OUR TEAM

Sofya Aptekar, co-Principal Investigator

Sofya Aptekar is an Associate Professor of Urban Studies at CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. Her research has focused on immigration, citizenship, diverse neighborhoods, and alternative economies. She has written a book, The Road to Citizenship: What Naturalization Means for Immigrants and the United States.

Sofya was born in Moscow, in what was then Soviet Union, and moved to New York when she was 12. Sofya’s personal experience as an immigrant guides her work as a sociologist and her commitment to immigrant rights. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Sofya conducted interviews with students and former students, along with Amy.

Find out more about Sofya here: http://sofyaaptekar.com.

Amy Hsin, Principal Investigator

Amy Hsin is Associate Professor of Sociology at Queens College, CUNY and faculty associate of the CUNY Institute for Demographic Research (CIDR). She has published research on educational inequality, family dynamics and race/ethnicity. Her work has been supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality and the William T. Grant Foundation. Her research has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, LA Times, the Economist, TIME, and NPR.

Amy was born in Taiwan and immigrated to Canada and then to the United States. Amy is a proud resident of Queens, New York.

Amy conducted interviews with students and former students, along with Sofya.

Find out more about Amy’s research here: https://sites.google.com/view/amyhsin

Holly Reed, co-Principal Investigator

Holly E. Reed is Professor of Sociology at Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY), a doctoral faculty member in Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center, and an associate of the CUNY Institute for Demographic Research. Her research focuses on migration, demographic dynamics, education, and health in the U.S. and sub-Saharan Africa. She has published articles in journals such as Demography, Sociological Forum, Demographic Research, Health and Place, and African Population Studies. Dr. Reed previously served as a program officer for the Committee on Population of the National Academies in Washington, DC. She has a Ph.D. in sociology from Brown University, and an M.A. in demography and B.S. in foreign service from Georgetown University.

Holly conducted interviews with staff and faculty.

Find out more about Holly’s research here:

http://qcsociology.org/people/faculty/holly-reed/

Evelyn Lucero, Research Assistant

Evelyn Lucero holds a master's degree in urban studies from the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, with a focus on public administration and policy. Her capstone research focused on the experience of Latinx immigrants living alone in New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Evelyn's family immigrated to the United States from Mexico when she was just eight months old. Evelyn's involvement in immigrant rights stems from her personal experience as a DACA recipient.

Evelyn is assisting Amy and Sofya with follow up interviews.

Thomas DiPrete, co-Principal Investigator

Thomas A. DiPrete is Giddings Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, co-director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), co-director of the Center for the Study of Wealth and Inequality at Columbia University, and a faculty member of the Columbia Population Research Center. He has been on the faculty of the University of Chicago, Duke University, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison as well as Columbia. DiPrete’s research interests include social stratification, demography, education, economic sociology, and quantitative methodology. His recent and ongoing projects include the study of gender differences in educational performance, educational attainment, and fields of study, the determinants of college persistence and dropout in the U.S., a comparative study of how educational expansion and the structure of linkages between education and the labor market contribute to earnings inequality in several industrialized countries, and the study of how social comparison processes affect the compensation of corporate executives.