2025-26 Education & Health Research Hub Speaker Series
"New Research in the Sociology of Higher Education"
Friday, March 27, 2026 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM EDT
Online Location, Zoom Link in RSVP Confirmation
The CSSR Education & Health Research Hub aims to use this speaker series to leverage connections, spark multidisciplinary dialogue, and bring funded research opportunities to the university community and our community partners.
Join us as Kristopher Cleland, Fanni Farago, and Tharuna Kalaivanan share "New Research in the Sociology of Higher Education".
Kristopher Cleland is a Sociology PhD Candidate and Graduate Lecturer at George Mason University, and a first generation college student with working-class origins in Covington, Louisiana.
Kristopher obtained his B.A. in Sociology in 2016 from Southeastern Louisiana University (SLU) while working full-time as a department manager at a regional grocery store. Kristopher obtained his M.S. in Applied Sociology in 2018 from the same university while working there as a Research Assistant for the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice.
Learning as an end-in-itself is great, but merely interpreting the world does little to change it for the better. He believes we must take what we learn in the academy, determine what is unjust and just about the world through the free exchange of ideas, and—based on that knowledge and those ideas—make the world a better place.
Fanni Farago is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at George Mason University. She came to Mason after obtaining an M.A. in Sociology from the University of Houston. She currently works for AARP as a Research Associate for their Advocacy, Community, and Engagement team within the Policy Research International department.
Since beginning the program in August 2019, Fanni has worked on a range of quantitative and qualitative research projects in her capacity as a Graduate Research Assistant at the Institute for Immigration Research and the Center for Social Science Research. Through these research experiences, she has built a strong foundation of research skills that help her investigate social inequality across many areas including higher education, health, aging, and immigration.
Currently, she is conducting her dissertation research, a qualitative study that explores the career services profession from the perspectives of career services practitioners. A range of changes in higher education and the economy mean that there are growing demands on career services; yet we know very little from a research standpoint about how these changes are playing out and impacting career services professionals. Her study examines how career services professionals make sense of changes to their work and document the challenges and opportunities they face in scaling and improving the impact of the work at public, Baccalaureate-granting institutions that enroll the highest shares of immigrant-origin students nationwide. Potential benefits of this study include raising awareness of the complex nature of career services work, including the needs of career services professionals, as well as informing institutional decision-making around career services resources and accessibility for immigrant-origin students.
Tharuna Kalaivanan is a PhD Candidate and a mixed-methods scholar in the Public and Applied Sociology Program at George Mason University. She graduated from George Mason University with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology in 2020. She is also an Honors College Alum. She is currently a Graduate Research Assistant in the Sociology and Anthropology Department where she is analyzing the Annual Refugee Survey through quantitative methods.
She is a co-founder of the Social Science Research Lab where she mentored students on qualitative research methods and techniques. This multi-disciplinary lab carves out vital space for both undergraduate and graduate students to learn and practice the skills of social science research in a collaborative environment.
Her research interests include immigrants and first-generation college students, focusing how their experiences are shaped by race, ethnicity, gender, and other dimensions of identity in higher education and the workplace. She served as the Secretary in the Public Sociology Association where she played an active role in encouraging students to explore, learn, and do public sociology through pursuits devoted to activism around social problems on-campus and beyond. Kalaivanan was also an instructor for the Honors College at George Mason University where she taught courses on first-generation college students. The course provided students with opportunities to think through the challenges faced by first-generation college students as well as the forms of cultural wealth they bring to college from a range of perspectives.
Kalaivanan was also the Graduate Professional Assistant for Data and Inclusion in the Honors College. In her role, she focused on using evidence-based strategies to support inclusion for Honors College students, especially those from historically underserved and underrepresented populations. She collaborated with the Director of Data Analytics and Assessment and other Honors College faculty and staff in designing research instruments (i.e., surveys, focus-group questionnaires, interview protocols, etc.) to support the college’s mission.
