Faculty

Joseph F. Donnermeyer(Professor)
Conducts research on topics related to rural crime. A secondary research interest concerns socio-cultural change among the Amish, with special reference to Amish in Ohio. He has received one USDA/National Research Initiative Competitive Grant to examine the relationship between rural community structure and adolescent substance use. He teaches introductory rural sociology, Amish society, rural youth problems, the change agent, concepts and theories in Rural Sociology, and diffusion of innovations. He is currently Chair of the NCA-13 Committee of Chairs of Rural Sociology Programs. He will serve as chair of the Endowment Committee for the Rural Sociological Society in 2002-2003. Dr. Donnermeyer is collaborating with co-authors from two other land-grant institutions on a new textbook for introductory rural sociology courses. Previously, he has been the author of 5 books (1 on introductory rural sociology, 2 on rural crime, and 2 on the Amish). Dr. Donnermeyer has received the Excellence in Instruction award from the Rural Sociological Society, the Gamma Sigma Delta award for Excellence in Teaching from the College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, the Departmental Research award from the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center for studies of adolescent risk-taking behaviors, and the Governor's Award for Excellence in Research and Evaluation on Community Oriented Policing in Ohio.

William L. Flinn(Professor)
Dr. Flinn is the former President and Executive Director of the Council of University Presidents for The Midwest Universities Consortium for International Activities, Inc. (MUCIA). MUCIA has conducted nearly 100 international large-scale technical assistance, training, and academic exchange programs, worked in more than 55 countries and administered contracts with a total value of more than $360 million dollars. The consortium currently has approximately $65 million in signed contracts that are funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), The World Bank, The Asian Development Bank, the African Development Bank, and host country contracts. Dr. Flinn served as President of the Rural Sociological Society in 1980-81. Dr. Flinn conducts research on social and technological change especially on the social structural constraints to change and the role that norms, values and ideologies play in preserving the status quo. He is currently involved in development of the "Rural Poll," a statewide survey public opinion survey. He teaches introductory rural sociology.

David O. Hansen(Professor)
Since 1987, Dr. Hansen has served as Associate Dean and Director of International Programs in Agriculture. In this position, he serves on the Administrative Cabinet of the College and is responsible for international programs in the College. He conducts research in the area of the sociology of development. Other areas of topical focus include the sociology of education, natural resources and institution building. Early in his career he focused on Latin America where he has lived and worked for over ten years. More recently his areas of inquiry have included Africa and Asia. He serves as the Rural Sociological Society's representative to the International Rural Sociological Association.

Linda Lobao(Professor)
Dr. Lobao's research specializations are the sociology of economic change (in agriculture and industry), community development, political sociology, and gender. She is currently involved in studies of the effects of economic change on socioeconomic well-being at the regional, local, household, and individual levels; and the response of social groups, particularly women, to the economic changes they experience. An important part of Dr. Lobao's research agenda is to address major sociological and cross-discipline audiences. She currently holds formal (courtesy) appointments in the both the Department of Sociology and the Department of Geography and is on the graduate faculty of the Department of Women's Studies. Dr. Lobao has received two USDA/National Research Initiative Competitive Grants, and is co-principal investigator (with Katherine Meyer, Department of Sociology) on projects funded by the National Science Foundation and North Central Regional Center for Rural Development. Dr. Lobao has received the Departmental Research Award twice from the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center. She received an OSU Sphinx and Mortar Board "Outstanding Faculty Member Award" for her work with students in 1997. Dr. Lobao teaches introductory rural sociology, diffusion of innovations and social change, concepts and theories in rural sociology, rural poverty, and women in rural society. Since 1990, she has served on the editorial board of three journals including Rural Sociology and Environment and Planning, a geography journal. She is also a reviewer for the National Science Foundation, USDA-NRI Program, and for manuscripts for various university presses. Dr. Lobao was elected Vice-President of the Rural Sociological Society for 1997-1998 and currently is the President-elect. Her term as president begins at the annual meeting of the Rural Sociological Society in August, 2002.

Richard Moore(Associate Professor)
Dr. Moore specializes in community organization and is the first resident social scientist at OARDC, the experimental station for the college. An anthropologist by training, Dr. Moore works on the area where anthropology, rural sociology, and ecology intersect. He is an executive committee member of the OSU Agroecosystems Management Program (AMP) which is an interdisciplinary program initially funded by the Kellogg Foundation. He is project leader for the Sugar Creek Headwaters Participatory Farmer Project, which is funded through grants from Ohio EPA, USDA, and NSF.  This participatory project encourages farmers from the same neighborhood to work together to reduce their pollution and form a watershed landscape in their own vision. He is also the author of Ohio's first water-quality trading plan based on local communities being the broker of environmental credits between industry and the local farmers.  He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in Anthropology in 1985. His dissertation was on "Social Organization in a Japanese Rice-growing Region." This work focuses on kinship, descent, land tenure, and community organization in a watershed setting. Having spent six years researching in Japan, he speaks Japanese and makes frequent research trips to the Japan. He teaches RS766 Environmental Sociology.

Ted L. Napier(Professor Emeritus)
Dr. Napier's primary research interests are focused on technology transfer of conservation technologies and techniques in the U.S. and less-scale societies of the world. He currently has research projects focused on adoption of soil and water conservation production practices at the farm level, a location study of outdoor recreation facilities in Ohio, a use of climate projections study, an impact assessment study of a proposed development project, and an ecotourism study. He will be undertaking a study of genetically modified organisms during the Spring Quarter of 2002. Dr. Napier is the only the second social scientist to be elected as a Fellow in the International Soil and Water Conservation Society. As well, he has been the recipient of the Society's Presidents Leadership Award. In addition to Rural Sociology, Dr. Napier serves as a member of the graduate faculty in the Department of Environmental Science and also in the School of Natural Resources. Dr. Napier has co-authored or co-edited 7 books, including Conserving Soil: Insights from Socioeconomic Research and Adopting Conservation on the Farm: An International Perspective on the Socioeconomics of Soil and Water Conservation. Dr. Napier teaches in the area of environmental sociology.

Cathy A. Rakowski(Associate Professor)
Dr. Rakowski holds a joint appointment in the Department of Women's Studies (College of Humanities). Her areas of specialization are social change and development (development theory, processes of social change, globalization, planning, impact assessment, program evaluation, local development initiatives, labor market restructuring), gender and development, and sexual violence. Dr. Rakowski's research is comparative and focuses on Latin America in general and Venezuela specifically; she also works on gender and development issues in Africa, particularly Senegal and Uganda. In the Rural Sociology graduate program, she teaches a graduate seminar on the "Rural Sociology of Development and Social Change," a graduate seminar on "Social Action in Community Development," plus a general education course on "Social Groups in Developing Societies." In Women's Studies, she teaches courses on women and violence; women and social change in Latin America; gender, power and social change; and cross cultural feminist analysis. She served as chair of the Rural Sociology Society-Kellogg Diversity Initiative. 

Jeff S. Sharp(Associate Professor)
Dr. Sharp is the newest member of the Rural Sociology faculty and is a State Extension Specialist in the area of rural/urban interface issues. Dr. Sharp's primary research interests are social change and development of rural communities and agriculture. Recent research projects include examination of individual and organizational networks and their association with capacity for community action; analysis of alternative agricultural organizations that directly link producers and consumers; and demographic analysis of rural change associated with metropolitan growth in Ohio. He is also interested in the use of network analysis in rural social research and the development of network analysis as a useful diagnostic and evaluation tool for development purposes. Soon after arriving at Ohio State, Dr. Sharp secured an OARDC seed grant to examine the social impacts of rural-in migration on Ohio agriculture and communities during 1999 and 2000. Also, he is working collaboratively with Dr. Flinn on the "Rural Poll." Extension activities have included presentations to OSU extension personnel and clients about social changes in Ohio's rural areas. In association with the OSU Extension Public Issues Education Team, Dr. Sharp has taken a leading role in delivering programs related to social change, conflict management, and the siting of confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in Ohio. Dr. Sharp is active in the Rural Sociological Society, has served on the Society's Program Committee and was chair of the Community Interest Group. He is also a member of the Editorial Board for the American Sociological Society's Community and Urban Section sponsored journal, City and Community. Dr. Sharp has taught a course on the relationship between agricultural change and rural community change.

Donald W. Thomas(Associate Professor Emeritus)
Dr. Thomas' research interest is concentrated in the area of applied demographics at the state and local levels. This includes tracking population change and the components of change such as migration and birth and death rates. Relevant population characteristics such as age and sex structure, and socioeconomic variables are also monitored. Administrative responsibilities included Acting Chair of the Department of Human and Community Resource Development (7/1/01 ­ 12/31/01), faculty friend for Norton-Scott (agricultural) dormitories and student orientation, department representative on Agriculture Faculty Council, and various department committees. He teaches five to six sections a year of Introductory Rural Sociology plus an occasional seminar in Rural Social Demography. He has received the Plimpton Outstanding Young Teacher Award from the College of Agriculture, the Excellence in Teaching Award from the Rural Sociological Society and the Outstanding Teacher Award from the College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Extension activities include providing support to state and district agents on such demographic topics as state and local population and change, migration, population composition and vital statistics. Also included is responsibility for assistance with the Data Center in the department.

Associated Faculty

Mark Erbaugh(Adjunct Assistant Professor)
Dr. Erbaugh received his Ph.D. in 1995 in Rural Sociology at The Ohio State University. Currently, he is the Assistant Director in the International Programs in Agriculture Office of the College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. As the Assistant Director, he is responsible for international grants/contracts development and implementation and administration of short-term technical training programs. He is the Uganda site chair for the Integrated Pest Management Collaborative Research Support Program. He has also conducted fieldwork in the Dominican Republic, Swaziland and Mali. Dr. Erbaugh occasionally teaches Rural Sociology courses, including an undergraduate course on Social Groups in Developing Societies, and is a frequent guest lecturer about the challenges and prospects of agricultural and rural development projects for courses throughout the College.

Daniel T. Lichter(Adjunct Professor)
Dr. Lichter is the Robert F. Lazarus Professor in Population Studies in the Department of Sociology at The Ohio State University. He is coordinator of The Ohio State University=s new Initiative in Population Research and chairs the Sociology Department=s Population, Health, and Life Course Program. He also is the current editor of Demography (2002-2004), the official journal of the Population Association of America (PAA), president of the Association of Population Centers, member of the Census Advisory Committee, and member of Population Association of America's Committee on Population Statistics. He also sits on the advisory councils of the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University and the Center for Families at Purdue University. Dr. Lichter has worked extensively throughout his career with rural population issues related poverty, youth, the elderly, families, and economic development. During 1999-2000, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York, where he investigated the long-term effects of poverty, welfare receipt, and family instability on pro-social behavior in late adolescence and early adulthood. Dr. Lichter has been an associate editor of Rural Sociology since 1988 and previously served on the editorial board for the Rural Studies Series for Westview Press. Dr. Lichter was elected to a three year term on the Council of the Rural Sociological Society in 1999, and currently serves as chair of the Nominations Committee for RSS. Dr. Lichter received the Kolb Award from the Department of Rural Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1980 for outstanding Ph.D. student. He also received the Excellence in Research Award from the Rural Sociological Society in 1995.

Kenneth Martin(Adjunct Professor)
Dr. Martin is the Chair of the Department of Extension and Associate Director, Programs for Ohio State University Extension. He previously served as OSU Extension’s Assistant Director for Community Development where he was responsible for program leadership and development, rural development, and community and economic development. Prior to joining OSU Extension, he previously served as director of the Center for Community Economic, and Workforce Development, associate dean in the Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer Sciences and director of the Center for Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Community Development. He also had appointments of adjunct professor of Sociology in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, and adjunct professor of Resource Management in the Davis College. Dr. Martin’s areas of expertise are community resource development, economic development, rural development, public policy analysis, leadership, and rural health development. His research and publications have focused on various rural development topics including health care, economic development, policy, local government finance, and leadership. His is currently working on an NRI grant studying the impact of community leadership in the new economy. In addition to teaching undergraduate and graduate leadership courses, he has led the development of distance education and on-line educational programming on various rural development topics.

Katherine Meyer(Adjunct Associate Professor)
Dr. Meyer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Coordinator of the Comparative Social Change Program in Sociology. She also serves as an Adjunct Faculty member with the John Glenn Institute of Public Policy and Public Service at The Ohio State University. In addition to numerous publications on democratization in the Middle East and change in the U.S. Catholic Church, she has studied U.S. farming, particularly the crises and transformations of the 20th century. Much of her collaborative work is with Linda Lobao at OSU, as well as with Peggy Barlett (Emory), Paul Lasley (Iowa State), and Larry Leistritz (North Dakota State). This work focuses farm families and the effects of economic hardship, personal statuses, community characteristics and social networks on men's and women's work roles, their mental health and their political behavior. Together with Lasley, Leitstritz and Lobao, she co-produced Beyond the Amber Waves of Grain: An Examination of Economic and Social Restructuring in the Heartland which is the most comprehensive study of the outcomes of the 1980s U.S. farm crisis for farm enterprises, communities and households. Dr. Meyer also serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Rural Studies and routinely reviews articles and books on rural issues for various other journals.