As a lifelong student and university educator, teaching and learning are personal and professional passions.  One of the most extraordinary and promising abilities of our human species is our ability to learn from one another and use our knowledge to change the world around us.  Whatever the venue (online, in-person, hybrid), the classroom provides an excellent opportunity to collaborate with students on developing a more meaningful and effective learning experience.  My scholarship of teaching and learning focuses on increasing student engagement via active learning.  I am particularly invested in developing and investigating learning experiences that use accessible information technology to actively and/or experientially involve students in the learning process.  In 2021 I published a refereed teaching resource " Teaching Social Mobility Using a Virtual Field Experience that Combines a Podcast with Google Maps" in the American Sociological Association's TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology.  This assignment uses a popular podcast and Google Maps to help students learn about the sociological concepts of stratification, agency, and structure.  Currently, I am working on an additional TRAILS publication (a class activity) about using a podcast and Google Maps Street View to facilitate an activity for learning about sociological perspectives and research on disability. 

Publications (Refereed) 

• Ellis, Trenton. 2025. "Podcast Review: The Sociology of Everything Podcast." Teaching Sociology, 53(3): 260-265. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0092055X251345272 

• Ellis, Trenton. 2021. “Teaching Social Mobility Using a Virtual Field Experience That Combines a Podcast With Google Maps”. TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology, August. Washington DC: American Sociological Association. https://trails.asanet.org/article/view/teaching-social-mobility-using-a-virtual-field-ellis. 

Publications (Non-refereed) 

• Ellis, Trenton and Dan May.  2017. “Music with a Message: Talking about Activism and Social Consciousness in the Classroom through Music.” More of Mobilizing Faculty into the Future: E-Book 2, Edited by Barbara Looney and Mary Caton-Rosser.  Link: http://www.mobilizingfacultyonlinetechforteaching.com/copy-of-home

Professional Presentations

• 2025 Annual North Dakota & South Dakota Co-State TRIO ASPIRE Conference (April 2025 in Spearfish, SD)

  • Ellis, Trenton. 2025. "Higher Ed Hunger Games? How Student Basic Needs Insecurity Erodes Social Mobility through Higher Education." Link: https://trioaspireconference.org/ndsd2025/sessions/ 

• 2025 Annual TIE (Technology In Education) Conference (April 2025 in Rapid City, SD)

  • Ellis, Trenton. 2025. "Taking Students Beyond Their 'Private Orbits' with Podcasts + Google Maps." Link: https://www.accelevents.com/e/2025-TIE-Conference#speakers 

• 2023 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Sociological Society (March 2023 in Minneapolis, MN)

  • Ellis, Trenton. 2023. “The BHSU Food Security Study: Teaching Research Methods and Measuring Student Food Insecurity via an Action-Oriented Class Research Project."

• 2021 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Sociological Society (Held Virtually via Zoom)

  • Ellis, Trenton (session organizer & presenter) and Steven Digioia. March 20th, 2021. "Teaching Sociology with Podcasts - Two Applications." Annual Meeting of the Midwest Sociological Society (Virtual).  Link: https://www.themss.org/assets/docs/2021mtgfiles/2021%20MSS%20program%20book%20-%20Final%20Copy.pdf 

Other Scholarship 

Since my teenage years, I've had a passion for food.  I actually applied to culinary school while in high school, but the cost was out of reach.  As a graduate student in Western Illinois University's Department of Sociology and Anthropology, I had the opportunity to work as an editorial assistant for the Journal of Ecological Anthropology.  My duties included soliciting and reading manuscript submissions, some of which were about food.  I remember reading and editing Hannu Heikkinen's article on reindeer herding in Finland and realizing that I could study food as a sociologist.  This thought stuck with me and when applying to PhD programs, I sought programs at universities known for food and agriculture studies.  Ultimately I attended South Dakota State University and selected the topic of food scares for my dissertation.  Food is more than something that provides nutritional sustenance, food is social.  I'll provide two examples of this.  First, food is a social construct - that is, food certainly has a material reality, but it is also a subjective project - it is something we develop and ascribe meaning to based upon a variety of factors.  You can see this in disagreements over what is and is not categorized as "food."  In some cultures dogs are an acceptable source of food, while in other cultures it is viewed as "inhumane" and potentially even classified as illegal.  Second, eating is a social interaction.  Whether conscious of it or not, by eating we relate ourselves to a field of various other actors as well as the set of ideologies and policies encircling and connecting them.  My decision to drink more expensive "fair trade" coffee, for example, relates me to a different field of actors than buying a cheaper generic store brand.  Food is social! 

I am currently studying food insecurity among college students.  I am particularly interested in the dynamics of college student food insecurity, student difficulties satisfying basic needs, and related challenges to navigating and achieving success in higher education, especially among students with low resources.  Along with co-authors, I am writing a paper examining the role of college student food insecurity as one factor hampering indicators of student success.  College student basic needs insecurities appear to threaten higher education's role as an institution of social and economic opportunity, particularly for students with low resources (e.g. financial, social, etc.).  

Publications (Refereed) 

Publications (Non-refereed) 

Ellis, Trenton.  2015.  "Beef is Beef? An Actor-Network Analysis of the 2012 LFTB Food Scare. " Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1851.   LINK: https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/etd/1851 

 Professional Presentations

• 2025 Canton, IL Bicentennial Celebration - Keynote Speaker for the "Salute to Fulton County Farms" Museum Exhibit (June 2025 in Canton, Illinois)

  • Ellis, Trenton. "Harvesting Change: Fulton County Farms & Shaping the Modern World." Keynote Address for the "Salute to Fulton County Farms" Exhibit Opening and Dinner. (Canton Area Heritage Center Newsletter: https://www.cantonillinois.org/wp-content/uploads/CAHC_Newsletter_072025.pdf) 

• 2023 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Sociological Society (March 2023 in Minneapolis, MN)

  • Session Organizer, Session Presider, Session: “Higher Education, Stratification, and Social Reproduction.” 

    • Ellis, Trenton and Michael Hollingsworth. 2023. "Higher Ed Hunger Games? College Student Funding Resources and Food Insecurity: Results from a Food Security Survey at a Small Midwestern University." 

• 2021 Friends of Food Security Annual Meeting (Rapid City, SD) (media KOTATV)

  • Ellis, Trenton. 2021. "The BHSU Food Security Study: 2019 Pilot Project." 

• 2019 Annual Meeting of the Great Plains Sociological Association

  • Ellis, Trenton 2019. "Food Insecurity Among Students at Black Hills State University: Results from a 2019 Food Security Survey."  

• 2017 Invited Lecture: Joint European Master in Comparative Local Development, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia)

  • Ellis, Trenton. 2017.“ Beef is Beef? The Social Construction of Food Scares.”  (press release)

• 2017 Public lecture: Geek Speak Lecture Series, Black Hills State University

  • Ellis, Trenton. 2017.  “Panic at the Meat Department: Food Scares as Moral Panics." (media SDPB Radio)

• 2016 Public lecture: Geek Speak Lecture Series, Black Hills State University

  • Ellis, Trenton.  2016. “The Social Life of Meat." (press release) 

• 2015 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Sociological Society (March 2015 in Kansas City, MO) 

  • Ellis, Trenton.  2015.  "New Directions in Development Studies: Academics and Agribusiness in the 2012 'Pink Slime' Food Scare."

• 2015 Annual Meeting of the Rural Sociological Society (July 2015 in New Orleans, LA) 

  • Ellis, Trenton. 2015. "Beef is Beef?: An Actor-network Analysis of the 2012 'Pink Slime' Food Scare." 

• 2012 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Sociological Society (March 2012 in Minneapolis, MN) 

  • Ellis, Trenton. 2012. "When Their "Food Got a Face": The Vegetarian Quest and Facebook Discussion Board Narratives" 

Other Scholarship 

My investigations of interpersonal violence are heavily influenced by a lifetime of witnessing the damage wrought by violence and victimization.  Even before I developed my sociological language, personal experiences drove me to question how/why people use violence as a mechanism of social control.  Beginning as a student in a community college "Social Problems" class, sociology gave me a language to make sense of the violence I witnessed around me as a youth and the hope for addressing it. 

Publications (Refereed) 

• Ellis, Trenton and Breanna Bass.  2018. "Bullying Victimization as a Predictor of Suicidality among South Dakota Adolescents: A Secondary Data Analysis Using the 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Survey." Great Plains Sociologist 27: (41-57).  (READ ARTICLE BELOW) 

Publications (Non-refereed) 

• Ellis, Trenton.  2009. " College Student Perceptions of Cyberstalking on Online Social Network Websites."  Master's Thesis for the completion of Master of Arts Degree in Sociology, Western Illinois University. 

Professional Presentations

• 2018 Spearfish School District Professional Development Day (February 2018 in Spearfish, SD)

  • Ellis, Trenton. 2018. "Bullying Victimization and Suicidality among South Dakota Adolescents." 

• 2017 Annual Meeting of the Great Plains Sociological Association (October 2017 in Fargo, ND)

  • Ellis, Trenton and Breanna Bass.  2017. "Bullying Victimization as a Predictor of Suicidality among South Dakota Adolescents: A Secondary Data Analysis Using the 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Survey." 

• 2008 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Sociological Society (March 2008 in Des Moines, IA)

  • Ellis, Trenton.  2008.  "College Student Perceptions of Cyberstalking on Online Social Network Websites"

Other Scholarship 

• 2008 - Research consultant, Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  • Data collection on the progression of domestic violence cases through the criminal justice system.