Sociologist · Educator · Community Builder
Ph.D. Sociology | Texas A&M University
Studying how social perception shapes identity, behavior, and deviance, from real estate offices to grade-school hallways. Committed to translating rigorous research into meaningful community impact.
A little more context
I came to sociology through real estate. Working as a Realtor in Texas, I witnessed property churning, racial steering, and wage fraud, the everyday professional misconduct that, multiplied across an industry, helped produce the 2008 housing crash. I returned to school hoping, perhaps naively, that a few more credentials might help. They didn't change the culture I was working in, but they did give me a way to understand something more useful: how the system shapes the people inside it and how the people inside it, in turn, sustain the system.
These questions center on how people come to convince one another in pursuit of a goal and how identity gets leveraged in that process. Whether it's a Realtor reading a client's status to decide how hard to push, or an adolescent calibrating their behavior against what they perceive everyone else to be doing, the underlying mechanism is the same: social perception shaping action.
I study that dynamic through experiments, surveys, and longitudinal data, committed to tracing the mechanism precisely enough that the findings travel beyond the cases that produced them. My aim is to make those moments legible to students encountering them for the first time, to communities navigating them without a map, and to researchers still working out what to do with them.
Areas of Work
Investigating how social perceptions and judgments shape subsequent behavior across adolescent deviance, professional identity, and the spaces between. Working across laboratory experiments, survey design, and longitudinal datasets.
Explore ResearchFive years of undergraduate instruction across theory, methods, and social problems, ranging from 22-student writing intensives to 84-student lecture courses. Committed to relational pedagogy and equity-minded practice.
View CoursesAdvising the Fort Collins Visual Artists Coalition on survey design and artist support systems. Former treasurer of the Fort Collins Mural Project. Special Olympics cycling coach for five years.
See InvolvementWhat we're working through
The Technological Society
Tackling this work in preparation for Ellul's Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes. Establishes the foundational concept of Ellulian Technique, covering its historical development, varied implementations, and self-replicating nature.
Jacques Ellul · 1964
Things I keep coming back to
Professionalization
A Nation of Realtors: A Cultural History of the American Middle Class
A fascinating history of the developing housing industry, the professionalization of real estate agents, the cultural enshrinement of home ownership, and the mid-century feminization of the sector.
Jeffrey M. Hornstein · Duke University Press · 2005
Classical Theory
The Theory of the Leisure Class
Explores the orientation of the leisure class, those whose lives no longer necessitate functional employment (how it self-replicates, diffuses across society, and adapts) as high culture shifts to illuminate the newest trend, fad, or meme.
Thorstein Veblen · Macmillan · 1899
Social Psychology
Unequals: The Power of Status and Expectations in Our Lives
A referential overview of major social psychological scholarship on the impact of status and power within social dynamics, a reliable map for both entry and return.
Webster & Walker, eds. · Stanford University Press · 2022
Identity & Boundary-Making
Ethnic Boundary Making
Tackles the historical trajectory of boundary-making scholarship, orienting away from constructionist arguments toward a deeper root. Boundary making is driven by hierarchies of power and prestige, and is meant to stabilize and institutionalize those very hierarchies.
Andreas Wimmer · Oxford University Press · 2013
Just being human
Reading
Book 3 of the Malazan Series: Memories of Ice
You're thrown into a living, ancient universe left piecing together the world through hints, rumor, fragmented histories, and unreliable narrators.
Cooking
Chilis & Curries
Spontaneous play with flavor and texture. Lately focused on what marinades, vegetables, and spices can do to approximate the consistency and depth of meat.
Gardening
Pollinator Garden
Working on establishing this season's pollinator garden. Snapdragons are always involved... a favorite from childhood.
Video Games
Sins of a Solar Empire II, Helldivers 2 & Stardew Valley
Nothing in heavy rotation, flitting between all three when there's time to decompress.