Research interests

Maternal and child health and wellbeing; poverty and public policy; children's weight outcomes; neighborhood social and physical environments and children's outdoor play; availability of and access to healthy foods; housing quality and children's physical activity

What led you into research/teaching?

"I grew up in an academic family, but first knew I wanted to be a sociologist when I took Bill Martin's Intro to Sociology course at Rice (I'm a Rice alum).  And now, I teach the same course!  I also gained experience doing sociological research working with Michael Emerson as an undergraduate, which helped me decide to go on to graduate school.  There, I worked with Sara McLanahan on the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study, which gave me training in constructing and analyzing a large and complex dataset.  Since then, my research has focused on health in general but my favorite research topic is children's health and wellbeing.

Why is undergraduate research important?

"One of the unique and wonderful things about Rice is that the low student-faculty ratio and focus on undergraduate education mean that any undergraduate who wants to gain research experience has the opportunity.  When I was an undergrad at Rice, I gained so much research experience that it was easy for me to hit the ground running in graduate school.  But even if I hadn't gone into academia, the statistical, coding, and methodological skills that I learned would have helped me in my future work life.  At many schools, undergraduates are not welcomed into research labs and onto research teams, because they are viewed as not being ready to undertake serious work.  That is absolutely not the case here, even if faculty are also working with graduate students.  The extremely high caliber and competence of our students mean that they can take on tasks often performed by advanced graduate students at other schools.  In some cases, students are even able to co-author books or journal articles with professors that they work with, which is very rare at other kinds of schools."

"I love being in the classroom, but I think my best and most focused teaching occurs when working with my undergraduate RAs, and I love seeing their excitement when we test hypotheses."

Other Interests, Hobbies:

"My kids, reading, cooking, yoga, theatre, and Brown College Faculty Associate."

For more information about Dr. Kimbro and to view other Sociology faculty, please visit the Sociology Departmental Website: http://sociology.rice.edu/