Meet Our Faculty & Staff

Faculty & Staff

	Dr. Alessandro Bonanno (Texas State University System Regents’ Professor and Distinguished Professor of Sociology) “Sociology is the science that studies society. But it is also a tool to change it.”
	Ms. Caron Cates “Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead
	Dr. Jin Young Choi “If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.” Margaret Mead
	Dr. Doug Constance (Director of Undergraduate Studies) “Do not go gently into that good night.... Rage, rage against the dying of the light." Dylan Thomas
	Dr. Furjen Deng "Power is not of a man. Wealth does not center in the person of the wealthy. Celebrity is not inherent in any personality. To be celebrated, to be wealthy, to have power requires access to major institutions." C. Wright Mills
	Dr. Karen Douglas (Director of Graduate Studies) "The philosophers have interpreted the world in different ways. What matters is changing it." Karl Marx
	Dr. Colter Ellis (Assistant Professor: Center for Rural Studies) “While academic knowledge mostly takes the form of description, concerned with what is or has been, political knowledge mostly takes an active form, concerned with what can be done and what must be suffered.” Raewyn Connell
	Dr. Maki Hatanaka “Objectivity is not about dis-engagement, but about mutual and usually unequal structuring, about taking risks in a world where ‘we’ are permanently mortal, that is, not in ‘final control.’” Donna Haraway
	Mrs. Cheryl Hudec (Associate Director: Center for Rural Studies) "Do right, and fear no man."
	Mr. Ryan Johnson “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” T. S. Eliot
	Dr. Amy Kirk “The doer alone learneth.” Friedrich Nietzsche
	Dr. Jason Konefal “For education among all kinds of men [humans] always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent.” W. E. B. Du Bois – The Souls of Black Folk
	Dr. Olena Leipnik “What is life? It is a flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.” Blackfeet Tribe
	Dr. Lee Miller (Associate Chair) “Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
	Dr. Andrew Prelog “Progress is not necessarily a natural or assured result of change. It comes only as a result of effort that is wisely expended and sacrifice which is sacrifice in truth.” Samuel Henry Prince
	Dr. Gene Theodori (Chair) “The future never belongs to the youth but belongs to all individuals caught in the cumulation of trivial decisions.” Bill Burch