating young adults as real adults.” (posted 8-11-14)
  • November 2013: Michael Rocque ’05, Director of Research for the Maine Department of Corrections, heard from Jason Houle ’05, assisstant professor at Dartmouth, that one of Houle’s students referenced a paper written by Rocque for a paper in his class. Houle comments “It’s a small world when students are being taught by a UMaine-trained sociologist while (independently) presenting on the work of another UMaine-trained sociologist. “
  • October 2013: Dawn Norris ’05 has her article Beat the Bourgeoisie: A Social Class Inequality and Mobility Simulation Game Teaching Sociology published in the American Sociological Association’s Teaching Sociology journal. The link connects to a full-text PDF of the article.
  • August 2013: Brianna Alexander ’13, Kimberly Samuels ’13 and Dianne White ’13 all received their BAs in Sociology. Congratulations!
  • Michael Rocque ’05 and Jason Houle ’05:  in an article from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: Solving the Riddle of the U.S. ‘Suicide Belt’.
  • Dawn Norris ’05: Beat the Bourgeoisie: A Social Class Inequality and Mobility Simulation Game Teaching Sociology published 23 May 2013, 10.1177/0092055X13490751
  • Michael Rocque ’05: has an article in Victims & Offenders: An International Journal of Evidence-based Research, Policy, and Practice. Entitled “Unraveling Change: Social Bonds and Recidivism among Released Offenders”, Abstract here.
  • Michael Rocque ’05: Press release about his most recent article in the Journal of Criminal Justice on Biosocial Crime Prevention.
  • Jennifer Moulton ’12: After spending only 4 months at the Humane Society of the United States in Washington DC as an Intern Online Media Outreach Specialist, Jennifer has been promoted to the full time position of Media Manager for the organization! On top of that she became engaged to her long-time boyfriend, Adam Stacey, on New Years’s Eve. Congratulations Jennifer!!! (posted 1-3-13)
  • Michael Rocque ’05 and adjunct faculty in the UMaine Sociology Department has received his PhD in Criminology and Justice Policy from Northeastern University’s school of Criminology and Social Justice. He has accepted the Director of Correctional Habilitation position at the Maine Department of Corrections. He will be overseeing research of programs and outcomes for individuals under correctional supervision in Maine. The position will start in May 2013. (posted 12-19-12)
  • Dawn Norris ’05 has accepted a tenure-track position at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, and will start in Fall 2013! (posted 12-18-12)
  • Jason Houle ’05 has accepted an assistant professor position at Dartmouth and will begin there in the fall 2013. (posted 12-18-12)
  • Gloria Brangwynne ’50: I enjoyed my time at UMaine esp. once I found my way to the sociology department!  My favorite instructor was John Romanyshyn.  I very much enjoyed my career in social work always on the direct service level. After my graduate degree., I moved from child welfare to counseling out in Cleveland. I retired in 1993. I am now 84 years old, living alone in my own home and coping well with Parkinson’s Disease. (Posted 12-18-12)
  • Gwen Jones ’61: I retired from the NYS juvenile justice system fifteen years ago after thirty years.  (Posted 12-18-12)
  • Diane Fassak ’78: Maine provided me with and excellent base to develop my skills in social work.  I would be willing to “give back” in any way that might be helpful. Although I am in Massachusetts, I began my career working for the State of Maine after my internship senior year.  Currently, I spend vacation time there as much as possible. I am also the mother of a Junior studying Mechanical Engineering at Maine!  (Posted 12-18-12)
  • Judith Carducci ’56: I worked in the Department of Veterans Affairs until I retired, and loved it.  It provided many opportunities for leadership. I am since then self-employed full-time as a fine artist and have an international reputation – teaching in the USA and around the world. Professor John M. Romanyshyn was my advisor, honors tutor, and, with his wife Annie, lifelong friend and inspirer.  There should be a monument to him!  My portrait sketch of him at age 80 is on my website www.judithcarducci.com.  (Posted 12-18-12)
  • Ruth Brewer Hussey ’66 : I retired from Penn State University in January 2010 after 34 years as an academic adviser for students enrolled in the Division of Undergraduate  who are exploring various degree options and deciding on an educational plan.  (Posted 12-18-12)
  • Barbara (Spiller) Currie ’62 tells us by email: “I graduated in 1962 as Barbara Spiller and went directly to the University of Hawaii to get a MSW and spent about 35 years as a Clinical Social Worker, mostly in Southern California working with adults with serious mental illness and speciallizing at different times on Domestic Abuse, Incest, and Multiple Personality Disorders.  In 1999 I decided to go to seminary and get a Masters of Divinity.  I graduated from Andover Newton School of Theology in 2003 and accepted a call to a small rural United Church of Christ congregation in Deering, NH.  I have enjoyed both my social work career and ministry so much and it all started at the University of Maine!” (Posted 5-16-11)
  • Joshua Tuttle ’09 let us know that he has received his MA degree from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Other good news is that he has been accepted into the PhD program at George Mason University. He plans to specialize in stratification and religion and will be working with Dr. Lester Kurtz. Congratulations to Josh!! (Posted 5-10-11)
  • Golda Michelson ’69 is now a psychotherapist in private practice in San Francisco and in San Rafael, Ca (Marin County).  She lives about 15 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge in a beautiful area of Marin County.  Email: goldamichelson@gmail.com
  • Nancy Pizzo Boucher ’70 now lives in Westbrook, Maine. In 2009 she wrote a book called Getting My Night Vision. Here’s what she has to say about the journey that resulted in this book:

    “In 1970 I graduated from the University of Maine at Orono with a degree in Sociology. As part of my study there, I went with one of my classes to visit the Bangor State Hospital. The suffering that I saw on so many people there was a memory that embedded itself in my consciousness. In 1994 my youngest son had his first psychotic break one month into his college education at Bard. Since he had graduated tenth in his class at Portland High School, he had received a four year scholarship to attend Bard at the price of his State University. By 2008 , fourteen years after he first got sick with a major mental illness, my son and our family finally found our footing again and are moving forward. In 2009, I wrote a book  called Getting My Night Vision , of our family’s experience in learning to see the patterns of mental illness and bringing it out of the dark and into the light. My book is full of hope, practical matters, compassion, mothering and family. It is way past time for mental illness to come out of the darkness into the light, and I know that my book will help families as well as mental health treatment providers to move that process along. My husband and I are committed to do our part by getting 5001 books into the world to help break the stigma and isolation for families and for those suffering with mental illnesses. At the National NAMI conference in Washington, D.C. in July, I did a poster presentation titled Do Not Give Up Family.  Our family helped promote healing and we know it can be done! My book is available online through Amazon and Barnes and Noble or directly through me.” Email: rcbou@maine.rr.com