Jacqueline M. Zalewski, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
I have ongoing scholarly interests in the growing contingencies workers face in their jobs and employment relations. This is because of my background. I grew up as part of the working class in Kenosha, Wisconsin during deindustrialization, characterized by heavy job losses in my community and many others across the US. This experience significantly impacted my ongoing research interests in changes in work and organizations and technology in the workplace (a prime culprit in the reengineering of work, producing greater employment contingencies, and the job losses described above).
For my master's thesis, I conducted ethnographic research of blue-collar temporary work. For my PhD, I interviewed information technologists and human resource professionals about the outsourcing of their work and jobs. I continued doing qualitative research on the outsourcing of professional work and, in 2019, I published a book about its effects on social relations, culture, jobs, and professional work. It's called Working Lives and in-House Outsourcing: Chewed Up By Two Masters (2019), and you can view the book here.
I have used my interests in changes in work to contribute to scholarship in academic and career advising with collaborator Dr. Leigh S. Shaffer. In 2018, our article “The Professionalization of Academic Advising: Where are We in 2010?” was awarded the first Leigh S. Shaffer Award by NACADA for significant advances made to the field of academic advising. Our article “Career Advising in a VUCA Environment” has also been well cited.
- https://meridian.allenpress.com/nacada-journal/article/30/1/66/36326/The-Professionalization-of-Academic-Advising-Where
- https://meridian.allenpress.com/nacada-journal/article/31/1/64/36320/Career-Advising-in-a-VUCA-Environment
Because of my background and professional interests in college teaching and pedagogy, recently I conducted three years of survey research (2017-19) on teamwork in undergraduate Introduction to Sociology courses. My collaborator, Susan Brudvig (Professor of Business Informatics at Northern Kentucky University), and I have one paper that was recently published in Teaching Sociology: “Encouraging Productive Behavior in Student Teams With Interventions (2023), 51(2):127-138.” Susan and I also recorded a podcast, published on the American Sociological Association webpage, explaining the issues that commonly arise in student group work, the interventions we instituted, and the positive effects they had on interactional fairness, students’ perceptions of others, and their satisfaction with teamwork in the course.
We are collecting more survey data in 2023 to continue improving teamwork pedagogy in our own courses and contribute further to scholarly research in this area.
I also developed a class-wide research activity—The Sociology Majors Project (SMP)—that examines the jobs, ongoing education, and professional careers of UG sociology alumni from West Chester University (WCU).
The SMP activity was published November 2020 in the American Sociological Association’s Teaching Resources and Innovation Library for Sociology (TRAILS).
In spring 2021, in collaboration with Dr. Johnna Capitano (Professor of Management @ WCU), I began qualitative research on contractor and consultant organizational socialization (or onboarding). In 2021 and 2022, Dr. Capitano and I conducted 51 interviews with three types of subjects: 1. Contractors and consultants (i.e., “non-standard workers”); 2. Agency representatives; and 3. Department representatives at client organizations. In 2022 and 2023, we presented analysis at several conferences: Labor and Employment Relations Association Annual Meeting (June 2022), Society for the Study of Social Problems Conference (August 2022 and 2023), Eastern Sociological Society Conference (February 2023), and Western Academy of Management Conference (March 2024). A journal manuscript that describes contractors’ and consultants’ proactive socialization into roles, relationships, and organizations at client organizations is currently under review for a journal special issue on “navigating careers in non-standard work.”
Finally, because of my background researching contingent, non-standard workers in two qualitative studies, I will be writing an article on these professional employment changes and their implications for academic and career advisement across disciplines.