We hope you enjoy this series where we meet and get to know employees from across campus. Would you like to be featured? Contact us at campusnews@csufresno.edu.

Name: Jennifer Randles
Title: Professor and chair of sociology
Academic Degrees: Ph.D. in sociology, University of California, Berkeley; M.A. in sociology, University of California, Berkeley; B.A. in sociology and political science, Austin College

What is your most notable accomplishment in your field, and why was it important? Earlier this year, I published a solo-authored article in my field’s flagship journal, and the research has since been covered in The New York Times, TIME, CNN and other major news outlets. The article addressed diaper need, lack of access to diapers, which affects one in three families in the United States. This research inspired my proposal to form our campus-based diaper bank, Diapers for Degrees, in the Fresno State Student Cupboard and my advocacy work promoting public support for diaper assistance across the country. It has been incredibly meaningful to draw on my academic work to inform meaningful social change around this important issue.

What are you most passionate about in your field and why? I am especially passionate about teaching courses on qualitative research methods, social inequalities, families, and childhood, my primary areas of interest. I love engaging in deep conversations with students, colleagues, and community activists about how we can utilize sociological theories and research to better understand and devise effective solutions for social problems.

What is a memorable moment you had at your job? I fondly remember each time a student emails, calls, or meets with me to share that something they learned in one of our classes helped them make sense of something they or a loved one experienced. I also treasure those moments when students inform me about graduations, new jobs, graduate school acceptances, and other accomplishments that will allow them to uplift our community by putting their sociological imagination to work. I have a folder on my desktop especially for these notes, and it represents all the reasons I wanted to become a professor.

What is a memorable moment you had in class, and what does that reveal about your teaching style? There are so many, but a particularly vivid one was during the last in-person class meeting I had with students in March 2020 before we all left campus due to the pandemic. Through tears, we discussed our fears about what lay ahead for students and their families. Students discussed the likely social and economic ramifications of the pandemic while referencing course readings and concepts we’d discussed just weeks before. One student said, “All these issues we’ve been studying in class really matter, though we didn’t know they’d matter like this.” It was a profound reminder to me of how the sociological perspective can help us cope with crises like COVID-19. My teaching style has always focused on deep empathy and helping students use sociological theories and findings to better understand their own lives and how to build a more equitable society. The pandemic reinforced the importance of that.

What do you like to do for fun in your spare time? I find coloring, reading, and playing board games with my young daughter to be particularly enjoyable. I am also a voracious reader, so I spend every spare moment I can reading, mostly non-fiction. I’m currently reading three books: "Heavy: An American Memoir," by Kiese Laymon; "Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants," by Robin Wall Kimmerer; and "There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness," by M. Leona Godin. I have about six or seven academic books related to my teaching and research in progress at any moment, and I’m currently writing my own third and fourth books. If I could clone myself, the second me would spend all her time reading, writing, and discussing books with other people. My daughter has taken to writing and illustrating her own storybooks (I help a bit with spelling), which is an endless source of joy for me.

What is something interesting about you that most people don’t know? I have a tattoo of a blue dot on the underside of my left ring finger. If you’re familiar with the work of Carl Sagan, you probably know that the “Pale Blue Dot” refers to a 1990 photograph of Earth taken by the Voyager 1 space probe from a distance of 6 billion kilometers. Sagan famously wrote of this image: “There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.” No one can really see the tattoo except me, and I reflect on it daily as a reminder of, as Sagan wrote, “The aggregate of our joy and suffering ... on a mote suspended in a sunbeam.” It helps me to not sweat the small stuff and to live my life with a sense of responsibility to others and the planet.

Is there something else you would like to share that was not asked? I really enjoy reading this series. Thank you for putting it together and asking me to be part of it!