Michelle Edwards

Michelle Edwards named Outstanding Graduate Student

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The Outstanding Graduate Student in Liberal Arts, Michelle Edwards, graduated cum laude from Rice University in 2005 with a B.A. degree in Sociology and Environmental Policy Studies. She entered Texas State in 2007 to pursue a Master of Arts in Sociology.

During her undergraduate years at Rice University, Edwards made the President’s Honor Roll, and she studied for one semester in the Natural and Cultural Ecology Program at the School for International Training in Belize.

After graduating from Rice, she spent a year in the Peace Corps in Be’nin, West Africa, where she taught environmental education classes to elementary and secondary students, developed local eco-tours, and led a teenage girls’ support group at a Center for victims of child trafficking.

At Texas State Edwards maintains a 4.00 GPA. She has served the Sociology Department as a Lab Instructor for Statistics, as a Graduate Assistant for three professors, and a Statistics Tutor for both undergraduate and graduate students. She received the Sociology Department’s Geoff Wood Memorial Scholarship in 2007 and a Liberal Arts Graduate College Scholarship in 2008. She is a member of Alpha Kappa Delta Honor Society and this semester she is taking a doctoral level course in Environmental Ethics, as well as completing her thesis on “A Qualitative Study of Community Advocates for Farmworkers in Texas.”

Edwards’ scholarly activities and professional service are impressive. Her article titled “Gender, Social Disorganization Theory, and the Locations of Sexually-Oriented Businesses” is forthcoming in the prestigious academic journal Deviant Behavior. Last month she presented a conference paper “Gendered Experiences in Alcoholics Anonymous” at the Southwestern Social Science Association annual meeting, and her paper “‘Exploit the land, exploit the people’: A Qualitative Study of Community Advocates for Farm Workers in Texas” has been accepted for presentation at the August meeting of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Edwards belongs to three professional societies: The American Sociological Association, Sociologists for Women in Society, and the Southwestern Social Science Association.

One of Edwards’ professors has observed that she is “a rare student, . . . [she is] what a graduate student should be—she is interested in learning for learning’s sake and embraces the university experience as a means to explore new areas of interest.”
After Michelle receives her master’s degree in May, she will pursue a doctorate in Sociology at Washington State University, where she has been awarded a Graduate Research Assistantship by the Boeing Environmental Sociology Professor Fund.