News & Events

Sociology Senior and Honors Student, Andrew Ainsworth, Presents Thesis

Sociology senior and Honor’s student, Andrew Ainsworth, presented his Honor’s Thesis research at the annual Undergraduate Research and Creativity Exposition, which was held on April 4th in the Cone Ballroom.

Andrew’s research investigates school shootings. Using secondary data collected from a variety of sources, Andrew constructed a dataset of deliberate school shootings from 1999-2018 that resulted in at least one fatality. His quantitative analysis tracks the annual prevalence of school shootings and reveals patterns in the social demographics of persons who participate in deliberate, fatal school shootings. In seeking to explain these patterns, Andrew relies on literature about American’s notions of hegemonic masculinity, disjunctures between cultural prescriptions of manhood and the means by which to gain them, age-graded strain, and responses to status frustration. Andrew is currently completing his student teaching and will graduate with dual BA degrees in Sociology (with Criminology concentration) and English, Secondary Education. He is a member of Alpha Kappa Delta, Sociology’s International Honor Society, and was nominated for UNCG’s Golden Chain Honor Society in 2017 for his extensive involvement with our UNCG community.