Guest Speaker

Teresa A. Sullivan, Ph.D.
Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Professor of Sociology and Law at the University of Texas at Austin

B.A., James Madison College and the Honors College, Michigan University
M. A., The University of Chicago
Ph.D. in Sociology, The University of Chicago

A labor force demographer, Professor Sullivan writes on the issues of economic marginality. She received the 1990 Silver Gavel Award of the American Bar Association for her co-authored study of consumer bankruptcy, As We Forgive Our Debtors: Bankruptcy and Consumer Credit in America. Her co-authored study The Fragile Middle Class was awarded the 2000 Writing Competition Award of the American College of Consumer Financial Lawyers. She has also won three major teaching awards for her undergraduate teaching. Professor Sullivan will be speaking on Texas as the Information Frontier.

Dr. Sullivan is currently President of the Association of Graduate Schools and a member of the Executive Committee of the GRE Board. She is past Secretary of the American Sociological Association, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which she served as Chair of the Section of Social, Economic, and Political Science; and a member and past Chair of the U.S. Census Advisory Committee. She was elected to the Sociological Research Association, an organization whose membership is limited to 150 sociologists worldwide who are recognized for their research and scholarship. She has served as a member of three National Research Council panels, on the National Science Foundation Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering; and was a member of the Leadership Texas Class of 1994.

Dr. Sullivan's research focuses on labor force demography, with particular emphasis on economic marginality and consumer debt. The author or co-author of six books and more than 50 scholarly articles, her most recent work explores the question of who files for bankruptcy and why. Dr. Sullivan has served as chair of the U.S. Census Advisory Committee. She is past secretary of the American Sociological Association and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.