Blackstone Named Director of ADVANCE Rising Tide Center
Amy Blackstone has been appointed director of the ADVANCE Rising Tide Center at the University of Maine, effective Sept. 1.
Blackstone, an associate professor and chair of UMaine’s Department of Sociology, replaces Susan Gardner, who has served as the center’s director since April 2013.
Gardner, an associate professor of higher education, has accepted the position of associate dean of accreditation and graduate affairs in the College of Education and Human Development. She will continue her role as co-principal investigator for the five-year, $3.3 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant that funds the ADVANCE Rising Tide Center.
Blackstone joined the UMaine faculty in 2003. Her research on childlessness and the childfree choice, workplace harassment, and civic engagement has been published in peer-reviewed journals and collections. Her work also has been featured by various media outlets including Katie Couric’s talk show, MPBN Radio, NBC, Fox, Today.com, MSNBC, Marie Claire, Dame and Huffington Post.
Blackstone is a founding advisory board member of Feminist Reflections, a blog hosted by The Society Pages. She also has served as a consulting editor for Contexts magazine and is author of the textbook “Principles of Sociological Inquiry: Qualitative and Quantitative Methods (Flat World Knowledge).”
The ADVANCE program seeks to develop systemic approaches that can be institutionalized at higher education institutions to increase the representation and advancement of women in academic science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), and social-behavioral science careers.