Introduction to Sociology

Melissa Bonstead-Bruns is a professor of sociology and an equity, diversity and inclusivity fellow at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. She earned her Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Iowa in 2000. Her teaching interests include social inequality, education and gender inequality in the labor market. Her most recent research has involved developing a new tool to measure campus climate at Eau Claire. She is also currently working collaboratively with students on two projects: one addressing issues that affect retention and success of Hmong students in higher education; and one looking at how cultural barriers in higher education affect the motivation and success of African American males.

After the diagnosis of one of her children with bipolar disorder and autism, Bonstead-Bruns has recently started on a new path of research related to the social stigma attached to mental illness. In particular, she is interested in the criminalization of mental illness and the likelihood of mentally ill children to be caught up in the school-to-prison pipeline.

Jacqueline Bergdahl is a professor of sociology at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. She grew up in an Air Force family, never staying more than five years in one location, in both Europe and the United States. Her undergraduate degree in psychology is from the University of Maryland, European Division, and she earned both a master’s and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of New Mexico. She races a vintage sports car as a hobby and studies driving behavior as a sociologist, although she is also interested in food, fitness and fatness. She has taught research methods and statistics for 26 years.

Julie B. Wiest is a professor of sociology at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. A sociologist of culture and media, she applies mainly symbolic interactionist and social constructionist perspectives to studies in three primary areas: the sociocultural context of violence, mass media effects and the relationship between new media technologies and sociocultural change. She has a Ph.D. in sociology and an M.A. in journalism and mass communication, and she previously worked as a print and online journalist. Wiest has published several books, including Mass Mediated Representations of Crime and Criminality (2021, Emerald Publishing), Theorizing Criminality and Policing in the Digital Media Age (2021, Emerald Publishing), The Allure of Premeditated Murder: Why Some People Plan to Kill (with Jack Levin, 2018, Rowman & Littlefield), and Creating Cultural Monsters: Serial Murder in America (2011, CRC Press). Recently published articles examine legacy and emergent inequalities regarding access to and uses of digital media, as well as public interest in fictional and news accounts of extreme violence. Wiest co-edits (with Thomas DeGloma) the Interpretive Lenses in Sociology book series (Bristol University Press) and is Senior Crime and Media Editor for the Studies in Media and Communications book series (Emerald Publishing).

Rik Newtson was raised in Los Angeles and Chicago. After earning his Ph.D. in sociology at the Iowa State University of Science and Technology, he joined the Civic Education Project and taught graduate courses in sociology and social work in Kyiv, Ukraine, for two years. Living in Eastern Europe allowed him to deliver guest lectures throughout the region on both sociology and social work curriculum reform. As professor of sociology at Columbus State University, in Georgia he teaches a wide diversity of classes, including introduction to sociology, social psychology, domestic abuse and sociology of the family. He is a member of the American Sociological Association and the Georgia Sociological Association, and a contributing member of Yad Vashem, the U.S. Holocaust Museum and Holocaust Museum of Skokie, Ill. His current research interests are in the teaching and learning of sociology with a special emphasis on online education. In his free time he enjoys sailing and spending time with friends and his dogs. He is forever thankful to one particular person who made his life as an academic possible.

Samuel M. Claster and Patricia Neff Claster are husband and wife sociologists who met while teaching at Edinboro University. Sam, a native of central Pennsylvania, attended Edinboro University as an undergraduate and master’s student, where he developed his passion for the discipline of sociology. He graduated with a Ph.D. in sociology from South Dakota State University. A specialist in social theory, he researches topics from contemporary cultural shifts in news media to current challenges for labor in higher education. Sam is known on campus for his engaging classroom lecture style and rapport with students. In fact, Sam has been nominated for the Faculty Member of the Year award almost every year since he has been at Edinboro University. Perhaps his greatest passion is mentoring undergraduate students engaging in research. Many of his students have presented and won recognition for their work at regional conferences.

Tricia hails from Buffalo, N.Y. where she received her B.S. in sociology from the State University of New York at Buffalo State. She earned her master’s and Ph.D. in sociology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. While in graduate school, she was employed by the New York State Research Foundation where she had the opportunity to work on a variety of interdisciplinary research projects. Her research interests center on gender, intimate and family relationships and child and adolescent development. She has published and presented numerous papers that focus on different familial and structural factors that influence the educational, occupational, marital and parenting aspirations of American adolescents. Tricia regularly teaches the required introductory research methods class and enjoys working closely with students developing individual research projects for presentation. She has served as the Editor for the book series Contemporary Perspectives in Family Research and Sociological Studies of Children and Youth. Currently, she is the Editor of Sociological Viewpoints, the academic journal of the Pennsylvania Sociological Society. When Sam and Tricia are not researching and debating the social universe, they enjoy spending time together at home with their son, Ben, and daughter, Maggie.

Huiying Wei Hill is a professor of sociology at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. She was born and raised in China. She earned her Ph.D. in sociology from State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1994. Organizational studies/ bureaucracy and small groups/ leadership are her specialties. She published her doctoral dissertation as a book, A Study of Authority and Relations in Chinese Governmental Agencies and Institutional Work Units in 2000. Her teaching areas are mostly in social organizations, small groups/ leadership, sociology of work and occupations, sociological theories, both classical and contemporary, race and ethnic studies, especially Asian Americans and Chinese society. In some years, she would lead the summer China Study Abroad programs and took American students to Chinese university campuses to visit and interact with Chinese college students. Her research interests are in organizational studies; Asian Americans; and social, political and economic issues in present-day China. Recently, she focused on the governmental policies toward the Muslim ethnic groups in the northwest region of China in the context of the rise of ISIS and the spread of extreme fundamental Islamic movements in the world.

Born in Waverly, Iowa, Sally A. Stablein grew up in Southern California, in the city of Orange. From Orange County, she moved to San Marcos, California, where she attended Palomar Community College and received an associate of arts degree in general studies.

From there, Stablein transferred to California State University, San Marcos, and fell in love with sociology. Her passion for the discipline led her to complete a bachelor of arts degree in sociology at CSUSM. Stablein’s areas of interest and specialty topics include deviant behavior, violence and culture, race and ethnicity, social stratification and gender.

During her time at CSUSM, Stablein decided she wanted to teach sociology. She then went on to obtain her master of arts in sociology from Humboldt State University in Northern California in 2001. Soon thereafter, she started her first teaching job in Denver in 2002 and taught at several schools in the Denver metro area until she received a full-time position at Red Rocks Community College. She teaches several classes, including intro to sociology, deviant behavior, death & dying, contemporary social issues, sociology of gender, violence and culture, sexuality and sociology of religion. She is working on an Environmental Sociology course that she hopes will be offered soon.

Kwaku Obosu-Mensah was born and raised in Oyoko, a small town in the eastern region of Ghana in Africa. His secondary and higher education landed him in the Ghanaian towns of Nkonya Ahenkro, Hohoe and Accra. After a stint as a teacher at Osu Presby Secondary School in Accra, he left for Nigeria to work as a high school teacher at St. John’s Anglican Grammar School (Ode Lemo, Ogun state) and later at Asabari Grammar School (Saki, Oyo state).

In 1985, he enrolled at the University of Bergen in Norway and obtained his master’s degree in sociology in 1990. His minors were in administration and organization science, methodology of social sciences and pedagogy.

He then worked as a lecturer at Høgskolen i Bodø (Bodø University College) in Bodø (Norway). In 1992, he enrolled at the University of Toronto to pursue his Ph.D. in sociology. Upon completion of his doctorate in 1998, he worked as a career counselor and a teaching assistant at the University of Toronto before moving to Jackson, Tennessee, to take an assistant professor position at Lane College in 2000. In 2001, he accepted a visiting assistant position at Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green. In 2002, he accepted an assistant professor position at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio. He has presented papers at more than 50 conferences in Norway, Canada, Germany and the United States. In addition to courses in sociology, he teaches international studies. At the moment, he is a professor of sociology at Lorain County Community College.

He has lived in, studied in, or visited 12 countries around the world. His hobbies are soccer, traveling, listening to music, organizing functions, fishing, reading and discussing international affairs.

Sergio Romero is the owner of Illustratio Vetting & Analytics, LLC, a consulting firm that specializes in cultural impact assessments. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Oregon in 2004. His general areas of analysis include race, social movements and political sociology with a specialization in community partnerships, racial-ethnic group history, immigrant labor empowerment and social network analysis.

He previously directed the Multi-Ethnic Studies Program at Boise State University, preparing students as community scholars for a rapidly changing society. He has taught at Boise State, the University of Montana and the University of Oregon.

iza L. Kuecker grew up in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, and received a bachelor of science degree in sociology and Spanish from her hometown school, the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse. She later went on to obtain master’s and doctoral degrees in sociology at the University of Oregon. She has experienced a deeply satisfying teaching career, holding faculty positions at the University of South Carolina-Upstate; Montana State University, Billings; and Clark College in Vancouver, Washington. She recently retired as full professor of sociology at Western New Mexico University, where she taught the following courses: Introduction to Sociology, Criminology, Social Psychology, Family, Aging, Research Methods, Sociology of Health and Rural Sociology. She also served four years as Social Sciences Department Chair, supervised student internships in the community and advised the Native American Student Organization.

Liza has remained in Silver City, New Mexico where she is active in the Southwest Women’s Fiber Arts Collective, serves as a Certified Long Term Care Ombudsman for the state of New Mexico Aging and Long-Term Care Services Department, and volunteers with The High Desert Humane Society.

Shondrah Tarrezz Nash is a professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Criminology at Morehead State University, in Kentucky. She earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Kentucky in 2002. In 2003, Nash conducted her post-doctoral work at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the Department of African American Studies.

Nash’s interest in the sociology of family evolved by way of her primary research: religious coping among survivors of spousal violence. Nash is an active participant in the domestic violence help and prevention community of Eastern Kentucky/Appalachia, where she served on the board of directors of a domestic violence shelter. Additional research endeavors involve an exploration of African American religious skeptics.

Timothy Madigan is an associate professor of sociology at Mansfield University of Pennsylvania, where he has been teaching and conducting survey research for 16 years. Before becoming a teacher, he was interim director of institutional research at Shippensburg University. He worked as a demographer/statistician at both the education branch of the U.S. Bureau of the Census and the National Center for Educational Statistics in Washington, D.C. His main task was to report to the U.S. Congress on the condition of education in the United States and to conduct and oversee specialized research projects on education. He has a Ph.D. in sociology and minor in statistics from Pennsylvania State University. His bachelor’s degree is in sociology/social work from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. His specialty is in the sociology of education and quantitative research. He has broadened his teaching over the years to other substantive areas within sociology such as theory, social policy, environmental sociology, deviance, Chinese society, political sociology, religion, social problems, the sociology of work and cultural anthropology. While in graduate school, he learned Mandarin Chinese. Since 1989, he has traveled extensively to Taiwan and China in order to study Chinese, teach sociology and conduct research. He serves as a reviewer for several sociology journals. He served as president of the Pennsylvania Sociological Society.

After work he advises various student clubs and captains an intramural basketball team made up of faculty and students. While growing up on the edge of the old anthracite coal mining town of Shamokin, Penn., he came to cherish hunting, fishing, mountain biking, canoeing, camping, hiking, outdoor photography, etc. On his artistic side, he plays Irish fiddle music on the harmonica, keeping a family and Irish tradition alive. Students who learn his Irish music perform with him at Irish pubs and festivals, especially on St. Patrick’s Day.

Josh Packard is an associate professor and applied sociologist at the University of Northern Colorado, where he is also the executive director of the Social Research Lab. He has written numerous academic articles and given dozens of presentations in the field of sociology of religion. He regularly teaches courses in research methods, sociology of religion and sociology of community. His course materials have been included in the Association of Religion Data Archives, and his research has been profiled in Leadership Journal, The Huffington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, Patheos and a number of other outlets. He is the author of the book Church Refugees, which examines the phenomenon of the Dones, those people who have fled the church but not their faith. Learn more about the book and The Dechurched Project at www.dechurched.net. Josh earned his B.A. in English from Texas Lutheran University in 2000 and his Ph.D. in sociology from Vanderbilt University in 2008.

Steven D. Williams was born in Toronto, Ontario, and raised in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. After high school, he was convinced he would have a career as either a rock star or a record producer, so he sang in a band in Red Deer, Alberta, and took a recording engineer’s course in Chillicothe, Ohio. Shockingly, he became neither rich nor famous. After five years as a night-club disc jockey, he began to notice that some of his friends in college were using words he didn’t understand. He started his journey in post-secondary education with no particular goal in mind other than to learn. But an introductory course in sociology changed his life. He was hooked on this way of thinking and seeing the world around him. He completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from Carleton University in Ottawa in 2000. He took a job at the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville in 2000, teaching introductory sociology, classical and contemporary theory, popular culture, race and ethnicity, and gender studies. He served as the director of USI’s gender studies program for ten years and later became an associate professor and even paid off his student loans.

With every year of teaching and research, Steven becomes more aware of the ways in which politics and economics intertwine. The institutions he was least interested in as an undergraduate have become integral to the way he now views sociology and the world. The entire planet, after all, is composed of political entities we call nation-states whose primary function is to compete for scarce economic resources. It’s sometimes a challenge getting undergraduate students excited about studying these fundamental institutions, but when they realize the direct effects on their lives, there may be no more apt way to demonstrate the “micro-macro link.” He remains confident that sociology and rock ’n’ roll will save the world.

Gesine Hearn was born and grew up in Germany. In 1994, she moved to the United States. She received her Ph.D. in 2006 from the University Erlangen-Nuernberg in Germany. Before she studied sociology, she earned a degree in nursing and worked as a nurse.

She is an associate professor in sociology and chair and graduate director of the Department of Sociology, Social Work and Criminology Justice, at Idaho State University. Her medical background still influences her research and teaching interests. Her research interests include lay and expert perceptions of health and disease, patient self-help organizations and health inequalities. She has published work in the area of gender, family sociology, the medical profession, patient self-help organizations and chronic pain and identity.

Rifat Akhter is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Central Arkansas. She teaches principles of sociology, gender roles, population and globalization and development. Her research interests include fertility, maternal and child health, globalization, gender and violence against women. She obtained her master’s in medical demography from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and her Ph.D. in sociology from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Her current research explores how the global economy and unequal power relations between men and women create a context where domestic violence continues to be a regular occurrence in many women’s lives. In another research project, she explores impacts of globalization and gender inequality in the labor market on maternal mortality. Akhter has published papers in Critical Sociology, Advances in Gender Research: Perceiving Gender, Locally, Globally, and Intersectionally, Global Studies Journal, The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Science and other peer-reviewed journals.

John Joe Schlichtman is an urbanist based at DePaul University in Chicago, where he is the director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Sociology. He received his B.S. in finance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his master’s and Ph.D. in urban sociology from New York University. His interests are motivated by the potential of equitable, just and productive community development. His research has focused on understanding the dynamics of macro-level processes such as globalization and gentrification: how stakeholders resist or exploit them, the decisions residents make in navigating them and their influence on the urban landscape. He authored the book Gentrifier with Jason Patch and Marc Lamont Hill and is working on a book for the Globalization and Community series for University of Minnesota Press. His research and perspectives have been discussed in such media outlets as Next City, CityLab and The Economist. He serves as a board member of the Research Committee 21 (RC21) for Urban and Regional Development. He has been a recipient of the PSA Praxis Award (2012) for his impact on organizational institutions, community betterment and reducing human suffering and was also named a Next City Vanguard (2016).

Raised by parents who were unionized factory workers, Paul Prew developed a penchant for social justice. In his final term as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, he did his research project on the mascot’s name change in 1989. After interviewing faculty, administrators, staff and students, he discovered the power of systematic sociological investigation by documenting the problems Native American mascots pose for native communities. The ability of sociology to promote intellectual growth led him to complete a master’s degree at Minnesota State University-Mankato and a Ph.D. at the University of Oregon.

While his research interests have changed over the years, they are rooted in issues of social justice. One theme includes ecological unequal exchange and the exploitation of environmental resources. Currently, Prew works with a fair trade non-profit and an environmental organization in his community. As an associate professor at Minnesota State University-Mankato, he also teaches a course on indigeneity and the environment, and courses on globalization, theory and introductory sociology.

Brian Moss is a sociology instructor at Oakland Community College in Waterford, Michigan. Moss was drawn to the field of sociology after a wide range of professional experiences highlighted the important role of social forces on the lives of at-risk populations. He has provided clinical support to families and children involved in child protective and foster care services, survivors of child abuse and neglect, and families and children needing care in medical facilities. Moss has also worked with parole violators within a Michigan Department of Corrections facility to prepare for reentry into the community. As the previous director of institutional research for Oakland Community College, he conducted and supervised the creation of formative and process evaluations, needs assessments, economic impact studies, marketing research and strategic planning studies. Moss has been very active producing qualitative and quantitative research on criminal, health and educational outcomes.

In addition to these professional experiences, Moss received a bachelor of science degree in psychology from Central Michigan University as well as a master’s of social work, a graduate certificate in infant mental health and a doctoral degree in sociology from Wayne State University. He has received additional training on advanced statistical and research method techniques at the University of Michigan’s Summer Research Institute. Moss has taught a variety of introductory courses and more advanced topics on research methods, statistical analysis and survey methodology.