SOCY PhD Student Wins NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

The College of Behavioral and Social Sciences congratulates Moriah Willow, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology, on receiving a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. This award provides 12-month support for three years.

Willow is a graduate fellow in Sociology’s Program for the Society and the Environment. His primary research focus is social inequality across time and space, and his interests include political and economic sociology, globalization and demography.

“The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship gives me the intellectual freedom and resources I need to aggressively pursue my research agenda and to find answers to important questions. Most immediately, this fellowship will allow me to spend more time working on my current research with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the primary federal law enforcement agency that enforces laws against workplace discrimination. This project focuses on changes in the degree of race and gender occupational segregation in state and local government employment and race and gender wage inequality between government workers in similar jobs since the passage of legal protections against discrimination,” Willow said.

As the College’s mission is to Be the Solution to the world’s great challenges, it is fitting that one of its most accomplished students has dedicated his career and studies to improving the working climate for all Americans.

“I came to the University of Maryland to find answers to some of the lifelong questions that motivated me to study sociology as an undergraduate. The key questions motivating my research relate to race and gender inequality in the U.S. labor market. Considerable progress has been made for women and racial minorities in the workplace since the passage of legal protections against employment discrimination, yet race and gender inequality remain stubbornly persistent features of the U.S. labor market. The primary thrust of my research is to better understand the mechanism that reinforce and help to perpetuate these inequities,” Willow said.

Willow said his study will fill an important research gap by providing a national desegregation narrative for racial minority and female state and municipal government workers following the passage of Equal Employment legislation in 1972, and will also provide some perspective on the variability of occupational desegregation within and across government agencies at the state and municipal level. He notes that this research will also have a broader impact on future studies evaluating the effect equal employment legislation has had on specific public-sector workplaces over time and on the efficacy of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s regulatory enforcement activities at the state and municipal level. “In addition, this study has theoretical implications for stratification scholarship, social psychological research, and organizational theory,” Willow said.

Acknowledging the prestige of this award, Willow said he is grateful for those who have helped him achieve this goal.

“I am deeply humbled to be selected for this fellowship, and I feel great sense of validation for the hard work that I’ve put in thus far,” Willow said. “I also feel a great responsibility to make the most of this wonderful opportunity and to encourage aspiring scholars to actualize their dreams. I never imagined that I would be in such a blessed position and I couldn’t have gotten to where I am without the support and encouragement I have received along the way.”

Published on Thu, Jun 19, 2014 - 1:39PM