Be committed

students studying
students smiling
Engaging classroom lectures
Classroom learning
Looking up at the tower of Ira Allen chapel
Kathy Fox
Charis Jones with a overhead view of a Middle Eastern city
Working in the fields in Nepal
Katrinell Davis

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—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. 

Sociology majors generally leave with solid research skills, people skills, and presentation skills, which helps prepares them for many fields of work. Some of our students go on to get PhDs in sociology or related fields, many work in human service agencies, or go on to masters in social work programs or law school.

Beyond the classroom

"Collaboration" and "involvement" are key words in the UVM sociology department. Students in our department have a variety of opportunities to do independent research, gaining valuable opportunities to present and publish academic work. We offer an upper-level research seminar in which students design and implement their own study, a senior honors thesis in which a student works with a faculty advisor on a project chosen by the student, and readings and research courses in which a student and a faculty member explore a specific topic of mutual interest. 


Careers

  • Educator
  • Entrepreneur
  • Hospital/Higher Education Administration
  • Human Resources Representative
  • Lawyer
  • Policy Analyst
  • Social Worker
  • Sociologist
  • Youth Advocate

Where alumni work

  • Armistead, Inc.
  • Dartmouth College
  • Hunter College CUNY
  • Stanford Graduate School of Business
  • Teach for America
  • Wake Robin Corp.
  • White & Burke Real Estate Investors

Related Information

Similar Majors

  • Anthropology
  • Psychology

Related Fields

Sociology is similar to other liberal arts degrees, such as philosophy and history, insofar as the skills you acquire are "transferrable" to many fields. Our students go into a variety of fields because a liberal arts degree equips students to do research, write and read critically and analytically so they can be trained for any kind of work. Many public or nonprofit agencies, governmental bureaus, and community programs hire sociology majors, as do organizations that need people with skills in sociological methodology and social statistics. Often, sociology serves as a pre-professional background.

 

Learning Outcomes

As a result of completing the major in sociology at UVM, students will be able to: View the world through a sociological lens such that

  • 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;
  • 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;
  • they can construct a sociological argument and communicate it effectively in written form.