Across the U.S., teachers and school districts are grappling with the realities of educator pay, emboldened by the national teacher protest movement demanding higher wages and better conditions and a steadily brewing shortage of educators. CSDE Regional Affiliate and UW-Bothell Research Professor Dan Goldhaber, who is also the director of the UW Center for Education Data and Research, spoke to The Associated Press about these challenges.

It’s difficult to compare school pay scales because of the endless variables across classrooms and campuses, said Goldhaber, but merely increasing salaries for all without differentiating for other factors such as student population and regional issues means pay disparities will remain. 

The heavy drinking of alcohol remains primarily a masculine ritual worldwide. Yet, scholarship has undertheorized women’s practices in shaping the boundaries of masculine rituals, including drinking. CSDE Visiting Affiliate and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Puget Sound Jennifer Utrata addresses these questions in her paper, “Invisible Labor and Women’s Double Binds: Collusive Femininity and Masculine Drinking in Russia,” published recently in Gender & Society.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with mothers, fathers, and grandmothers, she demonstrates that Russian women perform extensive invisible labor to produce responsible men.

CSDE Fellow Connor Gilroy, PhD Student in Sociology, was awarded the Graduate School Award for Distinguished Thesis in the Social Sciences for his thesis titled “How Distinct is Gay Neighborhood Change? Patterns and Variation in Gayborhood Trajectories.” Gilroy, who is also the co-leader of CSDE’s Computational Demography Working Group, did a significant part of the work for his thesis while a CSDE fellow.

Gilroy believes that residents of gay neighborhoods, and everyone who cares about their future, deserve an accurate account of what these spaces were like in the recent past, and how they’ve changed up until now.

CSDE Affiliate Tim Thomas, Postdoctoral Fellow at the eScience Institute and Sociology, was recently invited by the King County Council Equity and Social Justice Team to present on the history of redlining in Washington and how it impacts King County today. Thomas walked the audience through an account of the great migration, redlining, restrictive housing covenants, the home ownership gap, gentrification, and evictions. He also facilitated a lively policy discussion and presented recommendations regarding home ownership, renter protections, and development & zoning.

Thomas is transitioning to a CSDE Regional Affiliate as he is soon starting as a Postdoc at Berkeley’s Urban Displacement Project. Thomas says he is incredibly grateful to CSDE for the training and research support making his projects a reality.

The Population Association of American (PAA) is holding its annual conference in Washington, DC, April 22-25 2020. Submissions are due September 29. PAA is the premier professional organization in demography, and its annual conference has increasingly expanded to capture a range of disciplinary approaches to population processes. Check out PAA 2020 Call for Papers which includes the submission rules and instructions and the list of sessions.

To help you prepare and to share some tips on structuring an effective submission, CSDE is hosting a PAA Prep and Review workshop. 

CSDE Affiliate Heather Hill, Associate Professor at the Evans School, joins CSDE Director Sara Curran and CSDE Executive Committee Member India Ornelas, Associate Professor of Health Services at the School of Public Health, on the 30-member Population Health Initiative Executive Council. Ali Mokdad, Professor of Health Metrics Sciences, Chief Strategy Officer for Population Health, and Executive Council Vice Chair of the Population Health Initiative is also a CSDE Affiliate.

The Population Health Initiative addresses the most persistent and emerging challenges in human health, environmental resilience and social and economic equity and CSDE is honored to collaborate with the initiative on a number of research efforts.