Hyeyoung Woo is Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Institute for Asian Studies at Portland State University.
Since she joined the department in 2009, she has taught department-required undergraduate and graduate courses, such as Social Statistics, Sociological Research Methods, and Sociology Research Project, and Advanced Quantitative Methods. In addition to these required statistics and research methods courses, she has been offering elective courses, including Sociology of Aging, and Health Inequalities.
As a family demographer, her research focuses on status attainment in education, work, and family, and how these factors influence health and well-being over the life course. She has published three books and over 40 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters over the years. Her current funded project explores the interplay between work and family and its long-term health consequences for women in Korea.
Additionally, Woo is actively involved in academic associations and local Korean and Asian American communities. She has held many leadership positions at the American Sociological Association, the Pacific Sociological Association, and the Association of Korean Sociologists in America. She also worked as co-editor of Sociological Perspectives, the official journal of the Pacific Sociological Association. Beyond academia, she has served on the Executive Council at the Korean Society of Oregon, the Board of Oregon Korean School, and Asian Art Council at the Portland Art Museum in recent years.
Collaborating with local communities, Woo has hosted several large cultural events on campus successfully, and has been developing Korean Studies program at the university. In particular, Woo has facilitated partnerships with a number of Korean universities, and more recently, she has launched PSU KORE (Korean Outreach, Research, and Education) Initiative to support our students and faculty for Korean Studies related research and education effort.
Woo has been recognized for her research and community engagement. She is a two-time recipient of the Outstanding Scientific Researcher Award from the Sigma Xi Columbia-Willamette Chapter, first in 2015 and again in 2024. In recognition of her dedication to diversity and inclusion on campus, she was awarded the Distinguished Faculty Award at the President’s Diversity Awards at PSU in 2021.