Message from the Chair
- Seeking to change the world or your little slice of it?
- Interested in cultivating a global perspective of today's increasingly diverse socio-cultural world?
- Want to prepare yourself for a career of service to others?
Our goal is to provide students with the ability to both understand and act on their knowledge, whether in regard to urban social issues, inter-group relations, social institutions, religions, health and medicine, gender, aging, education, sexuality, race and ethnicity, social inequalities, organizational structures, violence, crime, law, social policy, deviance and conformity, media, or environmental and indigenous cultural concerns.
There are both intellectual benefits and practical applications gained by studying
Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work. The Social Work program aims to ensure
competence in generalist social work practice at the beginning (BSW) level. It is
designed to prepare students for employment, licensure, and graduate social work education.
Many of our Sociology and Anthropology graduates find employment as educators, researchers,
demographers, urban planners, sales or customer service representatives, counselors,
public relations specialists, journalists, diversity trainers, event planners, market
researchers, personnel and business managers, and media specialists. Others work in
the applied fields of government, diplomacy, and medicine. In addition, a number of
growth professions look to students with special training in these disciplines, including
legal studies, law and law enforcement, historical preservation, archaeology, museum
work and other fields of cultural resource management.
While our Sociology program is oriented toward topics and issues within the social
context of American society, the Anthropology program emphasizes a more comparative,
global-cultural perspective on what are similar central concerns. Social Work focuses
on the prevention of social problems and the provision of social services, always
employing a respect for human diversity and a concern for social justice. Sociology
cultivates the sociological imagination in students, enabling them to see the links
between social structures and personal problems. Anthropology concerns itself with
the entire range of human activities and cultures, preparing students to understand
their place in an increasingly global, pluralistic, and multicultural world. Social
Work encourages students to attain the knowledge, practice, research skills, value
orientation, self-discipline, and self-awareness required for beginning professional
practice.
Our faculty are experienced, dynamic, and diverse. Our expertise and research interests
include many issues of contemporary concern, some of which include: child welfare,
gerontology, social justice, humanistic values, social movements, religion and society,
gender, sexuality, social theory, demography, labor, media, culture, race/ethnicity,
African derived religion in the Americas, education and society, AIDS volunteerism,
Arab-Americans, ethnography, textiles, folk Catholicism, and mysticism. Whether you're
seeking a career, a major, a minor, or an interesting class or two, we've got a lot
to offer.
Come check us out!
C. Lynn Carr, Ph.D.
Chair, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work