Fall 2025
This course introduces students to the graduate program, department, courses and faculty, explains the program’s requirements and standards for successful completion of the M.A., and provides students with insights into how the profession works. During the semester, students will learn about campus and departmental resources that will aid them in their studies. The course deals with the role of research and writing within the discipline of sociology, the ethics of conducting research, and sociological research topics, questions, and literature reviews.
Provides students the guidance to develop, complete, and defend their thesis or project prospectus (proposal).
Spring 2025
Introduces students to undergradaute-level perspectives, theories, methods, topics, concepts, issues, and debates within sociological social psychological, which is broadly described as the systematic study of people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in social contexts.
Provides students a supervised internship and fieldwork experience in a CSUS/CEC-approved site set up the semester prior to enrolling in the course.
Introduces students to gradaute-level perspectives, theories, methods, topics, concepts, issues, and debates within sociological social psychological, which is broadly described as the systematic study of people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in social contexts.
Fall 2024
Introduces students to the history of attempts to define and explain deviant behavior; explains social conditions and processes associated with careers of deviants; examines relationship of deviance to problems of social control.
Ibid.
Spring 2024
Ibid.
Introduces students to the sociology of the family including an examination of the family in various cultures with the emphasis on the U.S. family in its many forms. Topics include traditional and conventional families but also nontraditional and unconventional families, such as transnational families, childfree families, LGBTQ families, and undomiciled families.
Individual projects or directed reading; open only to students who appear competent to carry on individual work. Admission requires approval of the sponsor of the project and the Department Chair.
This Culminating Experience course is a supervised course that helps graduate students complete their MA project/thesis. It is for graduate students who are writing their MA project/thesis. Completion of a thesis/project. Master's thesis requirement must be completed under the direction of the student's thesis chair and committee.
Graduate Students Supervised
Master of Arts in Sociology Committee Chair
2024-
2024-
2024-
2021-2022 Chaprill Bostick: “The Virtual Black Body: A Theoretical and Methodological Approach
to Understanding the Plight of Self-Presentation on Social Media Relative to Black Women.” (Soon to enter PhD Program in Department of Sociology, Howard University)
2020-2022 Ezra Cabrera: “Transgender Hurt and Healing: A Content Analysis of Non-Suicidal Self-
Injury among Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Individuals.”
2020-2021 Iyvan Carrier: “The LGBT+ Community and Mental Health: A Quantitative Study.”
2020-2024 Luz Cruz-Silva: “Employee Satisfaction, Burnout, and Languishing: An Investigation of Social Worker Wellbeing."
2020-2023 Gabriel Agustin Esparza: “Innovative Teaching Strategies for Student Success: Hip-Hop Pedagogy in the Classroom.”
2020-2023 Monica Linhthasack: “Healthcare Disparities in the United States: A Project Examining
People’s Attitudes Toward Government Intervention for Healthcare.”
2020-2021 Amber Lynn McElvain: “Racial Disparities, COVID-19, and Vaccine Hesitancy: A Content Analysis of News Media.”
2020-2021 Malissa Kekahu: “School Shootings, Race, and the Media: A Content Analysis of Podcasts on School Shootings.”
2020-2021 Jasmine Kurre: “Media Portrayals of Sexual Assault Survivors: A Content Analysis of Men in Public Service Announcements.”
2019-2021 Cheryl Renee Hogue: “An Analysis of Anti-Sex Trafficking Campaigns in Sacramento
County, California.”
2019-2020 William Blade Wagner: “Atheist Identity Work: A Qualitative Examination of Secular
Identities.” (Entered PhD Program in Department of Sociology, University of Colorado Boulder)
Master of Arts in Sociology Committee Second Reader
2024-
2024-
2021-2023 Isabel Bickford: “A Content Analysis of TikTok Bimbos through the Lens of Digital Third Wave Feminism.”
2020-2021 Kiga Cole: “The Black Church is Alive: Exploring Factors that Keep the Black Church Central to Black American Activism.”