Dr. Dickson joined the sociology faculty at UCCS in 1984 and retired in 2016

Her teaching and research areas include the Sociology of Poverty, Family, and race, class and gender studies. She has conducted research on shifting relationship and family formation strategies among African Americans, with particular attention to class and gender variations within this community. Her most recent publication (with Kris Marsh) is “The Love Jones Cohort:A New Face of the Black Middle Class?” in Black Women, Gender, and Families Spring 2008, Vol. 2, No 1. She is currently completing an analysis of the extent to which African American single parents are becoming new entrants to the middle class. She has collected data on inter- and intra-racial couples, and has given numerous papers and presentations on various aspects of these topics.