As a professor, I have been nominated by students for the campus-wide annual Advisor Award four times. In 2020, I was honored to be named Fresno Tower District's Education Woman of the Year.
Accompanied to Fresno City Hall's Woman of the Year celebration by four generations of my Youth and Social Media Research Lab scholars
I teach in California State University, Fresno's Department of Communication.
I joined the Fresno State faculty in the fall of 2013 as a faculty member in the Department of Child and Family Science.
In May 2017, I receivedmy college's top faculty teaching award.
Three years later, I was named Fresno Tower District's Education Woman of the Year.
As a COMM faculty member, I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in cultural studies,computer-mediatedcommunication, persuasion and social influence, communication theory, youth and communication, and communication research methods.
I previously taught adolescent development, advanced developmentaltheory, cultural perspectives on childhood and family, lifespan development, research, and risk and resilience, and led the department's student internship program.
Iserve on graduate students' committees and I work with undergraduates to write research grants and to pursue independent research studies.
In my final year as a doctoral student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I received the Outstanding Woman Scholar Award from the Women's Resources Center and the prestigious Campus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the Provost's annual teaching award given to five graduate student teachers across the university campus.
I served as founding faculty advisor of the undergraduate student organization Ambassadors for Youth Success (AYS). AYS creates opportunities for college students to reach out to support youth in our community. AYS was honored with the campus-wide Commitment to Service Award at the All-University Campus Leadership Awards Reception. One of AYS's two co-presidents was also awarded the campus-wide Outstanding Student Leader President Award.
Among other efforts, AYS attended Fresno High School's graduation to cheer on graduating high school students whose visit to my classes inspired undergraduates to form AYS. AYS's award-winning co-president and I appeared as guests on Fresno State Service in Action program to discuss the group's work. The program can be heard here.