Director, Associate Professor, and Inequalities Scholar at the University of Denver

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A LITTLE ABOUT ME

I am a tenured Associate Professor of Sociology and the inaugural Director of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of Denver (started both in September 2022). Prior to this appointment, I became the first African American to reach the level of Full Professor at my previous university (Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX). At Southwestern I was also a faculty affiliate of the Race and Ethnic Studies and Data Science minors. I graduated from the Ohio State University in 2009 with a PhD. in Sociology, hold a MA in Sociology from Ohio State (2005), a MA in Psychology from SUNY Buffalo (2003), and a BA in Psychology from SUNY Geneseo (2000). In line with Critical Race Theory, my work exposes and critiques the institutional manifestations of racism and sexism in U.S. social institutions (like the workplace, education system, the media, and public accommodations). My work has appeared in top academic journals such as Sociology of Race & Ethnicity, Gender & Society, Work and Occupations, The Journal of Higher Education, Social Forces, Social Science Research, and The Journal of Homosexuality. I enjoy teaching, working with students on research projects, and public sociology especially as it intersects with diversity and inclusion work (e.g., serving on the boards of nonprofits, consulting with private companies, media interviews, or helping advocacy groups with white papers). I invite you to take a look around my website and contact me if you have any questions or you'd like to connect.

Major Areas of Scholarly Activity

Employment Discrimination: I have been studying employment discrimination for nearly two decades. In this area, I have employed both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to analyze race and gender-based discrimination data from state-level fair employment practice agencies. Papers from this vein of research have been published in prestigious journals like Work and Occupations, Gender & Society, and Social Forces. My latest project is a mixed methods book project which was supported by the American Sociological Association's (ASA) Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline. In it, I analyze 1,000 cases of employment discrimination filed with eight state-level fair employment practice agencies across the United States (1999-2018). This book, which is under contract with ASA's Rose Series and will likely be published in 2023, would not have been possible without my amazing co-author, Dr. Vincent Roscigno, and the seven go-getter undergraduate research assistants who helped me content code the nearly 20,000 pages of data over five years.

College Campus Climate Studies: For the last decade, I have worked with my brilliant colleague, Dr. Maria Lowe, and six hard working undergraduate students to collect three waves of mixed methods (survey and interview) data about various aspects of the campus climate at one liberal arts college in the South. What started as a study of the campus racial climate soon extended to studies of the gender and sexual orientation climates. Collectively, we surveyed over 1,000 students and conducted about 125 in-depth interviews. These data were instrumental to making various curricular and extra-curricular changes on campus and led to publications in highly regarded journals like The Journal of Higher Education, The Journal of Homosexuality, and Sociological Inquiry.

Criminology: Having a keen interest in the sub-field of Criminology since graduate school, I worked as a research assistant for a team of criminologists at Ohio State before graduating. This interest carried forward into my previous academic position and led me to teach Criminology as a course. Working with criminology faculty colleagues and three undergraduate students over the years, I collected various national datasets which explore factors that affect neighborhood level crime and the reporting of such crime by the news media. These efforts have culminated in publications in top-tier criminology journals like The Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, and Social Science Research. They have also resulted in external grants which are under review.

Public Accommodations Discrimination: My most recent area of research honestly came about as somewhat of a fluke. As I gathered data for my multi-year employment discrimination project (described above), I came across a couple dozen public accommodations cases that were ultimately selected out of that dataset. But, this discovery sparked an idea! So off I embarked to start a pilot project with three undergraduate students to see what data I would be able to access systematically across the country (the broader national research scope was necessary because public accommodations discrimination is different from employment discrimination; sometimes public accommodations are not protected by state legislation and complaints themselves are rarely filed). In the end, I collected over 315 case files - that is, more than 3,000 pages of data - of race based discrimination from 18 (out of 35 contacted) city-level human rights commissions (2015-2020). I have also used recent waves of the General Social Survey to supplement these qualitative understandings. Such analyses have yielded two projects thus far - one has recently been published in the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity and the other is forthcoming at Contexts.

Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) work: In addition to these areas of inequalities research, I have successfully won external grants that have benefitted many scholars and students. For example, in 2016 I worked on a team that was awarded a substantial institutional grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation. I served as a co-director on the grant from 2016-2021. These funds allowed us to hire three postdoctoral teaching fellows, offer scholarships to eight under represented students, and host annual inclusive pedagogy workshops that benefitted nearly 60 doctoral students and professors. Furthermore, I have brought a JEDI lens to various other leadership positions (e.g., serving as a department chair from 2016-2019, chairing the university committee that awards all internal funding at Southwestern, serving on the board of directors for a nonprofit, and in consulting work for private sector companies).


As a professor, I strive to challenge students to become critically engaged scholars who have an appreciation for quantitative and qualitative methods, theory, and the sociological imagination. I have taught a wide range of courses including: Social Problems; Sociology of Work; Research Methods; Sociological Theory; Criminology; Sociology of Globalization; a First Year Seminar titled Race, Violence, and the State; and a Senior Seminar titled Life After the Covid-19 Pandemic. I have won various awards for my teaching, scholarship, and service. In 2022, for example, I was awarded the Paul Secord Award for Outstanding Service and made an honorary inductee into Phi Beta Kappa for my attainments in liberal scholarship. With these experiences under my belt, I am thrilled to have the opportunity to build the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies major at the University of Denver!  

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