Patricia A. Roos, Professor Emerita of Sociology, has been a faculty member and administrator at Rutgers since 1989.
Growing up in a military family, she lived in various locales, including West Point, New York and Honolulu, Hawaii. She earned her B.A. and M.A. at the University of California, Davis and Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles. She served as a sociology professor at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, before coming to Rutgers.
Her scholarship has focused on inequalities, gender and work, stratification, work and family and, more recently, addiction and mental health. Among her many publications are Gender and Work: A Comparative Analysis of Industrial Societies and Job Queues, Gender Queues: Explaining Women's Inroads Into Male Occupations, which is coauthored by Barbara Reskin.
At Rutgers, she served as chair of the Sociology Department from 1991 to 1997 and area dean for the Social and Behavioral Sciences from 1997 to 2000. From 1999 to 2001, Dr. Roos led the effort within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Deans Office to produce the "FAS Gender Equity Report," released in October 2001. From 2008 through 2011, she served as co-principal investigator on the National Science Foundation ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Grant: “RU-FAIR:-Rutgers University for Faculty Advancement and Institutional Re-Imagination.” She also served in various directing roles at the Center for Women and Work from 2008 to 2011.
Following the death of her son from opioid addition, she redefined her research and advocacy to focus on mental health and addiction. In 2018-2019, she was a fellow at the Institute for Research on Women's seminar "Public Catastrophes, Private Losses," working on a project entitled "Grief and Resilience in the Midst of the Opioid Epidemic." She is the author of the memoir Surviving Alex: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, and Addiction (Rutgers University Press, May 2024).
The Rutgers Oral History Archives received an operating support grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission, a division of the Department of State. In the 2022-2023 cycle, this grant assisted the ROHA staff in making this oral history available to you for your use.
