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SADRI

Social and Demographic Research Institute

Melissa Wooten

Melissa Wooten
(Ph.D. University of Michigan 2006)
Sociology

738 Thompson Hall
(413) 545-4071
mwooten@soc.umass.edu

Melissa Wooten is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology. She received her doctorate in Management and Organizations from the University of Michigan in 2006.  Her research lies at the theoretical intersections of organizations, social movements, and education.  In her dissertation she utilized institutional theory to investigate the processes leading to homogenization among historically black colleges, private Northeastern liberal art colleges, and public universities located in the American South, and social movement theory to investigate the emergence of the United Negro College Fund.  She is currently studying compensatory programs as a means to investigate the contexts in which black students acquire cognitive and cultural skills. She is currently a resident scholar at the Rockefeller Archives during 2011-12 for her project “Filling in the Missing Years: The Search for Organizational Data on Historically Black Colleges pre-1968.”

Curriculum Vitae

Areas of Interest: Organizations and Inequality, Economic Sociology, Sex, Race and Class Processes, Methodology

Current Grants:

2011. CSBS. Research Grant

Recent Grants:

2009-10. Andrew Mellon Foundation. Mutual Mentoring Micro Grant

2009-10. Rockefeller Archive Center. The Institutional Origins of the United Negro College Fund

2008-10. Andrew Mellon Foundation. Mutual Mentoring Initiative Grant. With Anna Branch, David Cort, Andrew Papachristos, Wenona Rymond-Richmond, and Amy Schalet

Pending Grants:

Cultivating Cultural Capital: Compensatory Education Programs as Mechanisms of Dissemination. NAE/Spencer Foundation

Cultivating Cultural Capital: Compensatory Education Programs as Mechanisms of Dissemination. Ford Foundation

Selected Publications:

“Soliciting Elites: The Framing Activities of the United Negro College Fund.” Mobilization, forthcoming.

"Organizational Fields: Past, Present and Future of a Core Construct.” In Sage Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism, Royston Greenwood, Christine Oliver, Roy Suddaby and Kerstin Sahlin (eds.), London: Sage Publications, 2008. With Andrew Hoffman.