OU Professor Named Jefferson Science Fellow
Loretta Bass, chair of the Department of Sociology and Edith Kinney Gaylord Presidential Professor of Sociology in the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma, has been named a 2023-2024 Jefferson Science Fellow. The fellowship is an initiative of the Office of the Science and Technology Adviser to the U.S. Secretary of State.
The Jefferson Science Fellows program is designed to build capacity for science, technology and engineering expertise within the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development. Academic scientists (life, physical and/or social), engineers and physicians from U.S. institutions of higher learning, who are U.S. citizens, are eligible for the fellowships.
Bass will spend one year for an on-site assignment in Washington, D.C., working in the Democracy Rights and Governance Center at USAID for the 2023-24 Jefferson Science Fellowship. She may also be involved in extended stays at U.S. foreign embassies and/or missions.
Bass is a social demographer who does research and publishes on stratification issues and civil and human rights in the United States, Africa and Europe. Her book, African Immigrant Families Another France (2014), examines the integration experiences of international migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa to France. Her prior book, Child Labor in Sub-Saharan Africa (2004), offers a window into the lives of child workers in 43 African countries. She is currently the series editor for the Sociological Studies of Children and Youth and serves on the editorial board for the journals Social Problems, Population Research and Policy Review and Sociology.
Bass has served in leadership positions in the American Sociological Association’s Children and Youth Section and International Migration Section and served on the ASA National Membership Committee. Active in the International Sociological Association, she has served in leadership positions in the Sociology of Childhood Research Committee and the Thematic Group on Human Rights.
She earned her doctorate in sociology from the University of Connecticut, Storrs, and completed a two-year appointment within the Fertility and Family Branch of the Population Division at the U.S. Census Bureau.
Jefferson Science Fellows’ assignments will complement and enhance existing staff while providing up-to-date expertise in the rapidly advancing science, technology, engineering and medical arenas that routinely impact the policy decisions encountered by the U.S. Department of State or USAID. Each Fellow will also be expected to become conversant with the functional operations of the two host organizations and take this expertise with them when they return to their institution. Fellows may remain available as consultants to their host offices or bureaus.
For more information about the Jefferson Science Fellows program, visit Jefferson Science Fellowship (nationalacademies.org).
