Associate Professor

Phone: 713.743.1918
Email: smkatz@uh.edu
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Education

Ph.D., Sociology, Vanderbilt University
M.A., Sociology, Vanderbilt University
B.A., Sociology and Women’s Studies, University of Georgia

Biography

Professor Sheila M. Katz uses qualitative research to understand women’s poverty. Using qualitative methods, she explores the lived experience of people in poverty, both in the United States and around the world. Her research focuses on people meeting their basic needs and understanding social programs that reduce poverty. 

Her first book, “Reformed American Dreams: Welfare Mothers, Higher Education, and Activism,” was published by Rutgers University Press in 2019. For this project, she conducted longitudinal qualitative research with single mothers who graduated from higher education while participating in the welfare system in the San Francisco Bay Area. She interviewed the same participants three times, in 2006, 2008 and 2011 with a 78 percent retention rate, and her research explores the needs of families who pursued higher education while on welfare, and how low-income families fared during/after the Great Recession. This project received national funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Poverty Center.

Her current project explores “Careers in Sociology” and is under contract with Rutgers University Press. 

Dr. Katz was the local arrangements chair for the American Sociological Association’s 2014 annual meetings in San Francisco.

Honors

• University of Houston Provost’s Teaching Excellence Award 2020
• American Association of University Women, Summer Publication Fellowship 2016
• National Center for Student Parent Programs, Advanced Scholars 2016
• Nominated for Pacific Sociological Association 2013 Early Career Award for Innovation in Teaching Sociology
• Emerging Scholar award by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, 2011
• National Poverty Center TANF Reauthorization Grant, 2011
• SAGE/Pine Forge Teaching Innovations & Professional Development Award, 2010

Research Interests

• Sociology of Poverty
• Qualitative Methodologies
• Sociology of Education