The degree program will be housed in the Department of Sociology and is intended to help address the continued demand for expertise in criminal justice-related work. It was approved by the 91���� System Board of Trustees on Monday, Jan.13 during its regular meeting.

“The Sociology Department is thrilled to launch our new major in criminal justice,” said Karyn Sporer, associate professor and chair of the Department of Sociology. “This is a great opportunity for the students at Maine’s flagship campus, and it will have a positive impact on the state of Maine and beyond.”

The program will offer educational opportunities unique to 91����, including an interdisciplinary curriculum, grounded in sociology, that explores the impacts of inequality and inequity. Students will develop strong research and data analysis skills to prepare them for employment or advanced study. 

This interdisciplinary major will bring together the full array of opportunities available at 91����, while also enabling students to take advantage of online courses at other UMS institutions. Career opportunities the program can help students achieve include police, correction, parole and juvenile intake officer; crime analyst, border patrol agent, victim service specialist, substance abuse counselor, paralegal, security manager and occupational health and safety specialists. Additionally, the degree can provide another pathway to a law program. Ultimately, it will allow students the full experience of an R1 university campus while pursuing the study of criminal justice.

“This is a program that our students have been asking for for some time,” said Emily Haddad, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “Our minor in criminal justice has been very popular and we’re happy to be able to offer the major here at Maine’s flagship university.”

The new program addresses the great need for people to fill criminal justice positions, both in Maine and across the country. Between May 2023 and 2024, there were 256 unique job listings covering a range of roles suitable for those with an education in criminal justice in Maine alone. Meanwhile, in the 2022-2023 academic year, the most recent year for which data are available, there were just 48 criminal justice bachelor’s degrees awarded at public institutions statewide. Introducing this program will potentially narrow the significant gap between the number of degrees awarded and the region’s market demand.

The major will be open to new first-year and transfer students, as well as to students already at 91����. Visit the to learn more about it.

A new 91����-led study shows that parents raising children with serious mental illness and violent tendencies experience and express grief similar to those of children who have died, which informs how practitioners can help these caregivers cope with the stress. 

Karyn Sporer, associate professor of sociology at 91����, led a study that conducted in-depth interviews with 32 parents of young and adult children with serious mental illness and violent tendencies. The transcripts of the interviews were analyzed for shared themes and ideas across the parents studied.

The results showed that the subjects expressed grief and loss similar to that of parents whose children have died, though parents of children with serious mental illness and violent tendencies lack the closure and community support that often comes with the loss of a child. Since their loss is symbolic and the child is still physically present and needs care, parents are more likely to cope with their stress by reconstructing the identity of their child rather than their identity as parents, which is more common for parents of deceased children. This reconstruction ranged from expressing the belief that the expression of mental illness is not truly their child, to viewing their child as a stranger or non-existent. 

“Our research highlights the pervasive strains and stigma associated with loving and caring for a child who suffers from serious mental illness. For these parents in particular, they are not only mothers and fathers in mourning, but they are also survivors of domestic violence,” Sporer says.

The study helps illuminate the grief experienced by parents in this uniquely stressful situation and informs practitioners helping parents who are in this caregiving role. The researchers recommend that, in light of these results, therapists encourage “meaning-making” and “both/and thinking,” which encourages acceptance of the tough emotions, celebrating what remains of their loved one and allowing for mourning of the connections or relationships that have been lost. 

“The relationship between mental illness and violence is a complicated one. I hope this work illuminates how compassion and courage is needed to fight the stigma of mental illness and to fight for better access to services and treatment for both persons with mental illness and their loved ones,” Sporer says. 

The was published Jan. 25, 2023, in the Journal of Family Trauma, Child Custody & Child Development.

Contact: Sam Schipani, samantha.schipani@maine.edu 

Tienda will deliver a public lecture titled “Higher Education as Integration Policy,” at 4:30 p.m. April 19 at Buchanan Alumni House. Her talk will argue that restoring the nation’s unconditional commitment to quality public education is essential not only to revive economic mobility and restore broadly shared prosperity, but also to broaden the national project of integration beyond race and national origins. Using her personal biography as a prologue, Tienda will provide a 50-year retrospective that illustrates how the national project of integration eroded as the population became more diverse and social mobility stagnated against a backdrop of rising economic inequality.

At 4:30 April 20 in Hill Auditorium, Barrows Hall, Tienda will be joined by 91���� faculty members Nicholas Micinski, Lisa Neuman, Brian Pitman and Amy Fried for a roundtable discussion titled “Is Demography Destiny? Diversity and its Discontents.” The conversation will address the changing ethno-racial composition of the U.S. population and discuss whether and how diversity undermines cohesion on college campuses.

Tienda is the Maurice P. During ’22 Professor in Demographic Studies and a professor of sociology and public affairs, with joint affiliations in the Office of Population Research and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. From 1997–2002, she served as director of the Office of Population Research. Tienda is co-author and co-editor of several books, including “Divided Opportunities” (1988), “The Color of Opportunity” (2001), “Youth in Cities” (2002), “Ethnicity and Causal Mechanisms” (2005), “Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies” (2006), “Hispanics and the Future of America” (2006) and “Africa on the Move” (2006). She has published over 200 scholarly papers in academic journals and edited collections, as well as numerous research bulletins and articles for a lay audience. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Spanish from Michigan State University and a master’s degree and Ph.D., both in sociology, from the University of Texas at Austin. She received honorary doctorates from The Ohio State University (2002), Lehman College (2003) and Bank Street College (2006).

Tienda’s research interrogates how ascribed attributes acquire their social and economic significance by investigating racial, ethnic and gender variations in social inequality. She is co-author of “The Hispanic Population of the United States” (1987), the first national comparison of the major nationality groups. She also has written extensively about equity and access to higher education and lectured about consequences of underinvestment in public education. Tienda held appointments at the University of Chicago, where she served as chair of the Department of Sociology and editor of the “American Journal of Sociology,” and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She is past president of the Population Association of America and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences and the American Academy of Education. She also serves on several philanthropic organizations.

Since 1956, the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program has been offering undergraduates the opportunity to spend time with some of America’s most distinguished scholars. The purpose of the program is to contribute to the intellectual life of the campus by making possible an exchange of ideas between the visiting scholars and the resident faculty and students.

Phi Beta Kappa is America’s oldest Greek-letter organization and national academic honor society. The Delta of Maine chapter of Phi Beta Kappa received its charter at 91���� in 1922. The purpose of the honorary society is to recognize and encourage scholarship, friendship and cultural interests.

For more information, contact Delta of Maine Chapter President Tim Cole at tmcole@maine.edu.  

The circular economy is an economic system that focuses on long-term sustainability, maximization of reuse and the reduction of waste. It has long been touted as a cure to social, environmental and economic ills. However, the role of social justice in the circular economy has yet to be thoroughly examined. Without consideration for the social dimension, such as what role labor plays in the system or ensuring inclusive representation in decision-making processes, the circular economy may not be as beneficial as its proponents claim it to be.

In a published in the journal Local Environment, 91���� researchers conducted focus groups with circular economy experts and analyzed reports authored by U.S.-based governmental, nonprofit and business groups on circular economies to see whether and how “justice” emerges as part of the conversation. 

The researchers divided justice into four sub-categories: neoliberal justice, which is achieved through individual actions and the free market; procedural justice, which gives representation to all parties who have stake in the outcome of a decision-making process; distributive justice, which centers on the fair distribution of benefits and harms; and compensatory justice, which compensates communities that have been historically disadvantaged. The researchers searched the literature for certain keywords related to justice and analyzed the texts to see which category it would fall under. 

“Circular economies are often framed as addressing social problems, but there hasn’t been much research exploring how this is supposed to happen,” says Brieanne Berry, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral research associate at 91����. “We wanted to understand in a systematic way how proponents of circular economies are thinking and talking about justice.”

The researchers also held virtual focus groups with experts in the circular economy, where they asked direct questions about how the participants conceptualize justice, as well as the opportunities and barriers to designing circular economies. The researchers analyzed the focus group transcripts for justice-related content and grouped it into the four categories.  

The results showed that while experts understand and advocate for the need for justice to be a key component in the circular economy, these ideas are rarely represented in the literature about circular economies in the U.S. When the topic of justice did come up, it was most often focused on neoliberal justice — more so than any of the other three forms of justice combined. 

For example, references to jobs and labor were more about the quantity of jobs created by the circular economy rather than the quality of jobs created. Attempts at addressing the other forms of justice were often vague, aspirational or couched in neoliberal ideas. 

Berry said that the researchers were surprised that the word “justice” only appeared four times in the 1,181 pages of text analyzed. 

“The prevalence of neoliberal framings of justice mirrors what we see in other sustainability efforts, such as the organic food movement,” says Michael Haedicke, associate professor of sociology and co-author of the study. “But this mindset overlooks the institutionalized inequalities that make it difficult for some groups of people to benefit from these efforts.”

The researchers emphasized the importance of including more complete, nuanced and actualized justice in the design of circular economies in order for the system to create the sustainable, transformative change that it aims to achieve.

“This work really demonstrates that circular economies won’t be just and equitable unless they are designed intentionally with those goals in mind. We can’t expect to prioritize expectations of profit and environmental sustainability and achieve justice goals,” says Berry. 

Contact: Sam Schipani, samantha.schipani@maine.edu