Ronald Ortiz Flores
Associate Professor and Chair of Sociology & Director of Community-based Learning

Ron Flores has taught in the sociology department at St. Lawrence for 10 years. He teaches all levels of undergraduate students, including a recent First-Year Program course on communities and a First-Year Seminar on baseball, his passion outside of academia. Flores has taught courses on race and ethnic relations, family, urban society, rural sociology and quantitative demography. He has written two books: The Newest New Yorkers, about immigration in New York City, and Puerto Rican New York.

Professor Flores was a faculty delegate to the Board of Trustees and chair of Faculty Council in 2002-03, and is chair of the sociology department, director of the University’s service-learning program, co-chair of the Diversity Task Force, and a member of the Caribbean and Latin American studies advisory board. He is a recipient of St. Lawrence’s Maslow Award, which is given annually to the faculty member who has demonstrated the greatest concern for the welfare of the student body as a whole.

Professor Flores says that the strength of St. Lawrence from a professor’s perspective is the institution’s commitment to teaching. “I sense a dedication to student growth here,” he says. “A liberal arts education is such that students take flight personally and grow intellectually. Education is my way of making a difference, and it is very satisfying.”

Professor Flores received his Ph.D. in sociology from Brown University after completing his undergraduate studies at Fordham University.