Select Past Work:

Some examples of my current (and recent) projects include:

Undergraduate career pathways (2021-2025): What are the biggest influences on how students pick careers? What emotions do they go through as they pursue these varied paths? With what likelihood can they predict their future career outcomes? Publications expected to begin in 2023.

Regional Social and Personality Traits Impact the Economic Development of Those Regions (2020): Policy makers should pay more attention to the psychosocial features of local markets. For example, we also found that Religiosity Influences Regional Recovery from Recession. The Social Science Journal and Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy.

Career Inequalities Between Private and Public University Grads (2019): How elite private universities maintain multiple layers of employment advantage for their graduates (using LinkedIn data of graduates’ early jobs). Socius.

Career Identity Emerges from Three Main Sources (2019): which map on to three corresponding traditions of identity literature in sociology. In this case I examine entrepreneurial career identity. Journal of Enterprising Culture.

Giving Fosters Wealth Creation (2019): How large donors in San Diego believe philanthropy can help boost regional economies. The Nonprofit Quarterly.

Student Startups Can Harm Career Pathways (2018): An investigation into how undergraduate entrepreneurship training programs do not equally benefit all students. UCSD Doctoral Dissertation.

Poor Treatment of Adjuncts is Bad for Students (2017): Book (Stylus Press) about how the mistreatment of adjunct faculty can lead to worse outcomes for students; and suggestions for how to take steps towards a more equitable work environment. Stylus Press. Here’s a recent (2019) suggestion for a compromise! Inside Higher Ed.

Companies Can Buy Access to Students (2016): How the emergence of corporate partnership programs in university career services centers are changing the process around how well-resourced firms recruit students. Research in Sociology of Organizations.

Top Firms Hack Recruiting at Top Campuses (2016): How elite universities like Harvard and Stanford let a handful of wealthy firms recruit massively outsized proportions of their students; students who are often ambivalent about working for these gilded employers. Sociology of Education.