Renowned University of Notre Dame sociologist Maureen T. Hallinan has been elected into the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) newly established Fellows Program, which honors education researchers with exceptional scientific or scholarly contributions.
One of the world’s foremost scholars in the sociology of education, Hallinan is Notre Dame’s William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of Sociology and director of the University’s Center for Research on Educational Opportunity. She is the author or editor of eight books and more than 120 peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals. In addition, she is the lead investigator of “Comparative Analysis of Best Practices in Public and Private Elementary and Secondary Schools,” a federally funded study that is revealing new insight into the comparative achievement of public and Catholic school children.
Hallinan is the recipient of Notre Dame’s 2007 Excellence in Research on Catholic Education Award, 2006 Faculty Award, 2003 Research Achievement Award, and 1997 Presidential Award. She studies the determinants and consequences of the organization of students for instruction, such as how students are assigned to ability groups and what the effects of ability group levels are on student learning opportunities. She also examines the effects of school characteristics on student achievement and social development. Her work includes studies of the formation and duration of students’ cross-race friendships in middle and secondary schools.
A past president of both the American Sociological Association (ASA) and the Sociological Research Association (SRA), Hallinan also served as vice president for fellowships for the National Academy of Education. In 2004, she received the Willard Waller Award for lifetime achievement from the ASA’s Section on Sociology of Education.
Hallinan joined the Notre Dame faculty in 1984 as the second woman appointed to an endowed chair at the University. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Marymount College, her master’s degree in mathematics from Notre Dame and a joint doctorate in sociology and education from the University of Chicago.
Contact: Maureen T. Hallinan, 574-631-7158, hallinan.1@nd.edu
Originally published by at newsinfo.nd.edu on July 23, 2008.