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News Release

Last modified: Wednesday, May 23, 2012

IU professor Pescosolido honored by alma mater, American Sociological Association

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 23, 2012

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Bernice Pescosolido, Distinguished Professor and Chancellor's Professor of Sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington, is the recipient of two prestigious awards, one from her alma mater, Yale University, and the other from the American Sociological Association.

Pescosolido, also director of the Indiana Consortium for Mental Health Services Research, was awarded the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal. The Yale Graduate School Alumni Association established the Cross Medal in 1996 as its highest honor, to be awarded from time to time to graduates of the Yale Graduate School of Arts & Sciences for outstanding achievement. Pescosolido was recognized for her "impressive contributions to scholarship, shaping hand in new interdisciplinary lines of research, and outstanding pedagogy and public service."

She received the 2011 Leonard I. Pearlin Award for Distinguished Contributions from the American Sociological Association's Section on Sociology of Mental Health. Her scholarship in the sociological study of mental health, including research on mental health services, social networks, suicide and the stigma of mental illness, was recognized for its high impact on the field.

Over the course of her highly productive career, Pescosolido has received numerous awards honoring her contributions to research, teaching and service. These include the Eliot Freidson Outstanding Publication Award from the ASA Section on Medical Sociology, which she received in 2009 along with co-authors B. Perry, J.S. Long, J.K. Martin, J.I. Nurnberger and V. Hesselbrock, for "Under the Influence of Genetics: How Transdisciplinarity Leads Us to Rethink Social Pathways to Illness." Pescosolido has also received the Leo G. Reeder Distinguished Career Award in Medical Sociology in 2005, the Hans O. Mauksch Award of the Section on Teaching and Learning in Sociology in 2006, and the inaugural Carla B. Howery Award for Developing Teacher-Scholars (with Brian Powell, sociology, IU Bloomington) in 2009.

Recently Pescosolido has initiated transdisciplinary projects aimed at synthesizing insights from the social and behavioral sciences with genetic/epigenetic science. She has a career enhancement award from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Drug Abuse for epigenetic research on substance abuse and comorbidities to pursue this new line of research.

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