Faculty

Tel:(415) 422-6894
organistap@usfca.edu

Pamela Balls Organista

Professor

Pamela Balls Organista, has a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and serves as the Chair of Psychology and the Director of Ethnic Studies at the University of San Francisco. Her areas of research include health issues in underserved populations, Ethnic minority psychology, Community-Based Research, and preventive Interventions.

Tel:(415) 422-6163
cdcook2@usfca.edu

Corey Cook

Associate Professor

Corey Cook serves as director of the Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good, and joined the university as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2006 after having earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Tel:(415) 422-6709
clharrison2@usfca.edu

Candice Harrison

Assistant Professor

Candice Harrison joined the department in Fall 2008 after completing her Ph.D. at Emory University. Her teaching interests span the eras of colonial and nineteenth century U.S. history, and include the subjects of economic and labor history, African American history, American popular culture, and comparative race and slavery in the Atlantic World. 

Tel:(415) 422-4371
wanjiru@usfca.edu

Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg

Assistant Professor

Dr. Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg is an assistant professor whose research and teaching interests center on the politics of gender, global philanthropy, international development, ethnic politics, democratization, and human rights.

Tel:(415) 422-6074
nasstromk@usfca.edu

Kathryn Nasstrom

Associate Professor, Department Chair, History

Kathryn Nasstrom, Associate Professor of History, teaches in the U.S. field and specializes in women's history, oral history, and civil rights history. She received her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1993 and has been at USF since 1994.

Tel:(415) 422-4454
smpoole@usfca.edu

Sonja Martin Poole

Assistant Professor

Sonja Martin Poole is an Assistant Professor of Marketing. Her research interests center on the intersection of culture, business and policy. She received her Ph.D. Education Policy and Management from the University of California, Berkeley.

Tel:(415) 422-5482
sdsears@usfca.edu

Stephanie Sears

Associate Professor

Stephanie Sears is an Associate Professor of Sociology and the Director of the African American Studies Program at USF. Professor Sears received her Ph.D. from Yale University's joint program in African American Studies and Sociology. Her research interests include gender, race and ethnicity, youth cultures, and dance. As an interdisciplinary scholar, her research examines the ways race, class, gender, sexuality, and generation intersect and interact in complex and contradictory ways often simultaneously reproducing oppression and facilitating empowerment. These theoretical concerns and interdisciplinary approach formed the basis of her book, Imagining Black Womanhood, and drive her current research project on girlhood, identity, and dance.

Tel:(415) 422-5319
rrsundstrom@usfca.edu

Ronald Sundstrom

Associate Professor

Ronald Robles Sundstrom is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Francisco; additionally, he teaches for USF's African American Studies program and the Master of Public Affairs program for the Leo T. McCarthy Center of Public Service and the Common Good.

Tel:415-422-5063
taylorj@usfca.edu

James Taylor

Chair, Associate Professor

James Lance Taylor is author of Black Nationalism in the United States: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama (2011). Between 2009 and 2011 he served as the president of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS). He is the newly elected Chair of the Department of Politics at the University of San Francisco, where he teaches various courses in the areas of religion and politics, race and ethic politics, law and public policy, and African American politics. His current research is on the forthcoming book manuscript, Peoples Temple, Jim Jones, and Black America.