LETTER FROM
THE DIRECTOR
Welcome to the 2020 edition of the Organizational Studies Newsletter. As all of you know, this year is unique, due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. Before anything else, we want to extend our wishes that you and your families are able to stay safe. Right
now, that is our number one priority, both in Org Studies and the U-M as a whole.
All of us in OS are currently working from home, and we have been since the middle of March. Remarkably, due to the herculean
efforts of our faculty, staff, and students, we have managed to keep things going. No one wanted to switch to an exclusively
online format, but we made the best of it, and we received numerous expressions of thanks from our students for the beyondthe-call-of-duty
commitment that our instructors exhibited in their classes. We even managed to hold a live online graduation
ceremony—certainly not what our graduates and their families had hoped for, but one that I believe conveyed the pride that we
have in our students’ accomplishments. Based on the live chat feed that exploded as our graduates’ names were being read, I
believe that their families appreciated the ceremony as well.
Despite the obstacles, we managed to have another terrific year in OS. On the personnel front, we have hired a new tenure-track
faculty member, Nicholas Camp, who comes to us as an assistant professor, having completed both his PhD and a postdoctoral
fellowship at Stanford University. Nick, who will join us in the fall, is a psychologist who studies relations between police and
the communities they serve. Among his projects is an examination, based on actual police footage, of the extent to which
officers respond differently to drivers of different races during traffic stops. Elizabeth (Beth) Popp Berman, whom we hired last
year, moved seamlessly into her new role, providing several new courses as well as serving as a mentor for our younger faculty.
On the staff side, we hired a new executive secretary, Tanya Moore, which gives us outstanding coverage in every one of our
positions. There will be no new faculty hiring in the coming year due to the current crisis, but we continue to have in place our
plan for the future expansion of the program.
We also continue to create extraordinary opportunities for our students. A highlight this year was a week-long trip to Costa
Rica that our faculty member Steve Samford led, for nine students in his advanced research course. The trip, which took place
during spring break (and thankfully just before the shutdown), allowed students to observe how small coffee growers in this
Central American nation bring their products to the international market.
Another major highlight this year was our new plan to reconfigure our Organizational Studies Leadership Committee. Although
we are still in the initial stages, our goal is to constitute a committee consisting entirely of OS alumni, one that reflects the full
diversity of our graduates, in terms of career path, geographic region, financial status, and demographic characteristics. Along
with this new plan for our OSLC, we are about to launch the Campaign for OS, about which we will have more to say elsewhere in
this newsletter. Our goal will be to provide an endowment that will allow us to support the programs that make OS so special—
from internships, to study abroad, to the Malkin Shadowing Program (which allows our students to spend a day at the workplace
of one of our alumni), to the support that we provide for students experiencing unexpected financial crises. The campaign is
currently on hold as we weather the crisis, but we look forward to getting it under way once the pandemic subsides.
I want to close by again thanking everyone associated with OS—our faculty, staff, and students, but also our extended
OS community, including our students’ families and our alumni—for everything you do and have done to make OS the
amazing program that it is. To everyone who has supported us in the past and continues to support us in the present, we
appreciate everything you do. I wish all of you a safe and healthy summer. And of course, Go Blue!
02
MARK MIZRUCHI
Director, Organizational Studies
Robert Cooley Angell Collegiate Professor of Sociology
Barger Family Professor of Organizational Studies