Sociology Graduation Honors, Spring 1999
for Majors and Minors and Graduate Students

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Latest update: January 18, 2000
Faculty on the Site.

Congratulations, Graduates!

Ceylonya Barrett
Stephanie Calderon
Carla Gonzales
James Shire, Jr.

Click on a name to be linked to an explanation of what wonderful students they were!

Carla Gonzales

• Role in Sociology: Major

• Faculty Recommendation by: Carla has done a superlative job of managing life, school, and family, and still making time for delving in depth into the development of her professional learning. She plans to pursue a doctorate in sociology, but along the way to pick up a Master's in Social Work at UCLA, where she begins her studies in the Fall of 1999. It was Carla who inspired our Social Work Links, and it was Carla who made the time to give a presentation at the Western Social Science Association in Fort Worth in April of 1999, despite her impossible schedule.

  Carla's academic work is as impressive as her time management. She served as Secretary of Alpha Kappa Delta, the Sociology Honor Society; she worked with the Law and Society Research Center to develop the papers presented at national conferences, and helped to define ways in which we could implement some in-depth academic training within a small university department, limited to a Master's program. She helped others, and welcomed their offers of help when she needed it. And now she brings those skills back to our department as she serves as a research assistant planning new papers and new ventures for the Fall of 1999.

  Carla was also elected a member of Who's Who in American Colleges and Universities. It has been a genuine pleasure to work with and teach Carla.

Ceylonya Barrett

• Role in Sociology: M.A. in Sociology

• Faculty Recommendation by: Ceylonya worked with the C.L.A.S.S. program on the link with our department's Web Board for tutoring. She helped us understand how to effectively meet the needs of our students through the use of on-line tutors. Ceylonya further volunteered her efforts to serve as on-line tutor for out statistics students, and was helpful to many, especially when illness or work-related barriers prevented their presence at times. They wrote specially to tell us of their gratitude.

  Ceylonya graciously used her computer sophistication to the benefit of all. Her criminal justice project included annotated links that would lead her classmates to law resources, and to some of the fun with law that some of our less sophisticated Web surfers might never have encountered. Her humor, her good will, her sensitive concern for others speak to the helping roles she will undoubtedly play for this community in the future. She is quick, attentive, and alert to possibilities, finding in every lecture or reading viable entrance points to her future work in criminal justice.

  It was a joy to have Ceylonya in our classes.

Jim Shire, Jr.

• Role in Sociology: Minor

• Faculty Recommendation: Jim's participation in the Sociology of Law class in 1998 led him to consider deeply what a classmate meant by "ethnocentric" in a debate of current global issues. We were speaking of the situation in which women were caught in Afghanistan, where they had been forced out of their jobs and sequestered in their homes. As Jim defended the human rights aspect of justice in access, a classmate raised the validity claim of Western failure to understand the Muslim tradition. Jim's response was his class project on the A Short Historical Non-Ethnocentric View of Female Fundamental Muslim Attire

  Jim expressed his understanding of the importance of listening to another's validity claims far better than I can do: "I think people need a little history lesson on the Muslim Religion so they don't do what I did and make an Ethnocentric judgment about the Muslim Religion's Dress Code without knowing some of the facts." Jim's is an excellent example of the intertextual meanings added by the work of students. It is for work like this that we maintain this site, including his final gift, of Avalon. A little whimsy is essential in the midst of all this discourse.

  Jim also distinguished himself by working with us on one of the projects in teaching criminology with the advantages of the new technology of distance. He presented his work at the Western Social Science Association in Fort Worth, in April 1999. He also served throughout the Spring semester to help us successfully apply for a small Technology grant that would allow us to set up a server in our office, so that our students will be able to have hands-on experience. His willingness to help showed a maturity that was a joy to work with.

Stephanie Calderon

• Role in Sociology: Major

• Faculty Recommendation: Stephanie played an active role in encouraging the department to establish this list of awardees and grant them special recognition for their contributions to Sociology. Without her incentive I doubt that we would have set up this page on how wonderful our students are. We are quick to criticize and ever so laggard at praising, as one of our colleagues, Allan Ryave, has written in " Withholding Compliments in Everyday Life and the Covert Management of Dissaffiliation."

  In some ways this was a fitting role for Stephanie. She writes well and plentifully. She communicates freely and effectively by e-mail. But she likes to remain nearly invisible. My plea on last semester's report of learning was: TALK TO ME! And she does. By forwarding me significant e-mail pieces on which she leaves her name off, and which I would have missed without her. Stephanie is a delightful student, with internal incentive and strong motivation. All our department needs now is for voices like hers to insist on being heard far more often!

• Role in Sociology:

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