Relational trust is the foundation.

How I teach

I teach sociology as both a way of seeing and a practice of doing. Seeing sociologically means learning to connect biography, interaction, institutions, history, and power. Doing sociology means using those connections to ask better questions, gather and interpret evidence, and act with greater care and accountability. Students develop both capacities by applying concepts to questions they recognize and revising their thinking as the evidence changes.

My courses use transparent expectations, scaffolded assignments, reflection, authentic choices, and opportunities to revise. Accessibility is not an accommodation added at the end. It is part of how the course is designed from the beginning.

Community-engaged learning & research

Applied sociology moves inquiry beyond describing the social world. Through community-engaged learning and research, students learn to listen closely, clarify questions, assess needs, interpret evidence, and translate what they learn for people making decisions in classrooms, organizations, and communities. The goal is not only to see sociology in everyday life, but to do sociology in ways that are ethical, useful, and responsive to context.

Seeing and doing sociology also have affective dimensions. Inquiry can unsettle assumptions, surface uncertainty, and ask students to work across experiences different from their own. Structured reflection helps students notice how emotion, identity, and social position shape what they observe, which questions they ask, and how they respond to what they discover. Vulnerability makes honest learning possible; relational trust makes that vulnerability safer. Together, reflection, vulnerability, and trust support more rigorous inquiry and more accountable engagement.

Mentoring across stages

My work with undergraduate and graduate students is grounded in a pedagogy of kindness: care made visible through clear expectations, honest feedback, flexibility, and attention to the institutional conditions shaping a student’s work. Kindness does not mean lowering standards. It means removing avoidable barriers so students can take on ambitious work.

I begin with value alignment. We identify what matters to the student, how the work connects to their professional and community commitments, and what they want the project to make possible. I provide methodological scaffolding and help students navigate academic processes while they retain ownership of the question, the learning, and the direction of the work.

Research training should make inquiry possible without pretending that all students arrive with the same time, confidence, preparation, or access to academic networks. I help students move from curiosity to a workable question, learn how methods shape what can be known, and practice making evidence-based claims for real audiences.

Rigor through relevance

Research socialization is a process, not simply a final deliverable. Students learn the full architecture of inquiry—from ethics training, question design, and data collection to interpretation, theoretical framing, iterative revision, and public presentation. A trusting mentoring relationship makes it possible to report confusion, flawed assumptions, and messy data without academic shame. That is often where the strongest learning and better research begin.

In one recent collaboration, I partnered with an MPA scholar-practitioner on research examining the intersection of autism and LGBTQ identity in employment. The collaboration combined faculty scaffolding in survey design, data analysis, theory, and dissemination with the scholar-practitioner’s leadership in shaping the project’s goals and public-facing applications. Rather than ending with a static paper, the project produced a living, public-facing toolkit designed to reach employers, HR professionals, care providers, and community networks.

Mentoring motherscholars

My mentoring also extends beyond formal courses and research projects. Through Ph.D. Mamas, I have cultivated a global community where motherscholars share resources, celebrate accomplishments, make struggle visible, and participate in formal and informal mentorship. My research on parenting graduate students documents how time poverty, inflexible expectations, inaccessible policies, and inadequate institutional support shape persistence. It also identifies practical responses: flexibility, visible resources, equitable access to leave and childcare, realistic workloads, community, and compassion in action.

Learn more about Ph.D. Mamas

Courses