Affiliates

Genaro Andrés Contreras

Genaro Andrés Contreras is an assistant professor of dairy health and wellbeing at MSU's Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences, working on disease control and the training of Spanish-speaking dairy farm workers. Andés is originally from Bogotá, Colombia, where he began his career consulting for tropical cow-calf operations and grazing dairy farms. He managed a high-pedigree herd in Canada and was a veterinarian in MSU's Large Dairy Internship Program at a large dairy herd near Grand Rapids. Following the internship, Andres started a master's degree program focused on mastitis and milk quality while continuing his doctoral degree in metabolic and immune adaptations of dairy cows.

Joe T. Darden

Joe T. Darden is professor of geography at Michigan State University and former Dean of Urban Affairs Programs from 1984 – 1997.  He is a former Fulbright Scholar, Department of Geography, University of Toronto, 1997 to 1998. He is also a core faculty member in the African American and African Studies Program, a Faculty Fellow in the Centre for Urban and Community Studies at the University of Toronto, and a Faculty Affiliate in the Canadian Studies Centre at Michigan State University.  His research interests are urban social geography, residential segregation, and socioeconomic neighborhood inequality in multi-racial societies. He is the author of eight books, including the most recent Detroit: Race Riots, Racial Conflicts and Efforts to Bridge the Racial Divide (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013).

Gustavo de los Campos

Gustavo was born in Uruguay and completed an Agricultural Engineering degree at Universidad de la República­‐Uruguay (1997). After graduation, he worked at the National Institute for Agricultural Research of Uruguay (INIA) and at an NGO, the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies about Development-­Uruguay (CIEDUR). In 2003 he started graduate studies at University of Wisconsin, Madison where he completed two MS degrees and the PhD degree. In 2010 he joined the Biostatistics department of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), first as a postdoc, and then as a faculty member (2011). In 2014 he was promoted to Associate professor and granted tenure at UAB. In 2015, I joined Michigan State University where he is a faculty member in the Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the Statistics and Probability departments.

C. Kurt Dewhurst

C. Kurt Dewhurst, Ph.D., serves as the Director of Arts and Cultural Initiatives and Senior Fellow, University Outreach & Engagement, and Curator of Folklife and Cultural Heritage at the Michigan State University Museum and Professor of English at Michigan State University. He is also Director Emeritus of the MSU Museum. A founder of the folk and traditional arts programs at the museum, he coordinates a variety of folklife research, collection development, and outreach & engagement programs. He is one of the founding directors of the Festival of Michigan Folklife, a coordinator for the National Folk Festival when it was in East Lansing, and is a founding director for the Great Lakes Folk Festival.  His research interests include folk arts, material culture, ethnicity, occupational folk culture, and cultural economic development, and cultural heritage policy.  He is the author and co-author of numerous books and exhibition catalogues.

Jualynne E. Dodson

Jualynne E. Dodson is a professor in the Department of Sociology and the Graduate Program in African American and African Studies at Michigan State University. She founded and has directed the award winning African Atlantic Research Team (AART) for some 15 years and transferred with it to MSU from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Dodson earned a doctoral degree in sociology of religion from the University of California, Berkeley. She was a Ford Foundation post-doctoral Fellow and a Research Fellow at Princeton University, and taught at Yale University and the University of Colorado, Boulder before Michigan State University recruited her to its faculty.

Noah J. Durst

Noah J. Durst is an Assistant Professor in the Urban and Regional Planning program in the School of Planning, Design and Construction at MSU. He earned a Ph.D. in Public Policy in 2017 from the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, where he also completed Masters degrees in Public Affairs and Latin American Studies. His research examines issues of social equity, residential segregation, and urban informality in the context of US housing markets. Most of his research to date has focused on informal, majority-Latino colonia settlements on the US-Mexico border.

Ronald Erskine

Dr. Ronald Erskine is a professor of veterinary medicine in the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Michigan State University.  He completed his bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and his D.V.M. at the University of Illinois in 1981. Following work in private practice in Pennsylvania, he completed his M.S. and Ph.D. at Pennsylvania State University.  His research and teaching focuses on bovine infectious disease, especially in mastitis and milk quality.  He has published over 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals and has been invited to present seminars and short-courses at over 100 state, national, and international professional meetings. 

Stephen P. Gasteyer

Dr. Stephen P. Gasteyer is assistant professor of Sociology at Michigan State University. His research focuses on the nexus between water, land, community development. Specifically, his research currently addresses: 1) community capacity development and civic engagement through leadership training; 2) the political and social processes that enable or hinder community access to water and land resources, specifically (but not exclusively) in rural communities; 3) the class and race effects of access to basic services (water, sanitation, food, health care);  4) community capacity, community resilience and water systems management; 5) the impacts of greening in economically depressed small cities; 6) the community aspects of bioenergy development; 7) international social movements and community rights to basic services; and  8) facilitating cross-sectoral and interdisciplinary partnerships to address water and land resources management.  Dr. Gasteyer was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali from 1987 through 1990, and worked with environmental non-governmental organizations from 1993 through 1998 in the Palestinian territories. He received a BA from Earlham College in 1987, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Iowa State University in 2001.

Steven J. Gold

Steven J. Gold is a professor and associate chair in the Department of Sociology at Michigan State University. His interests include international migration, ethnic economies, qualitative methods, and visual sociology. The past chair of the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association, Gold is the author, co-author or co-editor of seven books. Together with Rubén G. Rumbaut, he is the editor of The New Americans, a scholarly book series of over 70 volumes from LFB Publishers. Gold received the Charles Horton Cooley Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Sociology from the Michigan Sociology Association in 2007.

Peter G. Gulick

Peter G. Gulick is associate professor of internal medicine in the College of Osteopathic Medicine at Michigan State University.  He is a certified and practicing medical oncologist and infectious disease physician.  His special interests include HIV medicine and he has taken care of HIV patients since 1983.  He recently developed a Mid-Michigan HIV Consortium and entered 700 patients into an MSU data bank in order to facilitate clinical and translational research.  He also has an interest in caring for Hepatitis C patients and plans to do research in this area as well.

Ron Hall

Ron Hall is professor of Social Work in the School of Social Work at Michigan State University.  His research interests include mental health (individual/group psychotherapy), cutaneo-chroma, intraracial racism, Bleaching Syndrome, Black/White conflict, organizational issues, and race relations/diversity.  His social work research interests extend to the following four areas: special populations, human behavior and the social environment, social welfare policy and services, and research methods.  He intends that these interests provide a means that will be instrumental in the advancement of casework, clinical social work and various aspects of diversity.  Professor Hall has received numerous awards for his work on skin color and post-colonialism.

Zachary Neal

Zachary Neal is assistant professor of Psychology and Global Urban Studies at Michigan State University.  He serves as editor of theJournal of Urban Affairs and the Metropolis and Modern Life book series, as well as serving on the editorial boards of City & Community and Global Networks. His research focuses on using networks to explore urban phenomena at various scales, ranging from the formation of local communities to the evolution of international financial flows.  He is the author of more than 30 articles and 3 books: Common Ground:  Readings and Reflections on Public Space? (Routledge, 2009), The Connected City: How Networks are Shaping the Modern Metropolis (Routledge, 2013), and the Handbook of Applied System Science (Routledge, 2015).

Anna Maria Santiago

Anna Maria Santiago is a professor in the School of Social Work at Michigan State University.  She received the doctoral degree in Urban Social Institutions from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  Santiago was a research associate at JSRI during 1989-1990.  She previously taught at Case Western Reserve University, Wayne State University, Seton Hall University, and Universidad del Sagrado Corazon in Santurce and Universidad de Puerto Rico in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. Her research interests focus on the health and well-being of Latino children, families and communities.  She has received numerous research grants related to social inequality with a focus on poverty, housing, food insecurity, and other areas.

John J. Valadez

John is professor of practice in Media and Information and Film Studies at Michigan State University where he teaching documentary filmmaking.  He is a Peabody Award winning filmmaker who has written and directed a dozen nationally broadcast documentary films for PBS and CNN over the past 18 years.   Two of his feature films for PBS – Passin’ It On and The Longoria Affair – have received Emmy nominations. His films have tackled such diverse subjects as the false imprisonment of a leader of the Black Panther Party; Latino gangs in Chicago; segregation in America’s schools; the history of Latino civil rights; the evolution of Chicano music, and the genocide of Native Americans in the Southwest.  They have garnered top prizes at film festivals from San Francisco to Chicago to Mumbai, have been broadcast across the United States, Canada and Europe, and have been featured at major museums and cultural institutions. John grew up in Seattle and has taught photography in India.

Ana Vasquez

Ana Vasquez is a faculty member in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Her research focuses on the development, use and implementation of genetic information (pedigree, DNA sequence, gene expression and other omics) for analysis and prediction of complex traits and diseases. Originally from Uruguay, her undergraduate degree is from Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay, and her graduate degrees in dairy science are from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her research includes generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) which account for pedigrees, from which she has co-authored two R-packages (pedigreemm and pedigreeR). Her particular focus is on the genetics of obesity and its co-morbidities, as well as in the response to exercise intervention. Finally, she also conducts research on integration of omic information for prediction of cancer progression.

Irving E. Vega

Irving E. Vega is associate professor in the Department of Translational Science and Molecular Medicine at the College of Human Medicine.  He completed his bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez Campus, where he was a NIH-Minority Access for Research Careers (MARC) Fellow.  He continued his research training in the Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience at the Graduate School of New Brunswick, Rutgers University, where he earned his PhD.  Dr. Vega proceeded to a postdoctoral fellowship in the Neuroscience Department at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, where he developed his research career focusing on the identification of proteome changes associated with the accumulation of pathological tau proteins in neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. His commitment to mentor the next generation of researchers, especially those from underrepresented ethnic groups in science, is based on his own experiences and serves as the basis for a productive research career. 

Francisco Villarruel

Dr. Francisco Villarruel is the HDFS Associate Chair for Education, a University Outreach and Engagement Senior Fellow and Professor.  He has worked with several community, state, and federal agencies to address the disproportionate number of Latino youths in juvenile justice systems. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Campaign for Youth Justice and works with colleagues across the nation on The Alianza for Latino Youth Justice – a coalition of practitioners, advocates, funders, families and scholars that engage in culturally relevant practices to address the needs of Latino youth secure placements. He has authored numerous policy reports that promote fair and equal justice programs for youth. He has also been involved in research that focuses on youth development and what communities can do to foster the development transitions of youth to adulthood. 

Adalberto Aguirre, Jr.

Adalberto Aguirre, Jr., is a professor of sociology at the University of California-Riverside. His research interests are: neoliberal ideology and its effects on the education of students of color; the political economy of immigration detention centers in the United States; equity issues for women and minority faculty in higher education; and using critical race theory as a conceptual framework for interpreting the experiences of faculty of color in academia. His areas of expertise are: affirmative action theories and models in higher education; the demography of racial and ethnic minority populations in the US; and leadership in higher education. Some of his publications are: A. Aguirre Jr. & J. Turner, American Ethnicity: The Dynamics and Consequences of Discrimination 7^th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011); A. Aguirre Jr., E. Rodriguez, & J. Simmers, “The cultural production of Mexican identity in the United States: An examination of the Mexican threat narrative,” Social Identities 17(5): 695-707, (2011); A. Aguirre Jr., “Diversity as interest-convergence in academia: A critical race theory story,” Social Identities 16(6): 761-772, (2010).

Timothy Bates

Timothy Bates is Distinguished Professor of Economics Emeritus at Wayne State University. Prior to his Wayne State appointment, he was professor of policy analysis and chair of the graduate program of urban policy analysis at the New School for Social Research. 

Jeffrey H. Cohen

Jeffrey H. Cohen is a professor of anthropology at the Ohio State University.  His research focuses on migration, remittances and economic development in rural Mexico. His books include Cooperation and Community: Economy and Society in Oaxaca, The Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico; and, Cultures of Migration: The Global Nature of Contemporary Movement co-authored with Ibrahim Sirkeci and an Outstanding Academic Titles, 2012 Choice Book Reviews.  His most recent edited volume Global Remittance Practices and Migration during the Economic Crisis and Beyond was co-edited with Ibrahim Sirkeci and Dilip Ratha and published with the World Bank.

José Ángel Gutiérrez

José Ángel Gutiérrez is a Crystal City, Texas native with degrees from the University of Texas at Austin (Ph.D.) and University of Houston’s, Bates College of Law, Houston, Texas (J.D.). He is Professor Emeritus in Political Science at the University of Texas-Arlington (UTA), where he founded the Center for Mexican American Studies. He has authored and co-authored 14 books and many articles. His three most recent publications are part of the LiUS series at Michigan State University Press. His book on Albert Peña Jr. won 1^st place in the category of Best Biography from the Latino Literacy Now organization. His next book is The Eagle Has Eyes: The FBI Surveillance of Cesar E. Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union of America, 1965-1975.

Jill Kilanowski

Jill Kilanowski is Associate Dean Graduate Nursing Program and Professor at Mount Carmel College of Nursing in Columbus, Ohio.  She is a Certified Pediatric Nurse Practitioner with several years of experience as a practitioner, educator, and as a researcher. She received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in nursing from Columbia University, and her PhD in nursing from The Ohio State University. Her research interests focus on the Latino children of migrant farmworkers and obesity and overweight, nutrition, physical activity, food security, agricultural safety, and use of enhanced audio-technology in data collection with migrant families. Working with artists from the Columbus College of Art and Design she has created two bilingual comic books for teaching healthy eating and agricultural safety. She has received research funding from several sources over the years and has published her findings in the top national journals in nursing and healthcare.

Catalina Lopez-Quintero

Dr. Catalina Lopez-Quintero is a Colombian physician with a PhD in public health.  She is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Center for Research on U.S. Latino HIV/AIDS and Drug Abuse (CRUSADA) at Florida International University. Her research has focused on identifying and understanding the mechanisms by which individual, interpersonal, social and cultural factors influence the transitions across the stages of the drug use continuum. More recently Dr. Lopez-Quintero has become interested in the design of preventive interventions that aim to reduce drug use and HIV/AIDS health disparities. Her other areas of research interests include e-health literacy and mental health.

Michael J. Pisani

Michael J. Pisani Ph.D., International Business, University of Texas - Pan American, 2000) is a professor at the Department of Management, Central Michigan University. His research interests include the informal and underground economy of the South Texas border, the analysis of a small business survey of Latino entrepreneurship in South Texas, and Latino consumer behavior. With his new base in Michigan, he hopes to extend his focus to Latino entrepreneurship in Michigan, while continuing his research with informal Latino enterprises and Latin American entrepreneurship.

J. S. Onésimo Sandoval

J. S. Onésimo Sandoval is associate professor in the department of sociology and anthropology at Saint Louis University.  His primary research interests include spatial demography, urban sociology, social-environmental synthesis, spatial criminology, and Latino sociology. He is currently working on several research projects: the spatial hierarchy of cities, neighborhood diversity and residential segregation; Pan-Latino identity and neighborhoods, Latino demographic transitions, the demographic transitions of immigrants, and Latino quality of life. His research projects are unified by an underlying theoretical concern with differentiation, stratification, and the recognition of social, cultural, and symbolic capital, as well as by a methodological pluralism. The projects are designed to foster a dialogue for a new urban sociology that captures the diversity of social life, social suffering, racial harmony and discord, and the unique urban experience.

Mike Tapia

Mike Tapia is an assistant professor in Criminal Justice at New Mexico State University. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from The Ohio State University. His teaching and research interests include street crimes, race and crime, juvenile justice, and crime theory. He’s published work on risk factors in juvenile arrest, Latino arrest risk in the Midwest and the U.S., and Latino gang migration to the Midwest. His latest works examine Chicano street and prison gang organization in historical perspective. Mike has a forthcoming book called The Barrio Gangs of San Antonio 1915- 2015 (TCU Press), scheduled to publish in Spring 2017. Mike is also the Director of the NMSU Juvenile Justice Mentoring program. This group matches Criminal Justice students with youth involved in the local juvenile justice system to assist in their rehabilitative process.

Sonia Acosta

Sonia Acosta, PhD, is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Centro Multicultural La Familia (CMLF), an organization located in Pontiac, Michigan. CMLF's mission is to provide culturally competent support services to families using a holistic approach in order to improve their quality of life. Dr. Acosta is a fully licensed bilingual/bicultural psychologist with 26 years of experience in the field of mental health, substance abuse, and domestic violence. She is interested in the areas of behavioral health and community-based participatory research projects. She enjoys reading and traveling to Mexico to visit her family.

Lorenzo R. Almada

Lorenzo was born and raised in East Los Angeles where he developed a firsthand understanding of what it means to come of age within a challenged community.  After his military service, he attended college, earning bachelors and master’s degrees, before turning to a lifelong career of service to challenged communities. Lorenzo has achieved success in city, state, national and international projects. He has served as an Executive Director of social service agencies, and as the Vice-President of the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Subsequently, Lorenzo represented the National Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in International negotiations with Mexico and Canada.

Magnus Lofstrom

Magnus Lofstrom is a policy research fellow at PPIC. He also holds appointments as research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Germany; research associate at the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego; and is a member of the California State Controller’s Council of Economic Advisors as well as the Editorial Board of Industrial Relations. His research focuses on entrepreneurship, immigration, public safety, and education and has been published in such journals as the Journal of Human Resources, Demography, Small Business Economics, Economics of Education Review, Journal of Population Economics and Industrial Relations. Prior to joining PPIC, he was an assistant professor of economics at the University of Texas at Dallas. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, San Diego.

Nicholas Mihailoff

Nicholas Mihailoff has specialized in assisting individuals, small businesses, and organizations with creative economic solutions through the identification, development, and implementation of ideas since 2000. His collaborations have included work with LEED qualified development, a renewable energy device, and commercial retail groups. His travels across 25 countries have shaped his cultural and economic views and experiences. He has facilitated historic renovations in Glasgow, Scotland and in Michigan (where he received a county landscape award), provided logistical planning on projects in Haiti, and helped design a micro-finance program in the Dominican Republic. He is a public school board president and has been a collegiate business mentor. He was a theatrical performer for five years, was company manager of an international theatrical production, and is a published author. He received his master's in strategic leadership from Life Pacific College in San Dimas, CA.

Angela G. Reyes

Angela G. Reyes, MPH, is founder and executive director of the Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation, a nonprofit community-based organization she started in 1997. Ms. Reyes is a founding board member of the Detroit Community – Academic Urban Research Center, which involves multiple funded research and intervention projects aimed at increasing knowledge and addressing factors associated with health disparities for residents in Detroit. Ms. Reyes is actively involved in community based participatory research (CBPR) projects for policy change. Her organization focuses on youth and their families, prison release programs, gang intervention, youth development, adult education classes, HIV prevention, substance abuse, and family counseling.