Abstract
Every year, the Cooley Mead Award is given to an individual who has made lifetime contributions to distinguished scholarship in the field of sociological social psychology. It is with great honor and deep humility that I introduce this year’s recipient: Jane McLeod, Professor of Sociology, and Associate Executive Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University. As with other recipients before her, it could be said that Jane needs no introduction. But it might be the case that we simply want to highlight the impressive—and enviable—breadth and depth of Jane’s substantive and theoretical scholarship.
Jane’s distinguished opus of work includes her path-breaking scholarship in four distinct yet complementary areas. The first area is her detailed exploration in social disparities in children’s physical and mental health—in particular, the profound effect that poverty has on children’s affect, behavior, depression, education, and overall well-being (e.g., McLeod, Nonnemaker, and Call 2004; McLeod and Owens 2004; McLeod and Shanahan 1996). The second is her innovative development of the social structure and personality school within social psychology (e.g., McLeod, Hallett, and Lively 2005; McLeod and Lively 2003). The third area is her bold reenvisioning of the stress model of mental health research to include a broader range of social psychological processes (e.g., McLeod 2012; McLeod, Erving and Caputo 2014). Fourth, and finally, werecognize her spirited promotion of the theoretical and empirical linkages between inequality and social psychology (McLeod, Schwalbe, and Lawler 2014). Jane’s tireless efforts in any one of these areas would be worthy of receiving this award, which makes her enduring commitment to all four that much more extraordinary. If there is, indeed, anyone here who is unfamiliar with Jane, it likely is attributable more to her calm and gentle demeanor or her unassuming presentation of self, as opposed to the magnitude and the scope of her substantive, empirical, and theoretical genius.
Jane received all her training at the University of Michigan, starting with a BS in statistics (1981), followed by an MA in sociology (1985) and an MHP in biostatistics (1985), which might well explain her impressive empirical chops. She went on to receive her PhD in sociology (1987) under the guidance and tutelage of Ronald Kessler. Since her time in Ann Arbor, Jane has published 59 book chapters and journal articles, an impressive proportion of which are placed in first-rate academic journals and presses.
Furthermore, Jane’s work places her squarely among the select few social psychologists who have the distinction of frequently placing their work in the top generalist journals within sociology—the trinity of American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, and Social Forces—and many of the top specialty journals, including Social Psychology Quarterly, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Society of Mental Health, Journal of Marriage and Family, and Social Problems.
She has also, within the space of seven years, coedited three outstanding sociology volumes. In the intervening 15 years, these volumes have grown to be classics in the field and still hold within their carefully assembled pages the potential to set the research agenda across multiple areas for decades to come. These include The Handbook of the Sociology of Health, Illness, and Healing (Pescosolido et al. 2011); Mental Health—Social Mirror (Avison, McLeod, and Pescosolido 2007); and, most importantly, the more recently released Handbook of the Social Psychology of Inequality (McLeod et al. 2014). This last tome, coedited with experimentalist Ed Lawler and interactionist Michael Schwalbe, is, as one letter writer wrote, “arguably, the most impressive, and most comprehensive, editorial undertaking in sociology in over a decade.” This single volume alone brings together social psychologists from every stripe, effectively highlights their collective linkages to broader substantive issues within sociology writ large, and forges new questions and new blueprints for social psychologically informed work throughout the discipline. And because Jane is as impressive of a teacher as she is scholar—and as committed to undergraduate as well as graduate and postgraduate education—she was also instrumental in producing an engaging undergraduate anthology, Sociology of Mental Illness: A Comprehensive Reader (McLeod and Wright 2010).
Although they often go hand in hand, productivity, placement, and a scholar’s actual impact are, in fact, distinct markers of excellence. Jane ticks all three of these important boxes. For instance, Jane’s citation rate is, as one letter writer perhaps understated, “shockingly high.” Just to illustrate that this is not just an example of letter writer hyperbole, more than two dozen of her articles have been cited more than one hundred times each, two over a thousand times, and her H-Index is “among the highest that we have seen among sociologists.”
In addition to her superlative record of high-impact publications and overall academic excellence, Jane’s commitment to exacting scholarship and her ability to ask the right questions at the right time have led to a truly remarkable degree of funding, from such notable organizations as the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Spencer Foundation, the Indiana Division of Mental Health, and the Eli Lily and Company foundation.
Of course, as one letter writer pointed out, “the best way to appreciate who Jane is, is to read her work.” Although even if you have not read her work, it is impossible to be a sociological social psychologist and/or a mental health scholar without having been exposed to or influenced by her work. That same writer goes on to describe Jane’s work as “blessedly clear” in terms of writing, “state of the art” in terms of methodology, appreciative of the thoughtful application of mixed methods, and attentive to theoretical development and innovation. It is this last point, her theoretical innovation, to which I now turn.
One of the things that separates a truly excellent scholar from a good one is their willingness to question their own assumptions—even if those assumptions are the very ones upon which their existing legacy was built. By that definition alone, there are very few who would surpass Jane as a truly excellent scholar. All too often, it is tempting to stick with what they know and keep doing what already works. But that is not the path Jane has ever chosen. Initially trained in quantitative methods as a mental health and stress researcher, closely aligned with the social structure and personality paradigm, Jane, starting in the early 2000s, began turning her attention to the—at the time—unprecedented project of bringing both in greater alignment with the other two “faces” of social psychology, which include what theorists typically refer to as symbolic interaction and psychologicalsocial psychology (House 1977). In particular, she began championing—in presentations and in written work—what she already saw, and others came to appreciate, as the very real benefits of incorporating interactionist insights into both of these perspectives (McLeod et al. 2015; McLeod and Lively 2003; Schnittker and McLeod 2005).
Possibly due to her new academic home at Indiana University, her office situated in rough proximity to two legendary identity theorists, Jane was particularly drawn to treating identity not only as a set of static composite scores that were innate to the individual (e.g., simple scores of self-esteem, self-mastery, etc.), which placed it clearly in the realm of psychology (or the micro-level), but rather, as something more fluid, more dynamic, and more social within the proximal conditions of our everyday life, which, in turn, can moderate the deleterious or ameliorative effects of macro conditions on individual-level outcomes (e.g., mental health, health, and all of their associated measures). She did this, in large part, through a series of collaborative chapters and articles, many of which were coauthored with then predocs and postdocs of the National Institute of Mental Health’s Training Program in Identity, Self, Role, and Mental Health, which she directed from 2000 to 2004.
Although Jane’s leadership there was relatively brief, the predoctoral students and postdoctoral fellows who benefited from her tutelage went on to be placed at such institutions as University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, Dartmouth College, University of Michigan School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Adelphi University, and Central Michigan University. Notably, most of these scholars have followed in Jane’s tradition of pursuing their own independent scholarship and also serving as department chairs, editors, members of editorial review boards, grant reviewers, and ASA Section Chairs (e.g., Social Psychology, Emotions, Mental Health, etc.). Furthermore, several of Jane’s students, not just those associated with the training program, have also gone on to enjoy productive careers not only in highly ranked traditional sociology programs but also in medical schools, departments of pharmacy and psychiatry, and prestigious research institutes around the globe.
One might think that Jane is one of those people who never leaves her office. Because, really, when would she have time? However, Jane’s career is as much about service and, in her later years, administration as sociology. She has served in numerous leadership positions within her professional associations, including chairing the Social Psychology and the Medical Sociology sections of the American Sociological Association. And, as I am sure many of you have personally experienced—I know I certainly did—Jane served as undoubtedly the most dedicated and exacting deputy editor in the history of Social Psychology Quarterly. I know that many articles—mine included—benefited immeasurably from Jane’s last round of supplemental and inspiring comments on top of those delivered by an already carefully curated group of reviewers. Furthermore, in addition to directing Indiana’s postdoctoral program for four years, she has also served as Director of Research at the Karl F. Schuster Institute of Social Research and department chair. Finally, Jane has spent the last 14 years in and out of higher education administration, holding the roles of Associate Dean for Social and Historical Sciences and Graduate Education and, later, Associate Executive Dean for the College of Arts & Science, a position that she still holds today.
It would be perfectly normal to assume that Jane’s productivity might have slowed down during her time as an administrator. But that would be incorrect. Jane is currently working with numerous graduate students on a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development titled “College and beyond for Young Adults on the Spectrum.” They currently have two articles under review and two more in progress.
Lest anyone think that I am biased in my assessment of the magnitude of Jane’s career as both prolific social psychologist and remarkable human being, I sent out a request to some of Jane’s former students and collaborators to see if they would share their reflections with me. All of them were similarly laudatory. But they also included some details that I had overlooked, which are worth sharing here. These reflections include mentions of her “big” laugh, her culinary expertise, her seeming ability to balance work and family with grace and ease, her singular musical talent, and the incredible generosity and care that she brings to every interaction.
In her Cooley Mead address, Jane McLeod shares some insights from her newest, exciting, and timely work. Thank you, Jane, for being such a supportive and exacting mentor, an inspiring role model, and a supportive and joy-filled friend to so many.