Prospective Graduate Students

Dear prospective student,

I’m so glad you’re here. If you’re weighing a PhD in Sociology at the University of Minnesota — and thinking about working with me — let me tell you what that looks like.

An interdisciplinary home

Great science grows out of crossing disciplines.

I hold three degrees in Human Development and Family Studies from Minnesota’s fellow Big Ten schools — Illinois and Penn State — so I was trained to move between sociology, demography, psychology, and economics rather than stay put in one. I bring that same breadth to my students: a perspective on intimate relationships, family, and health that is rooted in sociology but crosses disciplines and uses methods from each, applied to secondary and primary data, and to self-report, observational, and time-diary data. I love ALL the data!

Minnesota is a remarkable place to do this kind of work. You can learn more about the Sociology graduate program, and I hope the prospect feels as exciting to you as it does to me.

How I mentor

My job is to help you get where you’re trying to go.

I take mentoring as seriously as I take my research. There are lots of pathways to joy, and my goal is to help my students get to joy – and a job they will love and that will fit them. I tend to have synergistic advisor–advisee relationships: I try to push my students towards the highest version of their potential, and support them as they work hard to achieve their goals. I’m explicit about my expectations rather than leaving you to guess — I have even wrote about them in a post on advice on being advised.

Mentoring matters to me personally. In 2019 I received the Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching — Ohio State’s highest teaching honor for tenure-track faculty — and the award specifically recognized how I mentor my undergraduate and graduate students.

Rachel, Diandra, Letitia, and me — graduation day, Ohio State, May 2015.

Where my students go

The track record speaks for itself.

My students win national fellowships, publish as first authors, and present their work at national and international conferences including the meetings of the Population Association of America, the National Council on Family Relations, the International Association for Relationship Research, and the Society for Research in Child Development, among others. And then they land jobs that fit them.

Emma Goldstein presenting her award-winning poster at the Population Association of America 2026 in St. Louis, MO

4

NSF Graduate Research Fellowships — Hyunjae Kwon, Patricia Pittman, Rachel Arocho, and Chanell Washington — plus several honorable mentions.

39

Peer-reviewed publications led by my graduate students, with many more co-authored alongside them.

100+

Conference presentations with a graduate student as lead author, from regional meetings to international congresses.

2

National Council on Family Relations Student Awards — Sara Mernitz and Rachel Arocho.

Rachel Arocho — Associate Professor of Family Science, Utah Valley University
Sara Mernitz — Research Scientist, Population Research Center, UT Austin
Letitia Linville — Data Analytics Manager, Ohio Department of Education
Hyunjae Kwon & Emma Goldstein — current doctoral students, Sociology, University of Minnesota

The Minnesota Population Center

You won’t be doing this alone.

Working with me means plugging into the Minnesota Population Center — a multidisciplinary, NICHD-funded hub for population and health research, with family demography as one of its signature strengths. Family demography studies the ties that bind people into households and families: marriage, divorce, cohabitation, parenting, and the relationships in between.

As a student here you can earn formal training in Population Studies and Population Health, pursue a graduate minor in Population Studies, apply for research space, travel funding, fellowships, and assistantships, and trade ideas with both students from other departments and disciplines and demographers from across the country who pass through the our seminar series. There are methods workshops and writing hunkers too. See everything MPC offers.

Hyunjae Kwon delivering discussant comments at the Population Association of America Conference in St. Louis, MO in May 2026

What it’s like to work with me

I’m committed to a lab where everyone belongs.

I have studied how context can shape shape health — so treating my students with a deep abiding respect is not just a stated goal – it is part of my work. I bring that same commitment to my mentoring. I want every student who works with me to feel they belong here and can do their best, most ambitious thinking.

I can’t promise you’ll never encounter bias in academia, and I won’t pretend I always get it right myself. What I can promise is that I stay open to hard-to-hear, honest feedback, that I keep working on my own blind spots, and that I’m someone who can change and grow. You can read more of my thinking on bias and microresistance and on why diversity matters in our science.

Living here

And honestly — the Twin Cities are wonderful.

Minneapolis–St. Paul is one of the largest metros in the Midwest, with a thriving arts and food scene, lakes and river trails threaded through the city, and a genuinely livable pace. It’s a great place to spend the years of a PhD.

Minneapolis at night, reflected in the Mississippi. Photo: Photomatt28, via Flickr (license).

Think we might be a fit?

I’d genuinely love to hear from you. Tell me a little about what you want to study and why, and let’s see whether graduate school at Minnesota is your next step.

Get in touch

Claire Kamp Dush · Department of Sociology & Minnesota Population Center · Minneapolis, MN

Prospective graduate students