Ed Collom

Dr. Ed Collom serves as Professor of Sociology at California State University, Fullerton. A first-generation college student from Southern California, he earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from UC Riverside after serving as Director of Faculty Affairs and Records. With fifteen years of prior experience at the University of Southern Maine, Collom has held leadership positions including department chair, faculty union president, and faculty senate member. His research examines alternative social organizations through three primary areas: community currencies, home schooling, and workplace democracy.

Education:

• Ph.D. Sociology, University of California, Riverside (2001)
• M.A. Sociology, University of California, Riverside (1996)
• B.S. Business Administration, University of California, Riverside (1993)

Collom is recognized internationally as an expert on community currencies and localism, with over fifty media appearances including NBC Nightly News, NPR, Time Magazine, and major newspapers. His scholarship examines economic alternatives to traditional market systems, educational alternatives to institutional schooling, and democratic alternatives to hierarchical workplaces.

His publications reflect consistent thematic attention to economic alternatives (community currencies, time banking), educational alternatives (homeschooling), and workplace democracy across multiple methodologies including survey research, transaction analysis, and movement studies. Recent work examines labor market dynamics in service industries.

Teaching: Collom teaches statistics, social movements, social inequality, introduction to sociology, social network analysis, and sociology of work courses.