Sociology Professor Joins Select Researchers in Receipt of National Award for Research, Service

In recognition of his distinguished research and dedication to others’ scholarship over an almost 50-year career, UNC Charlotte sociology professor Murray Webster has received the national 2015 Cooley-Mead Award from the American Sociological Association’s Social Psychology Section.

Webster joins a select group of researchers from institutions including Harvard University, Stanford University, Duke University, Columbia University, Johns Hopkins, University of California-Berkeley, and University of California-Los Angeles.

The Cooley-Mead Award, established in 1978, is the top honor the section gives annually to an individual who has made lifetime contributions to distinguished scholarship in sociological social psychology. Webster will present an address at the American Sociological Association annual meeting in Chicago in August.

Webster has shown remarkable generosity to others in the discipline, the award selection committed stated. He has been “an unsung hero when it comes to developing the talents of young scholars,” one nominator wrote.

In his scholarship, he “has been a leader in developing expectation states theory, identifying the processes by which status characteristics (especially diffuse status characteristics [e.g., beauty]) shape and organize social interaction and promoting rigorous, state-of-the art experimental scholarship,” the committee noted.

His research considers small group processes, including how status differences affect face-to-face interaction and how to overcome  undesirable effects of status. Much of the research has been funded by the National Science foundation, with additional funding from UNC Charlotte and the National Institutes of Education.

In recent funding, he and sociology colleague Lisa Slattery Walker were awarded $218,735 in funding from the National Science Foundation in August 2013. In his most recent book, he and Jane Sell edited Laboratory Experiments in the Social Sciences 2/e, published in 2014 (San Diego: Academic Press.)

Webster’s scholarship regularly has appeared in the top journals of the discipline, including American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, and Social Psychology Quarterly/Sociometry).

He came to UNC Charlotte in 1993. Previous academic positions were at University of South Carolina and Johns Hopkins University, and term appointments at Emory University, San Jose State University, and Stanford University. He also served as program director for sociology with the National Science Foundation in 1989-1991 and 1999-2000.

Words and image: Lynn Roberson, College Communications Director