Ed Collom, Ph.D.

PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY

BIOGRAPHY

Ed Collom joined the department after serving as the Director of Faculty Affairs and Records.  Born in Long Beach and raised in the Inland Empire, he is a first-generation college student who earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from UC Riverside.  Ed spent fifteen years at the University of Southern Maine as Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor of Sociology.  He has provided service as department chair, chapter president of the faculty union, and as a faculty senate member.  His broad areas of specialization are sociology of work, social movements, social networks, and social inequality.  He teaches statistics (303), social movements (348), social inequality (356), and introduction (101) courses.  Ed’s scholarship has concentrated on the study of alternative forms of social organization with a focus on three areas: community currencies, home schooling, and workplace democracy.  He is recognized as an expert of community currencies and localism with over fifty media appearances in venues such as NBC Nightly News, National Public Radio, Time Magazine, Business Week, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and USA Today.  Ed has also served as a reviewer for over 30 journals, three presses, and the National Science Foundation.

PUBLICATIONS

Textbook (free, open educational resource CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Quantitative Sociology Essentials: An Introduction to Survey Data Analysis using IBM^® SPSS^® .  Internet

Archive (2025). https://archive.org/details/collom-qse_202506

Book
Ed Collom, Judith N. Lasker, and Corinne Kyriacou.  Equal Time, Equal Value: Community Currencies and Time Banking in the US.  Surrey, England:  Ashgate Publishing  (2012).   Republished:  New York, NY: Routledge  (2016).  Paperback: New York, NY: Routledge (2017)

Journal Articles
“Getting a Barista Job: Adjudicating the Impact of Human Capital, Social Capital, Age and Gender,”  Open Journal for Sociological Studies, 4, No. 3 (2020), pp. 139-152.

“Microfinance, Cooperatives, and Time Banks: Community-Provided Welfare.” In S. Harper and K. Hamblin, eds.,  International Handbook on Ageing and Public Policy  (2014), pp. 433-444. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.

“Key Indicators of Time Bank Participation: Using Transaction Data for Evaluation,”  International Journal of Community Currency Research, 16 (2012), pp. A18-29.

“Motivations and Differential Participation in a Community Currency System: The Dynamics within a Local Social Movement Organization,”  Sociological Forum, 26, No. 1 (2011), pp. 144-168.

Lasker, Judith, Ed Collom, Tara Bealer, Erin Niclaus, Jessica Young, Zane Kratzer, Lauren Baldasari, Ethan Kramer, Rachel Mandeville, Julia Schulman, Danielle Suchow, Abby Letcher, Anne Rogers, and Kathy Perlow. “Time Banking and Health: The Role of a Community Currency Organization in Enhancing Well-Being.”  Health Promotion Practice, 12, No. 1 (2011), pp. 102-115.

“Engagement of the Elderly in Time Banking: The Potential for Social Capital Generation in an Aging Society,”  Journal of Aging & Social Policy, 20, No. 4 (2008), pp. 414-436.

“The Motivations, Engagement, Satisfaction, Outcomes, and Demographics of Time Bank Participants: Survey Findings from a U.S. System,”  International Journal of Community Currency Research, 11 (2007), pp. 36-83.

“Community Currency in the United States: The Social Environments in which it Emerges and Survives,”  Environment and Planning A, 37, No. 9 (September 2005), pp. 1565-1587.

“The Ins and Outs of Home Schooling: The Determinants of Parental Motivations and Student Achievement,”  Education and Urban Society, 37, No. 3 (May 2005), pp. 307-335.

Collom, Ed and Douglas E. Mitchell, “Home Schooling as a Social Movement: Identifying the Determinants of Homeschoolers’ Perceptions,”  Sociological Spectrum, 25, No. 3 (May 2005), pp. 273-305.

“Two Classes and One Vision? Managers’ and Workers’ Attitudes toward Workplace Democracy,”  Work and Occupations, 30, No. 1 (February 2003), pp. 62-96.

“Clarifying the Cross-Class Support for Workplace Democracy,”  Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 45 (September 2001), pp. 71-103.

“Social Inequality and the Politics of Production: Identifying Potential Supporters of Economic Democracy,”  Sociological Forum, 16, No. 3 (September 2001), pp. 471-501.

“Worker Control: The Bases of Women’s Support,”  Economic and Industrial Democracy, 21, No. 2 (May 2000), pp. 211-235.

Ogawa, Rodney T. and Ed Collom, “Using Performance Indicators to Hold Schools Accountable: Implicit Assumptions and Inherent Tensions,”  Peabody Journal of Education, 75, No. 4 (2000), pp. 200-215.