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Sociology DepartmentFaculty
Noel Byrne, Professor of Sociology, earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from Rutgers University (BA, Sonoma State College, MA, Rutgers). His teaching areas include Social Psychology, Urban Sociology, the Sociology of Organizations & Organizational Behavior, and Research Methods. Prior to joining the SSU Sociology Department he was tenured in the School of Business and Economics (Department of Business Administration) at SSU. Previously, he taught at Douglass College (the women's college of Rutgers University) and Soledad Prison. His publications and conference papers have been in such topic areas as the sociology of time, Emile Durkheim, and family businesses. His current research concerns center on the sociology of time and the sociology of evil. Kathy Charmaz Kathy Charmaz is Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Faculty Writing Program at Sonoma State University. She teaches in the areas of sociological theory, social psychology, qualitative methods, health and illness, and gerontology. As Coordinator of the Faculty Writing Program, she assists faculty in writing for publication and leads three faculty seminars on writing. In addition to writing numerous chapters and articles, she has written or co-edited five books including Good Days, Bad Days: The Self in Chronic Illness and Time , which won awards from the Pacific Sociological Association and the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. Her recent publications focus on medical sociology, qualitative methods, and social psychology and include a number of articles and chapters on grounded theory. Dr. Charmaz has served as the president of the Pacific Sociological Association, Vice-President of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, and editor of Symbolic Interaction . She is the chair of the Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association.
Forrest Deseran earned a BA in Sociology from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1966 and a PhD in Sociology at Colorado State University in 1975. He was on the sociology faculty at Louisiana State University from1975 until July of 2002. From 1992 until 2001 he served as the Director of the Louisiana Population Data Center at Louisiana State University. His research has been published in nationally recognized journals and he was the editor of a book series for the Rural Sociological Society. His most recent research projects deal with the effects of welfare reform on women's employment and with the changing structure of the seafood industry in Louisiana. His teaching interests include symbolic interaction, the individual in society, deviant behavior, food and society, death and dying in American culture, and population studies. While at LSU, Dr. Deseran won awards for his teaching at the national, university, and departmental levels. In 1998 he was named an LSU Distinguished Alumni Professor. After he and his wife recently relocated to Glen Ellen, California, Dr. Deseran joined the Sociology Department at Sonoma State University as an adjunct lecturer. While at SSU, he has taught Population and Society (Soci 381), Introduction to Sociology (Soci 201), Death and Dying (Soci 332), Senior Seminar in Sociology (Soci 498), The Social Construction of Crime (CJA 375), Deviant Behavior (CJA 441/Soci 314), and First Year Experience Seminar (Univ 102), . When not doing research or teaching, he can be found riding his road bike on the back roads of Sonoma County. Myrna Goodman is the Director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust and an Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department. She is a graduate of Sonoma State University (B.A.Sociology 1988) and earned her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Sociology from the University of California, Davis. Her Ph.D. degree includes a Designated Emphasis in Social Theory and Comparative History. Dr. Goodman's dissertation was an analysis of the contributions of ideology, culture and political process in the formation of the Danish Resistance Movement and the rescue of the Jews in Denmark during World War II. It is titled: "Resistance and Rescue: German-Occupied Denmark 1940-1943: Ideology, Politics and Culture." During her doctoral research, Professor Goodman made two research trips to Denmark to interview participants in the Danish Resistance Movement, Danish historians and Jewish Danes who were evacuated to Sweden. Her publications include a chapter, "Foundations of Resistance in German-Occupied Denmark." in the book, Resisting the Holocaust. Dr. Goodman coordinates annual Holocaust Lecture Series: Perspectives on the Holocaust and Genocide, an upper division GE course. http://www.sonoma.edu/users/g/goodman/ . Professor Goodman also teaches courses in Political Sociology, Sociology of Gender, Introductory Sociology and Research Methods.
Elaine Leeder was born in Lynn, Massachusetts and has her BA in Sociology from Northeastern University in Boston. Mer MSW is from Wurzweiler School of Social Work, Yeshiva University in NY, her MPH is from University of California at Berkeley and her PhD is from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. She taught Sociology for 23 years at Ithaca College and is now the Dean of the School of Social Sciences at SSU and a Professor of Sociology. In addition to her dean responsibilities she teaches Introduction to Sociology and Family Violence. Her books include The Gentle General: Rose Pesotta, Anarchist and Labor Organizer (SUNY, 1993), Treating Abuse in Families: A Feminist and Community Approach (Springer, 1994), and The Family in Global Perspective: A Gendered Journey (Sage, 2003). She also writes articles and speaks on topics related to the Holocaust. Leeder loves working with students and also enjoys swimming, biking and canoeing. Click here for Elaine Leeder's academic website.
Thomas Lough, Adjunct Lecturer of Sociology, earned a BSME in mechanical engineering, an AM in Sociology and a Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Michigan. His teaching areas indlude Social Movements, Political Sociology, Social Psychology and Globalism. Prior to joining the SSU Sociology Department he as tenured at Kent State University (and was in the line of fire during the Kent State massacre of May 1970). Before that he served as Senior Foreign Affairs officer in the Disarmament Affairs Division of the United Nations, and in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency of the U.S. Government. His research includes the energetics of social structure and the relationship among agriculture, patriarchy, genocide and ecocide. He is an evaluator for SSU's Project Censored and a professional jazz pianist. Melinda Milligan Melinda Milligan, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at SSU, specializes in the sociology of the built environment from a symbolic interactionist perspective. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Davis. Prior to joining SSU in Fall 2003, she held the position of Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Tulane University (New Orleans, LA). Professor Milligan's research and teaching interests include emotions, community and urban sociology, organizational sociology, qualitative research methods, and symbolic interactionism. Her publications have focused on topics such as space/place, place attachment, nostalgia and identity, organizational death, the architectural design process, children and museums, and the planning movement known as the New Urbanism. Currently, Professor Milligan is researching the social psychology of historic preservation through a range of projects, including (1) a study of the renovation of historic houses with an emphasis on homeowner decision-making processes and (2) a study of educational programs for children in museums with a preservation emphasis, such as historic house museums. Additionally, she is co-authoring the third edition of the classic urban sociology text Being Urban: A Sociology of City Life , originally written by David Karp, Gregory Stone, and William Yoels. Peter Phillips joined the Sociology Department in 1994 after completing a Ph.D. at U.C. Davis. He teaches courses in Social Welfare, Power, Class Stratification and Media Censorship. Dr. Phillips is the director of Project Censored an internationally known media research program that annually identifies the 'Most Censored" news stories in the United States. The annual research book produced by Project Censored is entitled "Censored; The news That Didn't Make the News", and is available from Seven Stories Press. EDUCATION: CURRENT POSITION: Course Areas: American Class Structure, Sociology of Censorship,
Social Work and Social Welfare, Sociology of Power, Research Director Project Censored: 1996 to Present, Administrative responsibility for the management of Project Censored, a national media research project.Responsible for national publicity and media relations. Guest on national radio shows including: NPR's "On the Media" and "Talk of the Nation", Pacifica Radio's "Democracy Now", Talk America, and numerous other programs. Statewide and Campus Activities: SSU Academic Senate 1995
to present, Statewide Academic Senate 1998-2001, Vice-President SSU Chapter
California AWARDS: PUBLICATIONS: Articles The 1934-35 Red Threat and The Passage of the
National Labor Relations Act, Critical Sociology, Vol. 20 Number 2, 1994 Popular Press: Numerous Op-ed pieces in various publications
including; Newsday, Social Policy, Z Magazine, Briar Patch and hundreds
of national Papers Presented: "Sociology of Affirmative Action:
Realities in California, Pacific Sociological Association 1998 Madeleine Rose Madeleine Rose, Adjunct Lecturer of Sociology, is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with extensive experience working with older adults and their families. Her teaching areas include Introduction to Social Work and Social Welfare, Family Systems, and Aging and Society. She has developed a unique service learning course, Group Work with Older Adults, in which students facilitate Intergenerational Dialogue groups at senior centers and retirement homes in the community. Prior to teaching at SSU, she was a tenured faculty member of the Department of Social Work at California State University Long Beach. Exchanging freeways for redwoods, she became an Adjunct Professor at SSU in 1999. Her academic background includes a Master's Degree in Sociology and a Master's Degree and Doctorate in Social Welfare from UCLA. Dr. Rose worked for 12 years as a Research Associate for the Family Styles Project at UCLA, studying children raised in nontraditional families, including communes and single mothers-by-choice. While at UCLA she led the effort to establish the University Child Care Center.
David Walls is a professor of sociology at Sonoma State University. At SSU since 1982, he has served as Director of Sponsored Programs and General Manager of the SSU Academic Foundation, and dean of the School of Extended Education from 1984 to 2000. He teaches classes on social movements for the Sociology and Women's & Gender Studies departments during the Spring terms. He received an undergraduate degree in economics in 1964 from the University of California at Berkeley. After graduation, he worked for the Community Action Program of the Office of Economic Opportunity in Washington, DC. In 1966 he moved to eastern Kentucky to work as field coordinator and later executive director with the Appalachian Volunteers, a community organizing project in the central Appalachian coalfields. He received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in sociology from the University of Kentucky, where he taught in the school of social work and helped establish and administer the Appalachian Center from 1974 through 1981. He is co-editor of Appalachia in the Sixties: Decade of Reawakening (Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1972), and author of The Activist's Almanac: The Concerned Citizen's Guide to the Leading Advocacy Organizations in America (Simon & Schuster/Fireside, 1993). His current research projects concern transnational social movement organizations and networks.
Elaine Wellin, Adjunct Lecturer of Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies, earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her teaching areas include American Class Structure, Sociology of the Environment, Human Service Administration, Sociology of Work, Women and the Environment, and Feminist Research Methods. Prior to joining SSU's Sociology Department, she taught at the University of Michigan in the Sociology Department. Her research and publications center on work in environmental sociology and feminist studies. Many of her classes involve service learning, a course component that extends class work to include participation in community affairs. Sociology Department Staff:Lisa Kelley-Roche, Administrative Coordinator Marcella Salisbury , Administrative Coordinator |
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