I am a recent graduate of UC Berkeley receiving a Ph.D. in Social & Cultural Context of Education. The Social & Cultural Studies Program raised questions and concerns regarding the larger context, meaning and purpose of education throughout history. In particular, areas focused on education's relation to history and the "significance of life." -- Krishnamurti

Other supporting issues address education as relates to: political economy, social risk, urban dynamism, division and urban youth. High school dropouts in urban settings was the central theme of my dissertation, with special focus on issues of race and education in America.

With four years of field investigation in Oakland's 'inner-city' residential West Side, my work is inspired by writers in a variety of fields ranging from civic policy and programs in history to current social forces influencing youths' lives. Especially fortunate, my field investigation allowed me to get to know many local groups, services, organizations, city officials, district and school faculty in troubled neighborhoods as in Oakland and San Francisco. I have learned a great deal through these interactions and continue to do so.

Particularly concerned with relations of 'big' politics, local and subsequent youth risk, correspondence as social reproduction, I have looked extensively at the relation between norms, social standards, risk and the renegade (or rebel) youth. I found that there is a deep relation and the idea of risk is expanded upon where the relation between social risk and the rising tide of individual risk, which become fused and accelerated. Greater emphasis has been given to the implications of the social construction of the individual person as relates to deeply embedded structures within society, material, systemic and symbolic. A dynamic dialectic relation includes the politicizing and depoliticizing of the social itself as critical to youths' commitment to their own creatively engaged critical learning.

Potential Course Offerings:

• Lower Division

Writing : Fusing Realities of Political-economy & Creative Mythologies

Sociology of Youth: Navigating Urban Peripheries

Sociology of Inequality: Causes of Stratification, Underclass, and Undercaste

Sociology of Labor/ Work: Complex Correspondence as a Struggle for Political Voice & Representation

Sociology of Education: Equity Within and Beyond the School Yard in Theory and Practice

Introduction to Sociology: Key Concepts and Foundational Thinkers

Introduction to Social Theory: Social Reproduction, Hegemony, the Local/Global Schism & 'What is to be done ?'

Introduction to Development Studies: Nation-building, Creative Destruction and Shifting Geographies

• Upper Division / Specialization

The Neoliberal City: Behind the Curtain of Neoliberal Urbanism

The Political Economy of Individualism and Community Under Late-Neoliberalism

Youth Risk at Risk: Turning Urban Economies & Institutions Around after COVID or Paying the Ultimate Price: The Educational Fabric of Learning