April Brayfield: Community is Sociology
If you attend the New Orleans Jazz Fest, chances are you'll run into April Brayfield.
The Tulane sociology professor loves the city's music scene and encourages her students to experience it just as fervently as she does - as a resident rather than a tourist. She makes sure they visit local grocery stores, the zoo, and arts and crafts markets so they can learn first hand about the New Orleans community.
In graduate school, Brayfield began knitting and became interested in designing knitting patterns. She belongs to the "Crafty Ladies" of the Tulane University Women's Association, where she leads a project called "Stitches of Hope." Members knit scarves and "chemo caps" for patients at the Tulane Cancer Center. She has also taught knitting at "Fridays at Newcomb," a series of gatherings for campus women at the Newcomb College Institute.
Her office is a visual treat, with purple and pink walls, flamingos, brightly colored yarns, and art gathered from her trips to other countries. Brayfield, an associate professor and vice chair of the department of sociology, grew up in California and came to Tulane in 1992. Her areas of specialization include gender, work and family, sociology of childhood, and cross-national research. She visits Budapest each summer to do research on the lives of children in Hungary and recently took part in a Fulbright exchange, during which she gave guest lectures in Paris on her research.
According to Brayfield, sociology courses are valuable because the skills you learn are transferable to other potential occupations. Students learn to write for a wide range of audiences, to analyze data, and to ask and answer empirical research questions. "Our graduates go to law and medical schools," she says, as well as policy-making jobs in government and the nonprofit sector.
Brayfield left a high-paying job in Washington, D.C., to return to the academic life because she likes the interaction with students. In 2004, she received the President's Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from Tulane. Of all her varied interests, Brayfield insists: "My core identity is a teacher-scholar."
