In that span, she has helped oversee the college’s academic departments and programs, advising center, staff and administrative efforts tied to awards, budgets, communications, development, events, facilities, research, scholarships and technology.

Among other notable campus roles the past 12 years, she has served as chair of the Department of Sociology, one of the college’s largest degree programs. She has also served as the chair of the University Academic Program Review subcommittee and University Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects; vice chair of the University Council of Chairs; and the Academic Senate Department Chair Representative.

She first joined Fresno State as an assistant professor in 2013, and was promoted to associate professor in 2017. She taught sociology classes through 2021 tied to the topics of family, marriage, race/ethnicity, gender, social inequality/poverty, childhood, qualitative methodologies, research methods and critical thinking.

Her research has often specialized in how social and economic inequities affect family life in the United States and how public policies address these intimate inequalities. This expertise has led to nearly 40 articles and other publications and more than 50 presentations, book forums, panels or invited talks at conferences, on campus or in the community.

She has been an active member and chair of several committees for the American Sociological Association, National Council for Family Relations, Council for Contemporary Families and U.S. Administration for Children and Families and Mathematica. She has also served on the editorial boards for the “Gender and Society” and “Men and Masculinities” journals and as a “Sociological Perspectives” journal associate editor.

She has published three books — “Policing Not Protecting Families: The Child Welfare System as Poverty Governance” (co-edited with Kerry Woodward), “Essential Dads: The Inequalities and Politics of Fathering,” and “Proposing Prosperity: Marriage Education Policy and Inequality in America.” Another book, “Living Diaper to Diaper: The Hidden Crisis of Poverty and Motherhood,” is forthcoming in February 2026.

She has received multiple awards from the American Sociological Association for her scholarly research articles and the Fresno State Provost’s Awards for Research, Scholarship and Creative Accomplishment and Promising New Faculty.

Besides serving as the president of the Board of the Directors of Exceptional Parents Unlimited, she leads the Healthy Kids, Healthy Futures Diaper Bank partnership between Fresno State and Valley Children’s Hospital, which is focused on the health and well-being of area kids.

Randles received her master’s and doctoral sociology degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. The Pottsboro, Texas native received undergraduate degrees in political science and sociology with honors in each from Austin College, and then returned to teach at the Sherman, Texas higher-education institution from 2011 to 2013.