Shelia Cotten

Dr. Cotten joined Clemson in August 2020 to lead the university’s Office of Research Development, foster large multidisciplinary research projects, advance faculty development efforts, and help generate new streams of research support. She is also provost’s distinguished professor and has joint faculty appointments in the sociology, anthropology and criminal justice department and the department of communication. Before joining Clemson, Dr. Cotten was Michigan State University Foundation professor and associate chair for research in the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State.

Dr. Cotten earned her bachelor’s degree in sociology from Wake Forest University, followed by graduate work, including a PhD in sociology, at North Carolina State University, and a post-doctoral fellowship at Boston University School of Public Health in Boston and the Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital in Bedford, Massachusetts. She is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, a past chair of the Communication and Information Technologies Section of the American Sociological Association (CITASA) and the 2013 recipient of the Public Sociology Award from the CITASA section of the American Sociological Association.