• Teaching Pedagogy
• Community Action and Health Inequalities
• Qualitative Methods and Narratives
• Racial/Gendered Identities
• STEM Education

Debbie Storrs is a Professor of Sociology and the Associate Dean of the College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of Idaho. Her research focuses on the inequalities with a particular interest in understanding how marginalized groups and communities respond to and resist to inequities. She teaches courses on inequalities and helps coordinate the Certificate in Diversity and Stratification. She believes in students’ fundamental curiosity about the world and their ability to critically engage in their educational process. She received the UI teaching excellence award for her commitment to teaching and has several publications on teaching and learning.

• “Teaching Mills in Tokyo: Developing a Sociological Imagination Through Storytelling,” Teaching Sociology, 2009, 37:1-16.
• “Japanese Feminine Wiles and Naïve Military Privates: The Reconstruction of Gender and Nation in the Babysan Comics,” US-Japan Women’s Journal 2008, 34:19-41.
• “Mentoring expectations and realities: An analysis of metaphorical thinking among female undergraduate protegés and their mentors in a university mentoring program” with Laura Putsche and Amy Withrow, Mentoring & Tutoring 2008, 16(2):175-188.
• “Critical Literacy Among the Working Poor: Individualism and Pseudo-Structural Interpretive Narratives of Health Inequalities,” Sociological Perspectives, 2007, 50 (1): 79-100.

• Welcoming Idaho Committee; see  http://welcomingidaho.org/.  Our committee is part of a national effort (see http://www.welcomingamerica.org/ to educate citizens on immigration, encourage civil dialogue concerning immigration, and help foster more welcoming communities.

• Co-PI for STEM Educational Research Initiative funded by Micron Corporation.  Our research takes a comprehensive approach to analyze current barriers that hinder science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education.  We seek to understand the complex cultural, socio-economic, and rural and urban factors that impact students’ ability to grasp the STEM disciplines, and STEM teacher education and development. STEM website: http://www.uidaho.edu/research/stem/micronstemed

• Athena Woman of the Year Award, 2010
• 2009 Distinguished Contribution to Sociological Perspectives Award for “Critical Literacy Among the Working Poor:
• Individualism and Pseudo-Structural Interpretive Narratives of Health Inequalities,” Sociological Perspectives, 2007, 50 (1): 79-100.
• Phi Kappa Phi Outstanding Faculty Member Award, 2007
• Naval ROTC Faculty Excellence Award, April 2007
• Alumni Associate Award for Excellence, December 2006
• Humanities Fellow, 2006-2007
• Martin Luther King Jr. Faculty Award, University of Idaho, January 2004
• Virginia Wolf Distinguished Service Award, University of Idaho Women’s Center, December 2003
• Advising Excellence Award, University of Idaho, 2007
• Teaching Excellence Award, University of Idaho, 2003