Full-Time Faculty

Sheldon Helfing, MA, MSW
Professor
sheldon.helfing@canyons.edu
661/362-5884

Mr. Helfing earned his BA in Psychology with a minor in Sociology from California State University, Northridge.  His MA is also from CSUN, in Education, Educational Psychology, Counseling and Guidance.  His Master of Social Work is from the University of Washington, Seattle.

Professor Helfing's professional interests include marriage and the family, criminology, culture and socialization, and social psychology.

Anne Marenco has a BS in Family and Consumer Sciences with an emphasis in Teaching and an MS in Family and Consumer Sciences with an emphasis in Family Relations/Child Development from CSUN and an MA and Ph.D. in Sociology with emphases in Aging and Family from USC.

Dr. Marenco's sociological interests include relationships, aging, social psychology, and research methods.  Her professional interests include field studies, assessment, and distance education.

Anne is married and has two children, a son in college and a daughter in graduate school.  She spends her spare time camping, quilting, traveling, and caring for her parents.

Professor Valentine earned her BA and MA in sociology at CSUN.  She also has a Mediation Certificate from the Center for Dispute Resolution. 

Ms. Valentine's professional interests include conflict resolution, gender issues, social movements, educational quality, and immigration. 

Mary has spent more than a decade studying the Women's Institute, England's oldest and largest women's organization, made up of more than 250,000 women in over 5,000 villages throughout England.   In the process she has become friends with the WI's most famous members, the Calendar Girls, who raised more than $2 million for Leukemia research by posing for a nude calendar.  Here Mary is surrounded by the Calendar Girls at a press conference in London.

Her personal interests include travel, especially in England, and photography www.maryvalentinephotography.com.

Pamela Williams-Páez, MA

Ms. Williams-Páez's research interests include stratification, social life in public spaces, and globalization.  Her teaching interests include gender, race, and class; and deviance. 

Writers who have influenced Ms. Williams-Páez include Howard Becker, June Jordan, James Baldwin, and Sherman Alexie.

Part-Time Faculty

Kim Bonfiglio, MSW
kimberly.bonfiglio@canyons.edu
626/840-0374

Kim Bonfiglio earned her BA in Psychology at Carroll College in Montana and her Master's of Social Work degree at CSU Long Beach.

Professor Bonfiglio professional interests include child abuse, foster care, adolescence, child welfare, gangs, social services, homelessness, domestic violence, psychotherapy, criminology, and  aging/gerontology.

In her spare time, Professor Bonfiglio spends time with her family camping and traveling.

Mariana Branda, MA
mariana.branda@canyons.edu

Ms. Branda earned her BA and MA in Sociology with an emphasis in social psychology from CSUN

Professor Branda's professional interests include distance learning development, qualitative methods, culture, gender/class/race relations, social psychology, and, globalization.  She teaches online courses for College of the Canyons from Argentina. 

Mariana spends her spare time with her family, reading, and traveling.

Kathryn Coleman

Kathryn Coleman earned her BA in Sociology from UC Santa Barbara and her MA in Sociology at CSUN.

Professor Coleman’s sociological interests include sex and gender, race, and class. At UCSB she focused on the American prison system for her research in race and class, and at CSUN she wrote her thesis on the American prison system, focusing on recidivism among the criminally labeled.  The title of her thesis is "The American Prison System: Institutional and Social Factors Contributing to Recidivism."  In this project, she was able to further explore her main sociological interests by focusing on the general prison population and the social and institutional factors which generate and propagate high recidivism rates among criminalized individuals in the United States.

In her spare time, Ms. Coleman enjoys traveling.

Tracie Gardner, MA

Ms. Gardner earned her BA in Sociology with a minor in Religious Studies and her MA in Sociology from East Carolina University.

Professor Gardner's teaching interests include social problems, deviance, research methods, and religion.

In here spare time, Tracie organizes vacation travel tours to foreign countries, most commonly Egypt.

Tyler Haugen, MA
tyler.Haugen@canyons.edu
www.canyons.edu/faculty/haugent

Professor Haugen earned his BA and his MA in sociology from California State University, Northridge.  His areas of interest include sex and gender, the sociology of work, and medical sociology.  Mr. Haugen was named the top graduate student in sociology for California by the California Sociological Association in 2004 and also was awarded "Outstanding Graduate Student" for his scholarship at CSUN.

In his spare time, Mr. Haugen is an avid theater-goer and loves to travel all over California and the world.

In 1995, Dr. Houston earned her BA degree in Religion with a minor in Global Peace and Security at UCSB.  In 1998 she was awarded a certificate in Women’s Studies and an MA degree in Religion from The Florida State University.  In 2006, she completed a doctoral degree at Claremont Graduate University in Women Studies in Religion.  Her dissertation field research examined the intergenerational relationship between female Holocaust survivors and their granddaughters--the third generation. 

Dr. Houston's interdisciplinary academic foci are sociology of religion, self and society, women’s studies, comparative genocides, and field research.

Professor Im received BA in Sociology from UC Irvine and his MA in Sociology from CSU Fullerton with an emphasis in Race and Ethnicity.  His professional interests include Race and Ethnicity, Multiculturalism, Majority-Minority Relations, Asian American Studies, Popular Culture, and Marriage and Family. 

Austin's personal interests include spending time with family, movies (80s and 90s film buff), sports, and traveling.

Arman Mgerian
armanmg@hotmail.com

Mr. Mgerian earned his M.A. and B.A from CSUN in the field of Sociology with a specialization in Criminology.  Upon graduation from graduate school, he was hired to teach Sociology and has been doing so since fall 2005. 

Professor Mgerian has taught several courses including Introduction to Sociology, Social Problems, Marriage and Family, Deviance, and Social Psychology.  He am currently working on a proposition for a new course in the  Sociology of Medicine at Pierce College.
 
Arman is happily married and awaiting a late December (2009) arrival of his first child.  He love to travel and is a black belt in the art of Judo, though he has been idle since 2007.

Lindsay Roberts has been happily teaching college courses for 9 years.  She received her Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology in 2000 from Cal Poly Pomona.  She continued to USC and obtained her Master's Degree in Gerontology in 2002.

Professor Roberts has been in the field of Social work for 13 years.  She has worked with children with Autism, hospice patients, people with acquired brain impairments, people with developmental disabilities of all ages, and currently enjoys doing quality assurance for Behavior Services programs provided to children with Autism.  She also teaches Behavior Management classes to parents of children with Autism.  Lindsay became a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) in 2009.

Lindsay enjoys spending time with her husband, traveling, surfing, and going to concerts.

Bob Turley, MA

Bob Turley is back in the game after retiring from 34 years of teaching sociology in community colleges in the Inland Empire. Among many other activities during a two-year, post-retirement hiatus, he moved to Santa Clarita in response to his wife's transfer to Van Nuys.

Professor Turley has a BA and an MA from Mich. State University and a near ABD in Sociology from Arizona State University. He served a two year term in the US Peace Corps in Tanzania E. Africa. He has three adult children. He is a volunteer counselor at a family counseling center and president of a new neighborhood's Home Owners' Association, which is tempting ground for a participant observation study.

Bob's lifelong interests include travel and all forms of media with a special emphasis on foreign and independent film. Although he strongly touts the infinite possibilities inherent in the social construction of reality, his stereotypical current choice is to take up golf.

Professor Wonser earned his B.S. in Business Administration with an option in Marketing and his M.A. in Sociology from CSUN.  His research interests include culture, mass media, subcultures, popular culture, youth culture, consumerism, social stratification, criminology, and social psychology.