May 2025
Congratulations, Dr. Viera!
The College of Liberal Arts has honored Assistant Professor Janelle Viera as a recipient of the 2025 Excellence in Teaching Award. This honor celebrates faculty who foster engaging, supportive, and inclusive academic environments through exceptional teaching.
Viera’s nominator wrote: “I am Dr. Viera’s faculty mentor and was immediately impressed by her approachability to students, innovation in teaching methods, and outstanding teaching evaluations… Dr. Viera has incredible talent for connecting with students in courses that explore the challenging content of race and social stratification. The solicited and unsolicited letters and written comments from course evaluations illustrate her openness and ability to connect with students, her creativity in course design, and the impact of her courses on students.”
Launching the Colorado Higher Education Basic Needs Summit
Amber Obermaier, Ph.D. student and leader of CSU's Food Security Advisory Council (pictured center) and Jorja Whyte, senior sociology and psychology double-major and Associated Students of Colorado State University (ASCSU) Director of Basic Needs (pictured far right), planned and hosted the first-ever Colorado Higher Education Basic Needs Summit. Approximately 80 attendees from 13 universities and 7 organizations, including the Colorado Department of Higher Education, attended the event held at CSU SPUR. The day of collaborating, learning, and amplifying included drafting a statewide basic needs advocacy plan.
“Having access to (food) is a basic human right, and having access to a safe and affordable place to live should be a basic human right,” Amber told The Collegian. “But as we’ve seen, … there’s such a gap in securing those basic human rights for so much of the student population."
Congratulations to our M.A. students on their successful defenses!
Kennedy Dalager: ’Woke No Longer’: An Ideological Analysis of State Legislation Targeting DEI in Higher Education
Rebecca Whitten: Sports Participation as a Social Determinate of Athletic Sex Differences
Maddie Zvalo: Resolving the issue of child-on-parent violence in Colorado: A recommendation for the Colorado Youth Detention Continuum
Celebrating Sociology's Superstars
We couldn't be more proud of our amazing students! Click on each to learn about their journey to CSU SOC, favorite class or professor, sociological imagination, future plans & more. Many thanks to each student for sharing their story.
Congratulations to Alex, Miranda, and Lilliana who are graduating this spring!
Alex Kotaba and Nitro, her support animal, serve as AKD co-president and CSU SOC's undergraduate representative for department council. She is excelling in her new position in the criminal court division at the Second Judicial District Courthouse in Denver.
Miranda Needham learned how powerful and important it is to bring sociological research and discourse into public spaces through her AKD leadership role as co-president, and Dr. Joshua Sbicca has inspired her to explore careers in community outreach and environmental education.
Lilliana Canino is a first-generation student and recent inductee into CSU's chapter of Phi Beta Kappa national honor society. She is a security temp at Larimer County Community Corrections and recommends that anyone and everyone at CSU take Kevin Cronin's Criminal Investigations course.
Dylan Witte is a first-generation junior who transferred to CSU this fall. "I have been lucky enough to have Professor Viera both semesters...[who] makes all of her students feel heard, even if their voices are not loud."
Samuel Potts is a first-generation senior and recipient of our department's Education Abroad scholarship to study criminology & criminal justice in Prague this summer. He appreciates how Dr. Pat Mahoney keeps the passion behind education alive.
Sidney Stadelmann is a junior and the Outreach Coordinator for CSU's Student Sustainability Center (SSC). Through the SSC, she launched the Community for Climate Anxiety (CCA) project recently featured in SOURCE. Jason Downing has been inspirational to Sidney in maintaining hope while also developing climate solutions.
SOC Alumni Spotlight: India Luxton
"I'm now a postdoctoral research fellow at Syracuse University! My work is supported by a USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Agriculture and Food Research Initiative award. I am in the Center for Policy Research and Department of Geography and the Environment, continuing my research on the meatpacking sector, and working alongside Dr. Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Dr. Rick Welsh." – Dr. India Luxton (Ph.D., '24)
Dr. Gabin Korbéogo’s visit to CSU
Dr. Gabin Korbéogo is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Joseph Ki-Zerbo in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and Director of the Research Lab for Local Initiatives. He has published dozens of articles and books in both English and French. His research focuses on urban and rural livelihoods and environmental resources, specializing in land governance, natural resource conflicts, gender analyses, health systems, and mixed methods.
He hosted CSU SOC Assistant Professor Dr. Jessie Luna in 2016 when she was a Fulbright Scholar studying agricultural change in Burkina Faso, West Africa. This spring Jessie arranged for Dr. Korbéogo to visit CSU and present his research “Secrecy, conspiracy, and transparency: On increasing vaccine hesitancy during the Covid-19 pandemic in Burkina Faso.”
Please continue to submit your news and events to Sociology's Communications Coordinator. Thank you!