Faculty and Staff

Yasemin Besen-Cassino, professor and chair, received a PhD in sociology from State University of New York, Stony Brook. Her research interests include: Work and Labor; Youth; Gender; Quantitative Methodology; and Ethnography. She teaches courses including: Sociological Research Methods, Sociology of Gender, Work and Professions, Sociology of the Family, Men & Masculinities, and Interviews and Focus Groups. Besen-Cassino was recognized as University Distinguished Scholar (2012-13). She is the author of two books published by Temple University Press: The Cost of Being a Girl: Working Teens and the Origins of the Gender Wage Gap (2018) and Consuming Work by Temple University Press (2014). She is also the editor of Contemporary Sociology.

Cheryln Sayles is the program assistant for the Department of Sociology. She received a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Baruch College in the City University of New York.

Christopher Donoghue, associate professor, received a PhD in sociology from Fordham University, New York. His research interests include: Bullying, Ethnic and Racial Prejudice, and Aging and Health. He teaches courses including Survey Research, Research Project Management, Statistics for Social Research, Sociological Research Methods, Poverty and Social Welfare, and Sociology of Education.

Timothy Gorman, assistant professor, received a PhD in Development Sociology from Cornell University. His research interests include: global development; food and agriculture; and environmental sociology. He teaches courses including Environmental Sociology and Sociology of Rich and Poor Nations.

Sangeeta Parashar, associate professor, received a PhD in sociology from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research interests include: Social Demography; Development/Globalization; and Sociology of Health and Work. She teaches courses including Statistics for Social Research, Sociology of Aging, Sociology of Rich and Poor Nations, Social Inequality, and Sociology of Population.

Janet Ruane, professor, received a PhD in sociology from Rutgers University. Her research interests include: Research Methods; Popular Culture; Applied Sociology; and Deviance and Social Control. She is the author (along with Karen Cerulo of Rutgers) of a popular text that uses sociology to challenge commonly held yet flawed ideas/beliefs about our social world: Second Thoughts:  Sociology Challenges Conventional Wisdom (Sage, 2015).  She also is the author of two texts on social research: Essentials of Research Methods (Blackwell/Wiley, 2005) and Introducing Social Research Methods (Wiley, 2016).  She regularly teaches the following courses: Social Research Methods, Senior Research Project, Foundations of Sociological Inquiry, and Sociological Perspective.

Stephen Ruszczyk, assistant professor, received a PhD from the City University of New York. His research interests include immigration, citizenship, schools, Latinos, community-based organizations and qualitative methods. He currently teaches courses including Urban Sociology and Latino Sociology.

Vikash Singh, associate professor, received a PhD in sociology from Rutgers University. His research interests include: Religion; Race and Ethnicity, Social and Psychoanalytic Theory; and Globalization. He teaches courses on topics of race, social theory, and religion.

Tanesha Thomas, assistant professor, received a PhD in sociology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her research interests include spatial demography, intersectionality, and the political economy of the environment. She has written about the spatial distribution of environmental hazards across the United States. She is particularly interested in the structural forces that produce and maintain environmental inequalities in marginalized communities.

Yong Wang, associate professor, received a PhD in sociology from Iowa State University. His research interests include: Theory; Cultural Sociology; Text Analysis; and Statistics. He regularly teaches Sociology of Rich and Poor Nations, Social Statistics, Data Analysis, Sociology of Mass Media, and Social Theory.