Graduate Student Achievements

Recent Honors and Awards

Hayden Fulton (left), Ashley Green (top right), and Alissa Klein (bottom right) received the 2022 Graduate Student Outstanding Teaching Awards. Congratulations to All!
Melinda (Mindy) Maconi received the 2021 Outstanding Student Paper Award by the Disability Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems for her paper "'When You Get into This World, You’re Constantly Connected to Things’: Creating and Reproducing Cultural Capital for People with Disabilities Participating in the Arts."
Edlin Veras received one of USF's 2021 Golden Bull Awards. The Golden Bull Award is one of USF’s highest honors given annually to up to 30 students who encompass the spirit of USF and have demonstrated our core values during their tenure at the university.

In Fall 2020, doctoral student Shumaila Fatima was awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Fellowship to Saudi Arabia.

In spring, 2020, doctoral student Fangheyue (Amber) Ma received "The 2020 Herbert Blumer Graduate Student Paper Award" from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction for her paper "You Are First a Chinese Citizen, Then A Consumer: Presenting and Balancing Identities Online as Chinese International Tourists."
In June, 2020, doctoral student Kristopher Oliveira received the LGBT Scholarship from the USF Alumni Association. This is a university-wide scholarship designed to support USF students who demonstrate academic achievement, have unmet financial need, and have contributed to the welcoming climate for all students, including those with a different sexual orientation.
In spring, 2020, doctoral students Melanie Escue and Alissa Klein each received the 2020 SAGE Publishing Keith Roberts Teaching Innovations Award.
In spring, 2020, doctoral student Edlin Veras received three prestigious honors and awards: the American Sociological Association's Minority Fellowship for the 2020-2021 academic year; the A. Harrison and Ruth Kosove Graduate Scholarship, which is awarded by the USF Alumni Association based on a student's academic achievements and community service; and USF's 2020 Sankofa Academic Excellence Award.
In spring, 2020, Wenonah (Nina) Venter was selected as this year's recipient of the Spencer Cahill and Donileen Loseke Outstanding Dissertation Proposal Award. Nina’s dissertation project is titled “Urban Redevelopment: An Institutional and Organizational Analysis of Professional Placemaking at the Level of Local Government.”
In spring, 2020, Carley Geiss received one of USF's Dissertation Completion Fellowships from the Office of Graduate Studies for the summer semester, 2020.
In spring, 2020, the following doctoral students won Distinguished Teaching Awards from USF’s Department of Sociology: Georgi Georgiev, Ashley Green, Melinda (Mindy) Maconi, Kris Oliveira, and Wenonah (Nina) Venter.
In December, 2019, the Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research
announced that our doctoral student Carley Geiss is the winner of 2019 Carl J. Couch Internet Research Award for her work, “Exploring Cultural Conventions of Compassionate Healthcare through Virtual Narrative Ethnography.” In this study, Geiss illustrates how public organizational narratives about compassionate healthcare reflect and reinforce cultural systems of meaning. Using virtual narrative ethnography of the Schwartz Center of Compassionate Healthcare, Geiss demonstrates the construction of a formula story that operates through (1) characterization of the “compassionate-worthy patient,” (2) a plot of empathetic connection and compassionate action between patients and providers, and (3) morals that communicate personal, clinical, and institutional benefits of compassion in healthcare.
In November, 2019, doctoral student Melanie Escue (formerly Melanie Rosa) was honored with the 2019 Outstanding Student Paper Award by the American Society of Criminology's Division of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology for her lead-authored article "Do developmental and life-course theory risk factors equally predict age of onset among juvenile sexual and non-sexual offenders?", which appeared in the journal Sexual Abuse in 2018.
In November, 2019, doctoral student Rebecca Blackwell was interviewed for a radio show broadcast from Venezuela about her research on how collective emotions are formed and, in turn, influence social structures.
In spring, 2019, the following doctoral students won Distinguished Teaching Awards from USF’s Department of Sociology: (pictured from left to right) Kristopher Oliveira, Hadi Khoshneviss, Ashley Green, Carley Geiss, and Doug Engelman.
In spring, 2019, three of our doctoral students – Carley Geiss, Alissa Klein, and Fangheyue (Amber) Ma – were awarded Spencer E. Cahill Research Grants from USF’s Department of Sociology to support their dissertation research projects.
In spring, 2019, Rodrigo Serrao won the Graduate Paper Competition of the SSSP's Racial and Ethnic Minority Division for his work “Blacks Here are Racist against Whites': White Identifying Brazilian Immigrants' Perception of African American Racism”. He also won the SAGE Publishing Keith Roberts Teaching Innovations Award, which helps to prepare a new generation of scholars and leaders in the Teaching Movement in Sociology.
In spring, 2019, Mindy Maconi received an honorable mention in the SSSP Disability Division Graduate Paper Competition.
In spring, 2018, Girsea Martinez Rosas received the 2018 Outstanding Student Award from the USF Presidential Advisory Committee Status of Latinos here at USF.

Recent and Forthcoming Publications

Sara Rocks, M.A. student, reviewed "The Digital City: Media and the Social Production of Place" by Germaine R. Halegoua (2020, New York University Press) in Urbanites - Journal of Urban Ethnography 11, 111-114.

Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman and Angelica Loblack. 2020. "'Cops Only See the Brown Skin, They Could Care Less Where it Originated': Afro-Latinxs' Perceptions of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement." Sociological Perspectives. 1-18.

Melinda (Mindy) Maconi published a book chapter "More than Therapy: Conformity and Resistance in an Organizational Narrative of Disability and the Performing Arts." 2020. Pp 123-136 in Sara Green and Donileen Loseke (eds.) New Narratives of Disability: Constructions, Clashes, and Constructions. Volume 11 in the peer reviewed book series Research in Social Sciences and Disability. Bingley (UK): Emerald Publishing.
Melanie Escue (with co-authors Michael J. Leiber, Bryanna Fox, Julie Krupa, and John Cochran) received final acceptance on their article “Race/Ethnicity and the Effects of Prior Case Outcomes on Current Dispositions: Continuity and Change in the Dispositional Careers of Juvenile Offenders.” Justice Quarterly (2020, in press).

Dr. Silpa Satheesh has received the final acceptances on two forthcoming publications: “Moving Beyond Class: A Critical Review of Labor-Environmental Conflicts from the Global South.” Sociology Compass; and (with Rob Benford) “Framing and Social Movements.” In Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2nd Edition. Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons.
Dr. Silpa Satheesh's article "The Pandemic Does Not Stop the Pollution in River Periyar," which describes the recent protests in Eloor, India, was published in Interface: A Journal for and about Social Movements (May 22, 2020). Her article appears alongside the articles of other social movement luminaries including Donatella della Porta, Jackie Smith, John Foran, and Kohn Krinsky among others.
Dr. Silpa Satheesh's article "'Break the Chain': Exploring the Kerala Model of Pandemic Response" was published in Sectors: Newsletter of the American Sociological Association's Sociology of Development Section (2020; Volume 7:1).
Girsea Martinez Rosas's article "Critically Accommodating “Illegality”: Anticipatory Losses within Mixed-status Immigrant Families" was published in the Journal of Loss and Trauma (2020).
Doug Engelman's manuscript titled "Endings and Beginnings:
An Autoethnography of a Father’s Journey through His Son’s Madness, Loss, and a Quest for Meaning" was recently accepted for publication in the journal Humanity and Society.
Edlin Veras co-authored with Dr. Elizabeth Hordge Freeman the article "Out of the Shadows, into the Dark: Ethnoracial Dissonance and Identity Formation among Afro-Latinxs" in the journal Sociology of Race and Ethnicity (2019).
Hadi Khoshneviss’ paper "A Home to which I Don't Belong: Global Geopolitics, Colonialism, and the Racialization of Middle Eastern and North African Citizens in the US” was accepted for publication in Postcolonial Studies. This will be his second publication in 2019, the first one being in the journal Ethnicities.
Douglas Engelman’s article “Making Our Classrooms Relevant by Integrating RPTS” was published in the newsletter for ASA section on teaching and learning.
Carley Geiss’s review of the book “Beyond the Sirens and Lights: The Technologically Governed Work of Emergency Medical Services” was published in Symbolic Interaction (2019).
Juan Arroyo Flores co-authored with Dr. John Skvoretz a working paper titled “Diversity, Topology, and the Risk of Node Re-identification in Labeled Social Graphs” (2018).
Girsea Martinez Rosas co-authored with Dr. Elizabeth Aranda the book chapter "Racialization and Strategies of Resistance among Young Adult Undocumented Latinas/os in the United States" in Cobas, J. A., Feagin, J. R., Delgado, D. J., & Chávez, M. (Eds.), Latino Peoples in the New America: Racialization and Resistance (2018).
Girsea Martinez Rosas co-authored with Drs Nadia Flores-Yeffal and Guadalupe Vidales the article "#WakeUpAmerica #IllegalsAreCriminals: The Role of the Cyber Public Sphere in the Perpetuation of the Latino Cyber-moral Panic in the U.S." in Information, Communication & Society (2018)

Rodrigo Serrao co-authored with Dr. James Cavendish the article “The Social Functions and Dysfunctions of Brazilian Immigrant Congregations in ‘terra incognita’” in the journal Review of Religious Research (2018).

Recent Job Placements

Melanie Escue, Ph.D. (2023) accepted an Assistant Professor position at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
Ashley Green, Ph.D. (2023) accepted a Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology position at the Central Connecticut State University.

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