Department of Sociology
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Department of Sociology
Fall 2011/Winter 2012 Newsletter
Graduate Survey College of Arts and Sciences
Sociology is a social science discipline oriented to a critical understanding of social arrangements and expectations. The notion of social arrangements is central - we seek to explain both where they come from and how they matter. This idea of critical understanding or "critique" is also very important. It means that we have an obligation not only to describe how things are but also to contribute to an informed discussion of what might be. Science and values tend therefore to be only partially or temporarily separable. Since this concern for informed debate and improvement is also a fundamental responsibility of citizenship, sociology is centrally involved in the business of helping develop the perspectives and skills of responsible members of society.
The Department of Sociology has undergraduate majors in Criminal Justice and Sociology and Masters and PhD programs in Sociology. Through these programs, the department is home to almost 800 majors and to 50 graduate students who work with roughly 20 full-time faculty (some are, of course, rougher than others).
- Criminal Justice students study the components of the justicesystem but also its assumptions and implications for the larger society. Internships are often available and many of these students pursue careers in the justice system.
- Sociology students study a somewhat broader range of institutions (educational, political, medical, religious and others) and problems (poverty, inequality, racism, sexism, economic dislocation, and so on) but both majors share a set of core methods and theories and both seek to understand the interdependencies of individuals, families, social groups, and normative and regulatory systems in a society. Increasingly this is done cross-nationally and cross-culturally as well as in direct examination of global systems of interdependence.
At the graduate level... well, it gets fairly complicated fairly quickly but the range of what we do collectively and in our research is described quite well in various parts of this website. Questions? Please contact us.