Hello, I’m Dan,

I am a PhD Candidate (expected 2018) in Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. I study higher education, careers, and entrepreneurism.

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I have two main current research projects in progress.

One examines student entrepreneurs and university-sponsored new venture incubators and accelerators. I’m trying to answer several questions about the efficacy of these training programs and how they influence the development of an entrepreneurial identity. I’m also trying to understand more about the organizational culture inside entrepreneurial support programs, which are rapidly being adopted by campuses across the country.

The other project is a book about college-to-career pathways in the U.S. Or more specifically, how where you go to college shapes the odds of what kinds of job you will likely learn to desire, as well as what kinds of jobs you will be able to land. This project uses computational methods from web-scraping LinkedIn data to topic modeling on thousands of college student newspaper articles about career seeking.

In broad terms, most of my work falls into one or more of these overlapping areas:

  • Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation
  • Organizations, Occupations, and Work
  • The Sociology of Higher Education

For more specifics, please download my CV here.

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