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About Marcia D. Hernandez

All of my courses are organized around the belief that student-centered learning is an avenue towards student empowerment. Sometimes the class day entails a formal lecture, other days include student debates or presentations, analyzing social media sites, viewing a documentary, or students working in small groups on a project. In my courses I assign a variety of "texts" including academic books and journal articles, opinion pieces, documentaries and autobiographic pieces for analysis. I ask that students take ownership of their educational experience by thinking critically about race, gender and class privilege and inequality, across groups and within individual relationships. For sociologists, critical thinking means more than being critical of an author's position or disagreeing with a speaker because their experience is different from one's own. Critical thinking is the skill of asking difficult questions about stratification, power and privilege, and being open to hearing answers that might make one uncomfortable from a variety of sources. I ask students to think critically about whom most often benefits from living in a society structured on social inequality and which groups are likely affected by the current structural arrangements. To this end students are encouraged to use their sociological imagination to consider alternatives to the existing structures of power, privilege and entitlement in the United States.

Positions

August 2020 - Present Professor, Sociology Department, University of the Pacific College of the Pacific
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2015 - 2020 Associate Dean, University of the Pacific College of the Pacific
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2011 - 2020 Associate Professor, Sociology Department, University of the Pacific College of the Pacific
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2012 - 2015 Assistant Dean, University of the Pacific College of the Pacific
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2008 - 2011 Assistant Co-Chair, Sociology Department, University of the Pacific College of the Pacific
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2005 - 2011 Assistant Professor, Sociology Department, University of the Pacific College of the Pacific
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2005 - 2010 Senior Fellow, Jacoby Center for Public Service and Civic Leadership
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2001 - 2005 Instructor, Project Renaissance, University at Albany, State University of New York
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Curriculum Vitae




Grants

2014 COP Summer Success Program
University of the Pacific
SEED Grant
Role: Co-PI
$32,000
2007 - 2010 Quality-of-life issues in California’s Central Valley
Great Valley quality-of-life issues in California’s Central ValleyCenter’s Partnership for the Assessment of Communities (PAC)
$13,000
2007 - 2009 Service-Learning for Political Engagement Program
California Campus Compact-Carnegie Foundation Faculty Fellows
$6,000
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Professional Service and Affiliations

Present Member, American Association of University Women
Present Member, American Sociological Association
Present Member, Pacific Sociological Association
Present Member, Popular Culture Association
Present Member, Sociologists for Women in Society
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Honors and Awards

  • 2017 Champions of Diversity Award
  • 2013 Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) Feminist Lecturer Award
  • 2011 Woman of Distinction Award
  • 2009 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace & Social Justice Award

Courses

  • Race and Ethnicity
  • Sociology Capstone
  • Family and Marriage
  • Sex and Gender
  • Prejudice and Racism
  • Mentor II
  • Introduction to Sociology
  • Introduction to Sociology
  • Foundations of Sociology
  • Pacific Seminar II “Media and Social Class”
  • Pacific Seminar II “You’ve Got Class”
  • Jacoby Center Research Practicum
  • Theories of Culture and Society

Education

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2007 PhD, Sociology, University at Albany- SUNY
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1999 Certificate, Women and Public Policy, University at Albany
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1994 BA, Sociology, University of California at Santa Barbara
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Contact Information

Wendell Phillips Center #200
209-946-2100

Email:



Books and Book Chapters (16)

Articles (12)