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Faculty


Heather Macpherson Parrott

Associate Professor of Sociology

B.S., College of Charleston Ph.D., University of Georgia

Description

Heather Parrott, Ph.D., received her undergraduate degree in Sociology from College of Charleston Honors College and her PhD from University of Georgia. Dr. Parrott has a Graduate Certificate in Nonprofit Management from the University of Georgia, and has nearly a decade of experience working for nonprofit agencies. She joined the LIU faculty in 2009 and teaches a variety of sociology courses here, including Research Methods; Sociological Statistics; Race and Ethnicity; Immigration; Poverty; and Gendered Violence. A strand of her research has been devoted to exploring innovative ways to engage students within and beyond the classroom. Her and her co-author, Elizabeth Cherry, have published two articles in Teaching Sociology - one on structured reading groups and one on process memos. Another strand of research has used advanced statistical models to explore women’s work and wages, as reflected in her Social Science Research publication “Housework, Children, and Women's Wages Across Racial-Ethnic Groups.” More recently, Dr. Parrott has been working on applied social research with and for Long Island organizations. She is the director of the Long Island Applied Research Center, an interdisciplinary group of faculty working with helping conduct community-based research.

Specialties

Race, Class and Gender Inequality
Teaching Pedagogy
Community-Based Research

Publications

  • Author, "Telling the Story: Interacting with the Communities You Study" forthcoming in Sage Publication's Social Research Methods: Sociology in Action (2019)
  • Co-author, "Lessons from the Field: Helping Victim-Services Community Organizations Produce Knowledge" forthcoming in the Routledge International Handbook on Public Sociology (2019)
  • Co-author, “Process Memos: Facilitating Conversations about Writing between Students and Instructors” published in Teaching Sociology (2014)
  • Author, “Housework, Children, and Women's Wages Across Racial-Ethnic Groups” published in Social Science Research (2014)
  • Author, “Negotiating Work and Family” published in Qualitative Sociology (2012)
  • Co-author, “Racial Mismatch and Organizational Structure: The Case of Teacher Satisfaction and Retention” published in Sociology of Education (2011)
  • Co-author, “Using Structured Reading Groups t Promote Deep Reading” published in Teaching Sociology.
  • Co-author, “The Myth of Millions: Socially Constructing ‘Illegal’ Immigration” published in Being Brown in Dixie: Race, Ethnicity, and Latino Immigration in the New South. (2011)

Honors/Awards

  • David Newton Award for Excellence in Teaching, Long Island University, 2014

Affiliations

  • Member, American Sociological Association
  • Member, Eastern Sociological Association
  • Member, Sociologists for Women in Society (National)
  • Member, Society for the Study of Social Problems