Dr. Blake Silver is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at George Mason University. He is also Director of Data Analytics and Assessment in the Honors College and Director of the Education & Health Research Hub in the Center for Social Science Research. Dr. Silver joined the Institute for Immigration Research (IIR) as a Faculty Affiliate in Spring 2023.
Dr. Silver's research interests include: higher education; parent and family involvement in education; the transition to adulthood; research methods; and second-generation immigrant students.
Dr. Silver began exploring questions about the experiences of college students from immigrant families when he was in graduate school at the University of Virginia. He describes that his first project "explored the experiences second-generation immigrant students had with navigating the senior-year transition as they looked ahead to graduation and their lives after college." When he arrived at Mason, he found many colleagues and students who shared these interests. He explains that he "had the opportunity to expand this work along with members of the Social Science Research Lab, a collaborative research group of undergraduate and graduate students who I have worked alongside, exploring new questions about the experiences of college seniors from immigrant families."
Currently, Dr. Silver is working on several projects connected to college students' educational pathways: "My next book project is exploring how students manage insecurity and risk as they make their way through higher education. I'm also collaborating with Dr. Dae Young Kim on a new longitudinal study of how working-class students from immigrant families navigate the college-to-work transition. These projects are focused on understanding how students' decisions and strategies relate to the resources and opportunities available in higher education."
Given Dr. Silver's research interests in college students' educational pathways, it is not surprising that the sociology of education is his favorite course to teach at both the undergraduate and graduate levels: "The opportunity to discuss and contextualize students' experiences with education while they're in the process of navigating college is a unique one. Every student brings firsthand experiences with education so that course discussions benefit from an especially broad range of perspectives."
For current Mason undergraduate and graduate students, Dr. Silver highlights that there are "a variety of exciting opportunities to build research skills for exploring topics related to migration and immigration." One way for students from any level or major to get involved is by joining the Social Science Research Lab. As Dr. Silver highlights: "This is a great way to expand on the research skills students develop in courses to learn more about how to design a project, collect data, analyze that data, and communicate findings to a variety of audiences."