Department of Sociology
Discover Sociology
Our department is known on campus for strong teaching and we offer a variety of courses in which we use the sociological perspective to analyze current social issues, including crime, deviance, gender, the social organization of the family, race relations, health care, and death and dying. Our curriculum provides both introductory and advanced offerings in these topics, which continue to attract a large number of students. At present we have approximately 300 majors and minors.
Training and research opportunities
Sociology majors are trained in both qualitative and quantitative methods. We offer a research seminar in which students, working closely with a faculty member, design and carry out their own research projects. Recent work has included a focus interview study of Vietnamese refugee adaptation patterns; survey analysis of alcohol use on campus; an investigation of domestic abuse patterns, using records of a local battered women's shelter; and a participant observation study of the subculture of snowboarders.
Is Sociology for you?
If you are actively concerned about the world you live in and want to do something constructive and useful in it — whether in law, business, education, medicine, urban or rural planning, etc.— sociology provides our best means for understanding how "the system" works.
Whether you want to change society radically, modify it, preserve it as it is, or restore it to a bygone era, you must first understand what the structure of system is, how social order is maintained, and how social change can be affected. Sociology can give you some of that knowledge and can further help you acquire the analytic tools to develop it on your own.
Goals of the major
As a result of completing the major in sociology at UVM, students will be able to:
- 1. View the world through a sociological lens such that
(a) they are able to observe how human social/cultural structures shape personal lives and how they, in turn, individually and collectively, can alter these structures;
(b) they possess a high degree of awareness of how one's race, gender, age, social class, ethnicity, nationality, and other stamps of identity enhance or constrain one's life chances.
- 2. Construct a sociological argument and communicate it effectively in written form.
Careers in Sociology
From the public sector to the private, advanced degrees and what grads are doing now. Read about careers in sociology.
Last modified April 04 2010 05:28 AM