Dr. Celeste Watkins-Hayes has hit a jackpot of academia.
Watkins-Hayes, a joint professor in Sociology and African American Studies recently received an award from the National Science Foundation and a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to for a research project studying the daily lives of HIV-positive Chicago women. Together the awards total approximately $734,000, which will be paid out over the next five years.
With her research, Hayes said she aims to determine ways women with HIV can improve their health and socioeconomic status.
Specifically, her studies will focus on the methods these women use to balace money, medication, doctor visits and stress, and the impact these factors have on their ability to manage their health. Hayes and her team will interview more than 150 HIV-positive women, and will complete an in-depth ethnography following 35 women over 2 years.
The project will also include a survey of service providers and organizations across Chicago who serve low-income communities, as well as an analysis of the public policies that determine these organizations’ capabilities.
“(These organizations) are the missing link between people’s larger social environment and the disadvantages that they face on the one hand and their abilities to manage their health on the other,” Hayes said.
According to the Web site of the National Science Foundation, which presented Hayes with the Faculty Early Career Development award, recipients are “junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.”
The Johnson Foundation uses similar criteria, awarding grants to individuals whose projects “seek to improve the health and health care” of Americans, according to its Web site.
In addition to her research, Hayes is known as a dedicated professor who takes the time to connect with her undergraduate students.
“She is so passionate about sociology, and you can tell that she is really interested in the questions she is asking,” said Sarah Freeman, who took Hayes’ 100-student class on “Race, Class and Power” last Winter Quarter. “She makes students want to engage in the class and helps take the awkwardness out of discussing certain topics like race.”
While enrolled in the class, Freeman, a Weinberg sophomore, went to Hayes’ office hours to get to know her better.
“I sat down and she started asking me questions about myself and how I liked her class and what my plans were before we even got to the reason why I came to see her,” she said. “She talked to me as more of an adviser-type figure than the high professor that she is.”
So far, Hayes has hired and trained her team, and is preparing to begin the field work.
Many people who work with Hayes are excited for her, said Darlene Clark Hines, chairwoman of the Department of African American Studies.
“My colleagues and I are absolutely thrilled with the success that Celeste Watkins-Hayes has achieved,” she said. “We are simply overjoyed and we agree that she is a brilliant sociologist and that her work is original and important and exceedingly well-regarded. That she has received this fabulous award is a testament to the excellence that she exemplifies.”[email protected]
