I have worked for more than twenty years with the ADVANCE program at the National Science Foundation, serving as a consultant, external evaluator, and external advisory board member to institutions in the ADVANCE community, and as a program officer, review panelist, and site visitor. In 2021, NSF presented a series of panels marking twenty years of ADVANCE; I served as moderator for one of these.
My involvement developed out of my interest in higher education, technology, and diversity. My research on engineering faculty and the retention of undergraduates from traditionally underrepresented groups included interviews with 100 faculty at six engineering schools in the Northeast (presented at ASEE meetings, and published in the proceedings: “Explaining Faculty Involvement in Women's Retention”).
I am a Professor Emerita of Sociology at Montclair State University, where I chaired the Sociology Department, served as a Special Assistant to the Vice President for Academic Affairs, worked with the New Faculty Program, and participated in the governance of interdisciplinary programs (Women’s Studies and Honors Programs).
I began writing about gender for college students early in my career, most recently with the 2014 publication of the fourth edition of The Sociology of Gender: A Brief Introduction (coauthored with Ann Beutel) from Oxford University Press. Earlier editions (2001, 2004, and 2010) were sole authored by Kramer, following The Sociology of Gender: A Text-Reader (1990), and The Sociology of Gender (as Laura Kramer Gordon, co-authored with Laurie Davidson, 1979).
Thanks to my mother's insights, I became interested in the intersection of gender and aging, and have co-organized activities focussed on this at some meetings of the Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS). Recently, I co-authored a piece with Barbara H. Chasin entitled "Ageism and Sexism: Invisibility and Erasure" for Segal and Demos' volume in Emerald Publishing's Advances In Gender Research (vol. 33).
In addition to my writing and consulting, I have been part of the American Sociological Association's (ASA) Program Reviewers and Consultants (formerly the Department Resource Group) for more than twenty years. I served as treasurer of Sociologists for Women in Society, from which I received both the Feminist Activism Award and the Mentoring Award. I chaired the SWS Career Development Committee and authored or co-authored several issues of its Hey Jane! career development newsletter. I served on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Rose Series in Sociology, and on the Committee on the Status of Women in Sociology of both the ASA and the Eastern Sociological Society. I currently serve on the ASA's Retirement Network Advisory Board.
Education: State University of New York at Stony Brook, PhD in Sociology (1972), MA in Sociology (1970); the University of Michigan, AB in Sociology (1967).