Karen Heimer sworn in as President of American Society of Criminology

Former UI Sociology chair to serve until November 2018
Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Karen HeimerAt its annual meeting last November, Professor of Sociology Karen Heimer was sworn in as President of the American Society of Criminology.

The American Society of Criminology is an international organization whose members pursue scholarly, scientific, and professional knowledge concerning the measurement, etiology, consequences, prevention, control, and treatment of crime and delinquency. Heimer was named a Fellow of the organization in 2015.

Heimer, who earned the PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1989, joined the UI faculty in 1991. In addition to her position in the Department of Sociology, she also holds appointments in the UI Public Policy Center and in the Department of Gender, Women's & Sexuality Studies. She conducts research and teaches in the areas of gender and violence, criminal punishment, juvenile delinquency, and criminology. She currently is researching gender and race differences in violent victimization, trauma intervention in schools, motherhood experiences of women in prison and jail, and gender and race differences in imprisonment in the United States. She is currently the PI on a four-year grant to the UI from the National Institute of Justice titled, "Link for Schools: A system to prevent violence and its adverse impacts." This project partners with the Cedar Rapids Community School District to administer and assess the impact of a trauma intervention in schools. 

 Heimer’s work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Justice, and National Consortium on Violence Research. She served on the National Academies of Sciences’ CNSTAT panel on Estimating the Incidence of Rape and Sexual Assault, on the National Research Council’s workshop on Understanding Crime Trends, and she is currently serving as advisor to the American Association of Universities' Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault & Misconduct.

 

The University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences offers about 70 majors across the humanities; fine, performing and literary arts; natural and mathematical sciences; social and behavioral sciences; and communication disciplines. About 15,000 undergraduate and nearly 2,000 graduate students study each year in the college’s 37 departments, led by faculty at the forefront of teaching and research in their disciplines. The college teaches all Iowa undergraduates through the college's general education program, CLAS CORE. About 80 percent of all Iowa undergraduates begin their academic journey in CLAS. The college confers about 60 percent of the university's bachelor's degrees each academic year.