Skip to main content

Urban Studies' Newest Faculty Member Arrives on the 50th anniversary of its First Faculty Member

By


The Department of Urban Studies welcomes Dr. Danielle Xiaodan Morales to our faculty. A demographer, she was born in China and later earned her Baccalaureate degree at the Renmin University of China. Completing her graduate training at Texas A & M under Dr. Dudley Poston, her dissertation looked at residential segregation between same-sex couples and heterosexual couples in 100 metropolitan areas in the United States.  Dr. Morales comes to us from the University of Texas-El Paso where she was part of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.  We know she will be a good fit for our interdisciplinary department, and she is happy to have landed where she can continue to look at population issues and social issues in an urban context.

(She is pictured here in the desert near her previous job.  We look forward to posting a picture of her knee-deep in snow within 6 months.)  

Joining us officially on September 1, 2022, Dr. Morales takes up her position exactly 50 years after Worcester State’s first Urban Studies professor, Dr. Vincent Powers, arrived on campus. Jake, as he was widely known, was the founder of the department and was the chief architect of the major that was established two years later. Dr. Morales is only the 13th tenure track hire in the department's half-century history.  

Please join us in welcoming Dr. Morales!

Comments

  1. MariaSeptember 27, 2022 at 5:32 AM

    Great move Dr. Morales, from the desert to the green and colorful New England. Welcome to WSU. Welcome to the heart of the commonwealth of MA, the city of Worcester which is among the best cities in the U.S. to live in 2020, according to rankings released by U.S. News & World Report today.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New Article by Urban Studies Faculty Member, Professor Shiko Gathuo

By
Not in This Together: COVID-19 and People of Color  by Shiko Gathuo, Ph.D. Shiko Gathuo, Ph.D. Professor and Graduate Program Director of Urban Studies Presidents, prime ministers, royalty, celebrities. These and other rich, powerful and famous people have contracted COVID-19. When the pandemic first took hold, it was easy to throw around phrases like “we are in this together,” “the pandemic does not discriminate,” and “united in the fight.” These warm and comforting sentiments quickly became hollow as it became apparent that, in fact, the pandemic does discriminate and it has negatively affected the poor and people of color disproportionately and in many different ways. People of color are experiencing the health aspect of COVID-19 including infection, testing and treatment differently. The virus has also exacerbated other already existing conditions such as economic deprivation, food insecurity, and the education achievement gap. COVID-19 has also had a significant negative effect o
2 comments
Read more

Advanced Placement in WPS

By
Professors Tom Conroy (Urban Studies) and Alex Briesacher (Sociology), along with students pictured at the right, Abigail Holden (Sociology) and Elizabeth Stone (Urban Studies/Environmental Science), received Summer Undergraduate Research Grants to continue their work on AP Participation and Performance in Worcester Public Schools.  Following the completion of a  quantitative study entitled AP & WPS, Part 1  in May, Conroy and Briesacher launched a qualitative study that looks at the impact of AP Exam-taking on student academic confidence and their college-going plans.  Their findings from the initial study raised many questions they wanted to ask and answer. For example, publicly-accessible data shows that  WPS’ failure rate is the highest among Massachusetts Gateway Cities with school districts of more than 10,000 students. This is in large part because WPS' testing rate is much higher than other districts.  In no year since 2007 have more WPS students passed their AP Exams t
Post a Comment
Read more

Urban Studies Professors Present in Washington DC

By
Urban Studies professors Dr. Tom Conroy and Dr. Tim Murphy, along with Dr. Alex Briesacher (Sociology) and associate vice president Mary Jo Marion (Civic Engagement) presented at the annual meeting of the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities in October.  Their panel, The Devils in the Details: The Complexities of Early College Partnerships , focused on the wide-spectrum of Early College models in the US and other areas of complexities including demographic shifts and "unharmonized" visions of EC programs. Altogether, they argued, these different levels of complexities contribute to confusion and disarray in programs that negatively affect the missions of many programs and/or lead to confusion of objectives.   Well-received by attendees, the session made the case that the area most controlled by individual institutions was the "unharmonized" aspects, which is addressed when institutions create and communicate clear objectives for Early College Programs th
Post a Comment
Read more