Professor Walters received her Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University in 1984. Her areas of teaching and research are: Sociology of Education, Stratification/Inequality, Comparative/Historical Sociology. She served as editor of Sociology of Education, the major journal in her field. She currently co-chairs the Study Committee on Education Research co-sponsored by the Social Science Research Council and the National Academy of Education and directs the Indiana University Center for Education and Society, an innovative cross-field research center and graduate training program that brings together faculty and graduate students in education and in the social sciences. Professor Walters is the recipient of the Indiana University Sonneborn Lecture award for 2004.