Rate My Professor Corey Sparks

Corey Sparks is an Associate Professor in the Department of Demography within the College of Health, Community, and Policy at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where he joined the faculty in 2006. He earned his PhD in Anthropology and Demography from The Pennsylvania State University. Sparks specializes in spatial and statistical demography, applying advanced quantitative methods such as Bayesian spatio-temporal models to analyze health disparities, mortality patterns, reproduction, migration, food security, and historical demography. His substantive research examines human health and reproduction, including cancer incidence disparities in Texas, maternal mortality causes, links between sleep, immune function, and mortality, and job loss inequities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sparks serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Population Research and Policy Review, enhancing the dissemination of demographic research internationally. He has earned the Outstanding Graduate Advisor of Record award from the UTSA Graduate School and received seed funding for projects on spatial epidemiology and urban microbiomes. Key publications include 'A reassessment of human cranial plasticity: Boas revisited' (Sparks and Jantz, 2002), 'Life histories, blood revenge, and reproductive success among the Waorani of Ecuador' (Beckerman et al., 2009), 'Changing times, changing faces: Franz Boas's immigrant study in modern perspective' (Sparks and Jantz, 2003), 'The inequities of job loss and recovery amid the COVID-19 pandemic' (Sáenz and Sparks, 2020), and 'Machine learning algorithms for predicting undernutrition among under-five children in Ethiopia' (Bitew, Sparks, and Nyarko, 2022). Sparks mentors doctoral students in applied demography, contributes to interdisciplinary initiatives like the Center for Urban and Regional Planning Research, and develops open resources such as the Applied Demographic Data Analysis textbook.