Dr. Howard Kaplan

Howard B. Kaplan, Ph.D.

Regents Professor

Distinguished Professor of Sociology

Mary Thomas Marshall Professor of Liberal Arts

Director, Laboratory for Studies of Social Deviance

Department of Sociology, College of Liberal Arts, Texas A&M University

Howard B. Kaplan, Ph.D., holds the titles of Regents Professor, Distinguished Professor Sociology and Mary Thomas Marshall Professor of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University, he is also the Director of the Laboratory for Studies of Social Deviance in the Department of Sociology.  Dr. Kaplan received his Ph.D. in Sociology in 1958 from New York University. His over 200 publications include peer review articles or contributions to edited works in the areas of substance abuse, mental health, deviant behavior, and related areas. He has authored seven books, co-authored one, edited three other volumes, and coedited another volume. His research has been continuously funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse since 1980.  He holds a Senior Scientist Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Since 1971 he has conducted longitudinal studies of large in-community populations to test theoretically informed models of the antecedents and consequences of drug abuse and other deviant adaptations to life stress. The major study involves interviewing a cohort of 9,300 seventh graders up to six times between adolescence and the fourth decade of life, and the children of that cohort between early adolescence and young adulthood.  Among his awards are the Outstanding Mental Health Research Award from the Mental Health Association, the Leo G. Reeder Award, Medical Sociology Section, from the American Sociological Association, and  the Faculty Distinguished Achievement Award in Research from Texas A&M University.