University Professor of Sociology Gloria Jones-Johnson and Abdi Kusow, professor of sociology, are recipients of service awards from Iowa State’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Both were nominated by their faculty peers.
Jones-Johnson received the LAS Institutional Service Award, which recognizes an LAS faculty or staff member for their history of exemplary institutional service benefitting their department, the college or the university. Jones-Johnson specializes and teaches courses in social psychology, social inequality, and work and occupations. Her research involves a co-PI National Science Foundation multi-year funded project investigating microaggressions among engineering students at a predominantly white institution and a historical black college and university; an intersectional analysis of women of color in STEM fields; and an intersectional analysis of alcohol use among women in the United States.
“It is heartening to have my contributions recognized by this award,” Jones-Johnson said.
Kusow received the LAS International Service Award, which recognizes Iowa State faculty for outstanding international service in the areas of teaching, research or administration, either within the United States or abroad. He is an internationally recognized sociologist with extensive scholarship in international migration, social inequality, symbolic interaction and the geopolitics of the Horn of Africa region. He is the first scholar to lay the foundation for what is now a well-established Somali diaspora scholarship. Kusow is also one of the most recognized scholars on the social and geopolitical dynamics of the Horn of Africa region.
“It is very rewarding to have my international engagement, representing the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Iowa State University abroad, acknowledged by my colleagues,” Kusow said.
Jones-Johnson and Kusow will be honored with the other 2020 university award winners at the annual awards ceremony this fall.