The Department of Sociology and Anthropology inducted students into the Alpha Kappa Delta and Lambda Alpha honor societies during their end-of-year celebration.
The Department of Sociology and Anthropology hosted a celebratory dinner for graduating majors and honor society inductees on April 16. The event featured guest speaker Raea Tyson ’23, who shared wisdom about the importance of sociology and anthropology in crafting a better world, a pursuit she has taken on as a third-year Ph.D candidate in sociology at North Carolina State University, studying food insecurity.
The highlights of the event included the induction of sociology students into Alpha Kappa Delta, the International Honor Society of Sociology and of anthropology students into Lambda Alpha, the National Anthropology Honor Society.
The department also celebrated Avery Shipp, recipient of the 2026 Outstanding Sociology Senior Award, and Kate Burns, recipient of the 2026 Outstanding Anthropology Senior Award. These awards recognize distinguished scholarship and ethical research practices by senior majors.
Shipp was recognized for her mixed-methods research on the impact of the presentation of “bad behavior” in children’s literature on neurodivergent children from the 1980s until the present.
Kate Burns was recognized for her archaeological research and ceramic analysis at the Dos Hombres field site in Belize, research that she will continue to pursue in the Ph.D program in Anthropology at UT-Austin.