Dr. Roger Nemeth of the Hope College sociology faculty is serving a three-year term as a member of the national board of councilors of the Social Science Division of the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR).
Founded in 1978, CUR focuses on providing undergraduate research opportunities for faculty and students at predominantly undergraduate institutions. A national organization of individual and institutional members, CUR represents more than 900 colleges and universities.
CUR is organized into seven disciplinary divisions and one at-large division, each of which appoints up to 24 councilors. Nemeth is one of 22 scholars from around the country serving as councilors in the Social Science Division. His term continues through 2008.
Nemeth is a professor of sociology at Hope, where he has taught since 1983. His research interests include comparative and historical sociology, the sociology of religion and urban sociology.
The Michigan Sociological Association named him Michigan's Outstanding Sociology Professor of the Year in 1989. He has received multiple external grants and awards in support of his research, including a fellowship at the East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1981; a Fulbright Study Award in 1985 for research in Seoul, South Korea; and a Malone Fellowship to study in Cairo, Egypt, in 1990. Last summer he and Dr. Deborah Sturtevant, who is professor of sociology and social work and chairperson of the department, led a team of three Hope students to Romania to conduct research on international Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). During the college's May Term this year he will lead 12 Hope students in their studies at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo, Japan.
Nemeth is the author of several articles published in professional journals and chapters. He co-edited the 2001 book "Reformed Encounters with Modernity" with Hope colleague Dr. Donald Luidens and also Corwin Smidt, H. Jurgens Hendricks and Hijme Stoffels.
Active in professional organizations, he is a past president, vice president and secretary-treasurer of the Michigan Sociological Association. The association presented him with its Marvin Olsen Memorial Award in 1999 "for distinguished service to sociology in Michigan."