CAS CONNECT 2019

explored a wide range of community-based topics and problems,” he added. While we may not think about it in these terms, everyone engages with social structures all the time, Mix said. Sociology helps us understand how to relate to institutions that are larger than ourselves, including at the local, state, national and global levels. “Are some people more vulnerable?” Mix asked. “We use tools to help understand and assess that. We’re working hard to engage our students: ‘How can students gain critical-thinking skills and tools to be able to employ them later on with whatever their career choices are?’” The department conducts research in five specialty areas: criminology and deviance; social psychology; social inequality; environmental sociology; and social movements. While some faculty members may focus on one area, most have engaging research projects that cross several. For example, Mix’s main area of research is environmental justice, situated in environmental sociology, which she connects with inequality and social movements. Lately, she has been doing a lot of work in the area of food justice, which relates to inequitable conditions people experience in gaining access to and procuring food. She recently published a book, Meet the Food Radicals , with Bailey Norwood, Ph.D., an agricultural economist in OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources. The book presents diverse insights from 27 people working across the broad spectrum of the existing food system. For example, one source is an undercover operative for PETA, and another works in big cattle production. Others include an individual who created a mobile market serving food deserts, a person working in gene editing, and someone who teaches mindful eating for yoga and other practices. “We wove their stories together as though they were at a dinner party,” Mix said. “In a setting like that, most people are going to be a little more civil about disagreements. This format gave us an opportunity to explore their ideas in conversation with one another.” Examining differences of opinion and experience is nothing new for Mix, who was born in Thailand while her parents worked for the U.S. State Department. She also lived in Africa, Panama and the Philippines, and traveled all over the world before her family settled in Virginia just before she completed high school. “Seeing significant disparities in equality in different countries had an impact on me,” Mix said. “You could see the shift in inequality moving from single-family homes to elite homes with manicured lawns to poverty-stricken slums with lack of water access — just on the route from home to school.” That experience played a part in her decision to study sociology at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, followed by a master’s and doctorate at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her first faculty position was at the University of Alaska Fairbanks from 2002 to 2005, just prior to her move to Stillwater. As she begins her tenure as department head, Mix is looking forward to helping sociology progress. “I plan to work with our faculty and staff to maximize our existing strengths, develop strategic goals and set a path for our future as a department at OSU,” Mix said. “I’m interested in collaborative vision-setting and intend to emphasize recruitment and retention of both undergraduate and graduate students.” OSU COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SC I ENCES 9