He is Distinguished Professor of Communications, College of Communications Scholar and Research Professor of Communications, Sociology and Humanities at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He won the Charles Cooley Award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction in 1988. In 1997 he was awarded the George Herbert Mead Award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.
She is a Professor in the Department of Educational Administration at Texas A&M University. She has taught at the University of Kansas and Vanderbilt University. She has received numerous awards.