Her areas of teaching specialty are Late 19th-20th Century U.S. social history with emphasis in immigration and ethnic history, race, social justice movements, and urban history. She has a PhD in History from the University of California Los Angeles. Her dissertation was titled “‘Homeseekers’ Paradise’: Railroad Promotion, the Low-cost Housing Industry, and the Expansion of Working-Class Los Angeles,” and one of her publications can be found in the Southern California Quarterly, titled “The ‘Bungalow Boom’: the Working- class Housing Industry and the Development and Promotion of Early Twentieth-Century Los Angeles.”