COLUMBUS -- Three members of The Ohio State University College of Social and Behavioral Sciences faculty have been named Joan N. Huber Faculty Fellows.

The three – Lawrence A. Baum, professor of political science; Nancy E. Betz, professor of psychology; and Randy D. Hodson, professor of sociology – will receive an annual cash award of $5,000 for three years to further their research.

The fellowship program acknowledges and rewards the strongest scholars of the Social and Behavioral Sciences faculty who are not already Eminent Scholars, chairpersons, Distinguished University Professors or Distinguished Scholars. The fellowships are named in honor of Huber, who served as dean of the college from 1984 to 1992 and as senior vice president for academic affairs and provost until her 1993 retirement.

“The winners of this highly competitive honor are chosen because of their exceptionally strong records of scholarly productivity,” said Randall B. Ripley, dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. “The most important dimension of that productivity is the national and international impact they have on their respective fields.”

• Baum, who joined Ohio State’s faculty in 1973 after earning his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin, is a leading specialist on judicial behavior, in both the U.S. Supreme Court and various federal and state courts. During his career, Baum has received many honors by Ohio State, including the University Distinguished Scholar Award and the Council of Graduate Students Outstanding Service Award. Among other things, Baum has served on the review panel for the National Science Foundation’s Law and Social Science Program and as chair of the Law, Courts and Judicial Process Section of the American Political Science Association. He has written about 40 articles for journals and law reviews, and more than 20 chapters in professional books. He also has written two textbooks on American courts and his own book, “The Puzzle of Judicial Behavior.”
• Betz joined the Department of Psychology in 1976 after receiving her doctorate from the University of Minnesota. Betz is best known for her contribution to understanding women’s career achievement. Her theory was that women’s under representation in male-dominated career fields was related, at least in part, to women’s lower expectations of themselves. This theory has inspired hundreds of studies by other researchers. Last year, Betz was the youngest person to be awarded the Leona Tyler Award for Distinguished Scholarly Contributions to Counseling Psychology, the top honor for a senior scholar in counseling psychology. A fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society, Betz has been awarded the John Holland Award for Contributions to Research in Personality and Career Psychology. Betz was also recognized by Ohio State with the University Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award.
• Randy Hodson, who joined the Department of Sociology in 1996 from a faculty position at Indiana University, earned his doctorate in 1980. Through his research, Hodson has found that management practices are important in the quality of work life. Hodson is also studying ethnic conflict in the states of the former Yugoslavia. He identifies the fears and social isolation of people within ethnic regions as major factors leading to ethnic violence. In 1999, Hodson won the Max Weber Award for Outstanding Scholarship, awarded from the Organizations, Occupations and Work Section of the American Sociological Association, and he was also elected to the Sociological Research Association, an honorary group with only 300 members in the entire discipline. In addition to several books, he has published 57 articles and chapters, with 13 of these in the top three journals in sociology.

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