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Welcome to new faculty and congratulations to faculty promoted in the Jordan College of Agricultural Sciences and Technology and College of Social Sciences this fall.
The Jordan College of Agricultural Sciences and Technology welcomes:
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Dr. Lindsey Decker, assistant professor, Department of Animal Sciences and Agricultural Education. She earned her undergraduate and graduate animal science degrees from Kansas State University and a doctorate from Texas Tech University. She has conducted a wide scope of meat science research and product development and has undergraduate minors in leadership and food science. After teaching meat science classes at Kansas State and Texas Tech, she will teach similar classes at Fresno State and will serve as supervisor for the meat science lab. She also has prior experience working as a student intern for Tyson Foods. As a student, she was an All-American for the Kansas State Meats Judging Team and coached other All-Americans and a reserve national champion team. She has been equally active in outreach efforts and coordinated 4-H and FFA youth judging and outreach programs.
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Dr. Cirenio Hisasaga, assistant professor, Department of Animal Sciences and Agricultural Education. A former Jordan College Undergraduate Dean’s Medalist, Hisasaga earned his bachelor’s degree in animal science and a master’s degree in agricultural science from Fresno State. He added a doctorate in animal biology from the University of California, Davis. A former campus Foster Farms Poultry and Education Research Center student employee, his research has continued to examine how housing and management practices influence livestock behavior, physiology and meat quality with an emphasis on addressing animal welfare concerns.
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Dr. Dominic Vieira, assistant professor, Department of Agricultural Business. He earned his doctorate in agricultural economics from Texas A&M University and has expertise in food waste and sustainability, consumer demand and food consumption, agribusiness decision-making, agriculture and food systems, and environmental and economic trade-offs in agriculture. The Central Valley native is an alumnus of the Fresno State Agricultural Business Department and Jordan College Honors Cohort, and received associate degrees from Fresno City College and Modesto Junior College. He also holds the American FFA Degree, the highest honor agricultural high school students can receive, which tied to academic accomplishments, leadership skills, supervised experience from special projects and community service.
- Dr. Yi Wang, assistant professor, Department of Agricultural Business. She earned her doctorate in agricultural economics from Purdue University and has researched food and agricultural markets with an emphasis on government policy, market structure, firm conduct, consumer welfare and vertical relationships in supply chains. She also has expertise in applied microeconomics, industrial organization, structural modeling and causal inference. She received a master’s degree in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California, Davis. She also earned a master’s degree in technology economics and management and a bachelor’s degree in logistics management from Three Gorges University in China.
The college also recognizes promoted faculty:
- Dr. Serhat Asci, promoted to professor in the Department of Agricultural Business.
- Dr. Margaret Ellis, promoted to professor in the Department of Plant Science.
- Dr. Lisa Herzig, named department chair in the Department of Food Science and Nutrition.
- Dr. Amanda McKeith, promoted to professor and named department chair in the Department of Animal Sciences and Agricultural Education.
- Dr. Cliff Yu, elevated to associate professor in the Department of Viticulture and Enology.
Other new staff and college news:
The College of Social Sciences welcomes:
- Dr. Juanita Vivas Bastidas, assistant professor, Department of Chicano and Latin American Studies. At Fresno State, she teaches classes in Chicano culture and Latine cultural changes, and is interested in teaching research methods and a course on the environmental justice movement and activism across North, Central and South America. Her prior work as an environmental and urban sociologist studies how systems of power shape experiences of migration, environmental inequality and mental health. Her most recent research examines how people interpret and respond to social and environmental stressors in Chicago’s Latine barrios, drawing on Black, Chicana and Standpoint feminist methodologies. As a community-engaged scholar and member of the Chicago Coalition to End Sacrifice Zones, Vivas Bastidas consistently collaborated with Latine-led environmental justice organizations to understand how people experience and make sense of their exposure to environmental harm and how they organize toward environmental justice. She was awarded one of the 2026 American Sociological Association’s Community Action Research Initiative grants with Loyola University Chicago sociology faculty Dr. Maria Akchurin. Together, they are exploring how three often underrepresented groups of residents on Chicago’s Southwest Side — namely, older adults, workers in industry or retraining for green jobs and small business owners — prioritize environmental concerns relative to other issues. She received her doctorate and master’s degrees in sociology from Loyola University Chicago.
The college also recognizes promoted faculty:
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Dr. Naomi Bick earned early tenure and promotion to associate professor in the Department of Political Science. Her teaching interests include American government; local, state and urban politics; and environmental, food and public policy. In particular, she has studied local government policymaking and how climate change and water issues affect the Central Valley. In addition to serving as a Fresno State Transportation Institute faculty fellow, she received the college’s Outstanding Faculty Research Award, has authored seven solo peer-reviewed articles, and received a Chancellor’s Office Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities Award. She has also served as the director of the master of public administration program and helped start a graduate student chapter of the International City and County Management Association. She has shared her expertise with and mentored students as a faculty advisor for the Student League of Women Voters and Smittcamp Honors College faculty member. She received her doctorate in political science from Western Michigan University.
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Dr. Michael Onyebuchi Eze earned early tenure and promotion to associate professor in the Africana Studies Program. As the new program coordinator, Eze teaches courses on Black pop culture, contemporary African societies, critical thinking about race, social change and protest movements, and South Africa. Over the course of his career, he has authored or edited three books and 35 articles, book chapters and essays. His expertise is also tied to decolonization, African state formation and political economies, resistance and social change. He is an authority on the African philosophy of Ubuntu — meaning “humanity towards others” and often translated as “I am, because we are.” He has served on numerous university and department committees and recently completed a term as vice-chair of the College Assembly. He received two doctorates, one in history and cultural reflection from the Universität Witten-Herdecke and one in political science and international studies from the University of Cambridge.
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Dr. William Force earned tenure and promotion to associate professor in the Department of Sociology. His research and teaching explore the accomplishment of identity at the intersection of language, power and culture. He teaches courses on the sociology of pop culture, film, gender, and religion, as well as contemporary sociological theory and qualitative research methods. He recently published journal articles focused on the sensory experiences of being tattooed and tattoo culture and its ties to social media. He has also studied a range of cultural topics such as dive bars, punk music, television and trick-or-treating. He is currently working on a project examining the intersection of outlaw country and gangsta rap. He received his doctorate from the University of Missouri, Columbia.
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Dr. Katherine Fobear was promoted to professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Winner of the 2025 Harvey Milk Community Leadership Award, Fobear focuses her work on the intersections of identity, race, sexuality and gender in oral history, migration, transitional justice, health and housing. Serving as a new department chair, she is the author of several journal articles about transitional justice and oral history, most notably in the International Journal of Human Rights, The Journal of Homosexuality, Journal of Human Rights Practice, Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees and Women’s Studies International Forum. In addition to 10 external grants post-tenure, she is currently working on the campus library’s Central Valley Rainbow Archives and Qistory, a queer public history initiative in partnership with Community Link that records and preserves the voices and lives of LGBTQ+ persons in the Central Valley. She also works with LGBTQ refugees and undocumented persons in Canada and transgender unhoused individuals in California’s Central Valley. She received her doctorate in women’s studies from the University of British Columbia.
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Dr. Aseem Hasnain earned tenure and promotion to associate professor in the Department of Sociology. As a political sociologist interested in politics and culture in a broad context, his expertise includes topics such as environmentalism, ideology, nationalism, social movements and the politics of food and eating. Part of his perspective came after working as a community organizer and program manager with indigenous communities and nonprofits that support communities in Western, Central and North India. He co-authored the book, “Decolonizing Environmentalism” and wrote articles and made presentations that encourage others to reimagine questions of sustainability, activism and justice through a decolonial lens. He has also recently published articles about the Shia religion and perceptions of the collective self, the politics of food in India, and a ban in Seattle on caste-based discrimination against immigrants from stigmatized groups in South Asia’s traditional social hierarchy. He received his doctorate in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he also studied religion and South Asian History.
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Dr. Chelsey Juarez was promoted to professor in the Department of Anthropology. An internationally recognized forensic anthropologist, she oversees the Fresno State Forensic Anthropology Laboratory, teaches classes and conducts research on bioarchaeology, immigration, isotopes and paleopathology. Juarez received the 2025 Provost’s Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities and has co-authored a major revised textbook and laboratory manual and co-authored five peer-reviewed articles in top-tier journals. In the spring of 2026, she helped organize a forensic fire academy led by researchers that trained first responders from California and beyond to assist and recover human remains after wildfire-related disasters. Her research collaborations have also included professional counterparts, universities and community partners in the American South, Mexico and West Africa. She earned her doctorate from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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Dr. Danny Kim earned tenure and promotion to associate professor in the Department of History. His teaching and research focus on modern East Asia, including Korean history under Japanese colonial rule, gender and feminism under colonial rule, East Asian immigration, Korean literature, socialism and world history. His Pacific Historical Review article, “Refashioning Femininity in Colonial Korea,” won two awards for excellence. He has translated works authored by others for a book on travel and nostalgia in Korean Art and another book on Siberian intervention, antisemitism in Japan and Russian influence in the World War I era. He coordinated successful study abroad trips to Korea and Japan and developed scholarly philanthropic relationships to support those experiences. He received his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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Dr. Leece Lee-Oliver was promoted early to professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. The director of the American Indian Studies Program has taught courses, conducted research, and connected the campus with local indigenous populations and culture to create a thriving interdisciplinary program with the state’s first, standalone AIS honors program. In addition to serving as a substantive co-editor for a special edition of Feminist Foundations, the journal of the National Women’s Studies Association, and the book, “Decolonizing Social Work in Finland,” she authored multiple book chapters and articles highlighting her work as a collaborative and comparative ethnic studies scholar and leader in decolonial Indigenous feminist and queer scholarship. Her book manuscript, “Red Feminist Roots: American Indian Women, Coloniality, and the Liturgies of Death and Life,” examines colonial racial misogyny and its impacts on American Indian women historically and in its manifestation on Missing and Murdered Native American Women and Girls crisis today. It also pays homage to the legacy of American Indian activism and how cultural traditions help navigate anti-“Indian” violence and promote the lifeways of American Indians today. Besides helping coordinate Native American and American Indian campus and community initiatives, she has conducted research and yielded numerous grants to support service development for students and community partners in the areas of American Indian wellness practices, student success, violence against American Indian women, girls, and families; and, collaborations on Native feminist and BIPOC queer projects and support programs. She received her doctorate in ethnic studies and Native American studies from the University of California, Berkeley.
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Dr. Chris Sullivan was promoted to professor in the Department of Sociology. As the department chair and new director of the Fresno State Humanics Program, he has taught an array of highly evaluated and challenging courses and received the College of Social Sciences’ Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award in 2024. His recent publications have focused on Finnish social work and LGBTQI inclusion, Central Valley social worker experiences during the AIDS epidemic, student sexuality and gender diversity attitudes and information needs. He has led study abroad trips to Finland and Ireland where students learned about comparative social welfare methods to show how globalization has influenced social institutions, ranging from large-scale financial institutions like the World Bank. He received his doctorate in sociology and demography from the University of California, Berkeley.
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Dr. Tinneke Van Camp was promoted to professor in the Department of Criminology. A key faculty member of the department’s victimology option, she teaches classes in criminal justice, research methods, restorative justice, social change, victim services and victimology. Her research focuses on the consequences of victimization, restorative justice, wrongful convictions and procedural justice, and includes five post-tenure journal articles and numerous other chapters, book reviews and field notes. She has also served as editor and editorial board member for International Review of Victimology and as co-editor-in-chief for a book series on restorative justice. She has forged relationships with practitioners locally and internationally to support greater understanding and prevention of domestic violence while promoting restorative justice and has received a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada which will create opportunities for graduate students as she takes over as Graduate Program Coordinator. She received her doctorate in criminology from the Université de Montréal, Canada.
- Dr. Yang Sao Xiong earned tenure and promotion to associate professor in the Asian American Studies Program and Department of Anthropology. An expert in social mobility and political efficacy of Hmong refugees and other Asian American immigrant groups, he currently teaches community health and political education theory classes. He also helped the program develop its bachelor’s degree in Asian American and Asian Studies that was introduced in 2025. He also helped co-organize the Asian American and Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Student Leadership Conference and served as an advisor to the Pew Research Center. His research has led to three journal articles and a book chapter, and he is working on several books tied to Asian American topics. His book, “Immigrant Agency: Hmong American Movements and the Politics of Racialized Incorporation,” examined how Hmong immigrants overcame socioeconomic challenges to have their interests integrated into public policy. He has also worked with Southeast Asian farmers in the Central Valley related to their experiences and skill-building capacity. He earned his doctorate in sociology from UCLA.
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