Professor Robert Courtney Smith Wins Distinguished Career Award for the Practice of Sociology

August 15, 2024

Robert Courtney Smith, PhD, a professor at Baruch College for 20 years, received a Distinguished Career Award from the American Sociological Association (ASA).

According to the ASA, this award honors outstanding contributions to sociological practice with work that has served as a model for the work of others; that has elevated the professional status or public image of the field; or that has been widely recognized for its significant impacts, particularly in advancing human welfare.

Professor Smith, who teaches at Baruch’s Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, was honored at the ASA’s annual meeting in Montreal held on August 9-13.

“I am especially pleased to win this award from ASA, because it recognizes uses and extensions of basic research that seek to address key challenges confronting society,” Smith said. “Academic life often directs our attention away from such applied research and work, but this award from ASA recognizes it, as I hope more of academia will do.”

Smith is currently working on research analyzing the impacts of the pandemic on immigrants and their families, and especially on children. His study finds significant delays in children’s speech and linguistic and social development for “Covid kids” who were born during or whose early years were in the shutdown and masking phases of the pandemic.

He is also writing papers on racialized traffic stops and interactions with immigrant drivers, and another book on contested immigrant political incorporation based on data previously collected.

Earlier this year, Smith won the 2024 Public Sociology Award from the Eastern Sociological Society.

Learn more about Smith here.

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