Debra Schleef (dschleef)

Academic Degrees

Debra Jo Schleef, Associate Provost for Institutional Analysis and Effectiveness and Professor of Sociology, earned a Ph.D. (1997) and an M.A. (1991) in sociology from Northwestern University, and a B.A. (1988) in sociology from Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, where she graduated summa cum laude. Her recent research focuses on intentional communities, particularly the continuum of community that ranges from cooperative gardens and enterprises to income-sharing, egalitarian communes. Schleef is the author of Managing Elites: Professional Socialization in Law and Business School (2006), and the co-author, with H.B. Cavalcanti, of Latinos in Dixie: Class and Assimilation in Richmond, Virginia (2009).

She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the Southern Sociological Association. She is the recipient of two Mary Washington Faculty Development Grants and a Jepson Fellowship, and most recently, the J. Christopher Bill Outstanding Faculty Service Award. Dr. Schleef is an authoritative source on the sociology of law, occupations and professions, elites, professional education and socialization, Latino assimilation in the American South, and intentional communities.