Delivering Success

Graduate student credits faculty for success; is focused on
an academic career

Many students work their way through college or graduate school, but few can say they have already retired – from bread delivery. David Geronimo Truc-Thanh Embrick, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Texas A&M University, did just that. Embrick worked 60 hours per week in route sales for a local bread company from 1996 to 2003. Such a grueling work schedule left little room for school, which Embrick attests was a stressor.

“I remember on many occasions having to park my bread truck somewhere close to campus, attend my classes, and then go back to work delivering goods to the rest of the stores on my route,” said Embrick.

Embrick first attended Texas A&M as an undergraduate in 1994 with intentions of entering the private sector after graduation, but Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, now at Duke University, convinced him to try graduate school. It’s a good thing he did because Embrick, currently assistant professor of sociology at Loyola University in Chicago, will graduate this month with his doctorate. Embrick’s dissertation looks at diversity in corporate America. As a tenure-track professor, Embrick hopes to expand his research to publish a book and study racial attitudes based on enrollment in social inequality courses.

Even though as an award-winning scholar at Texas A&M, earning an American Sociological Association’s Minority Fellowship, Embrick said that his time as a working-class minority student was not always the best. It was difficult to navigate a mostly middle-class university and he endured several instances of racial discrimination.

For Embrick, the difference was his department.

“While I would have liked to say that I am simply a case of hard work-turn-success story, the truth of the matter is that I am a product of a very good department, one that is very dedicated to increasing racial and class diversity in higher education,” said Embrick. “Personally, I feel that I owe these folks a lot.”

“These folks” include sociology faculty members Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (now at Duke), Edward Murguia, Rogelio Saenz, Mark Fossett, Jane Sell, and Dudley Poston who mentored him throughout his college career. But Saenz notes Embrick deserves some credit, too.

"David Embrick is the hardest working student that I have ever been around," commented Saenz. "He has been an excellent mentor to undergraduate and graduate students of color and from working-class backgrounds."

His areas of expertise include race and ethnic relations, racial attitudes, and diversity in the workplace. Embrick has already published articles in a number of journals including the Journal of Intergroup Relations, Race and Society, Research in Political Sociology, and Sociological Forum.

Saenz has high hopes for his former student. “I am excited about David’s appointment as an assistant professor at Loyola University-Chicago and expect many great accomplishments from him.”

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Contact: Blair Williamson, 979.458.1347, bwilliamson@libarts.tamu.edu