Mark J Schafer
Associate Professor/Director of Graduate Studies
Contact
mschaf1@lsu.edu
225-578-5357
215 Martin D. Woodin Hall
After earning my BSEE in 1989, I joined the US. Peace Corps and served as a high school math teaching in Mwanza, Malawi for two years. I earned my master’s and PhD degrees in the 1990s at Indiana University. I have been a faculty member in the Department of Agricultural Economics with a minor, teaching appointment in the Department of Sociology since 2000. In addition to my split appointment, I became affiliated with the Department of African and African American Studies and with the International Studies Program. I currently serve as the Director of Graduate Studies in both Agricultural Economics and Sociology, and I also founded the LSU Peace Corps Prep program in 2020.
Fujiyama, Hideki, Yoshinori Kamo, and Mark Schafer. 2021. “Peer Effects of Friend and Extracurricular Activity Networks on Students’ Academic Performance.” Social Science Research 97.
Schafer, Mark J and Shana Khan. 2017. “Family Economy, Rural School Choice, and Flexischooling Children with Disabilities.” Rural Sociology 82:524-547.
Schafer, Mark J, Wesley Shrum, B. Paige Miller, Paul N. Mbatia, Antony Palackal, and Dan- Bright S. Dzorgbo. 2016. “Access to ICT and Research Output of Agricultural Researchers in Kenya”. Science, Technology, & Society 21:250-270.
Perry, Ashley M. and Mark J. Schafer. 2014. “Resilience in Louisiana FEMA Parks: A Person-Centered, Fuzzy-Set Analysis.” Sociological Spectrum 34:39-60.
My initial scholarship focused on educational expansion globally and within Africa, with a specific focus on family and community response to change. I later developed an interest in educational change within Louisiana, the impact of the 2005 hurricanes, and racial and ethnic changes in the Gulf of Mexico Region. More recently, I have focused on factors related to student academic performance, with a specific focus on the role of structured activities. In addition, I have contributed to a long-term research program focusing on how advances in information and communications technologies has shaped scientific research collaboration and productivity, and that team is currently researching the effects of Covid-19 on scientific collaboration. Finally, my research interests also include in various aspects of educational change within Louisiana and the United States, including trends toward virtual schooling and homeschooling, and how Covid-19 is still shaping those trends.
1999 PhD Department of Sociology, Indiana University
1995 MA Department of Sociology, Indiana University
1989 BS Electrical Engineering Department, GMI Engineering & Management Institute
SOCL 7591 Graduate Seminar on Globalization 2022
SOCL 7201 Research Methods in Sociology (statistics) 2021
SOCL 7491 Graduate Seminar on Educational Inequality 2017