Elected Officers

Bruce Friesen

President

Bruce K. Friesen is Associate Professor of Sociology and Sociology Chair at the University of Tampa where he has been since 2005. From 1995 to 2005, Dr. Friesen served as Assistant and then Associate Professor of Sociology at Kent State University in Ohio. Dr. Friesen specializes in the Sociology of Human Rights and Applied Sociology. He is the author of numerous articles and three books, the most recent of which is Moral Systems and the Evolution of Human Rights (Springer 2015). Dr. Friesen has served as President of the U.S. chapter of Sociologists Without Borders (2013-2015), as Chair of the American Sociological Association’s Section on Human Rights (2011-2012), and as the ASA’s representative on the AAAS Science and Human Rights Coalition in D.C. He also founded the University of Tampa’s Human Rights Think Tank at the University of Tampa. Dr. Friesen is the recipient of over two dozen teaching excellence awards and commendations, including the 2013 College of Social Science, Mathematics, and Education Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Tampa and the College’s 2012 Service Award. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Applied Social Science (https://journals.sagepub.com/home/jax).

Juan Bobo

Vice President

Jane Doe

Secretary

Trenita Childers

Past President

Trenita Childers is a senior health care policy researcher at AIR. Her work focuses primarily on health equity, social determinants of health, and communicating health information to broad audiences. Dr. Childers also examines how structural barriers, such as discriminatory policies and practices, worsen inequality. In her book, In Someone Else’s County: Anti-Haitian Racism and Citizenship in the Dominican Republic, Dr. Childers uses ethnography to connect race, labor, and immigration.

Dr. Childers' methodological expertise includes qualitative and mixed methods approaches with an emphasis on community engaged methods and asset-based frameworks. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Fulbright Program, and she is a returned Peace Corps volunteer.

Augie Diana

Treasurer

Augie Diana holds 3 academic degrees in Sociology and has been an active Applied Sociologist his entire professional career, including serving as Treasurer (since 2018) and as Vice President of AACS. Augie’s professional diversity includes federal service (retired December 2019), state agencies, as an independent consultant and at a small business. In these roles, Augie served as coordinator of small business research and general technology portfolios at 2 NIH Institutes, led development of disease prevention and wellness portfolios, oversaw national evaluations and data/technology initiatives, and designed and implemented community-based research studies in areas such as physical activity, drug use/abuse, and media/communications.