Jenness appointed UCI acting vice provost

Valerie Jenness photo

Valerie Jenness, professor of criminology, law and society, has been appointed UCI's acting vice provost for academic planning, effective July 1. 

Since joining UCI in 1997, Professor Jenness has served in a range of administrative roles, including dean of the School of Social Ecology from 2009-2015 and chair of the Department of Criminology, Law and Society from 2001-2006. She served on the Academic Planning Group and in the UCI Academic Senate on the Council on Academic Personnel and the Committee on Privilege and Tenure. She held visiting professor positions in the Department of Sociology at UC Santa Barbara in 2016 and in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan in 2015. As of July 1, she will hold the title Distinguished Professor.

Jenness earned her Ph.D. in sociology at UC Santa Barbara in 1991. Her research has focused on prostitution, hate crime, prison violence, and prisoner grievance systems as well as law, policy, and reform more generally. She is the author of four books and numerous articles published in highly regarded journals in sociology, law and society, criminology, and gender.

She has been honored with several awards. Her teaching and mentoring has received campus and national recognition, including the UCI Academic Senate Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching, the American Society of Criminology’s Teaching Award and the President’s Award for Mentoring from the Western Society of Criminology. Her research has been recognized with awards from the American Sociological Association, Society for the Study of Social Problems, the Pacific Sociological Association, the American Society of Criminology, the Law and Society Association, the Western Society of Criminology, the University of California, and the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America.

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