student on green A cornerstone of a UVM education involves work outside of the classroom. Sociology majors have the opportunity to engage in several courses that get students out into the community, and a service learning based internship seminar.

Sociology students in the field:

"My internship at the King Street Center taught me about the refugee population in Burlington, specifically Somali refugees, who I have been walking past and shopping next to in the grocery store for four years now without knowing anything about them. My internship allowed me to have one-on-one contact with them which I may not necessarily have had the opportunity to do. Furthermore, the internship allowed me to examine the refugee experience through a sociological lens, which distinguishes this experience from my other volunteer work, as the class allowed me to connect real life and real people to the material that I have been studying."

— Lily B., student in the Service Learning Internship course, 2010

"It is very taxing work. Not just physically, but also emotionally. You are helping someone that has lost everything they had. Their stories are all too real ... You simply can’t experience this from inside a classroom. We read a couple of articles and saw some pictures of the mobile home park, but it is completely different when you actually witness it."

— senior Iva Bugbee of being in the field after Hurricane Irene

Students engaged in Hurricane Irene aftermath

When Tropical Storm Irene devastated Vermont with destructive flash floods in 2011, Alice Fothergill had just started her seminar in the sociology of disasters. Responding quickly, she reorganized the course to get students in the field as volunteers, spending many weekends with students at disaster sites. Students helped clean up debris, sort out belongings, and rebuild homes.

"Irene allowed us to volunteer and do research on how some groups are affected more than others. But it also allowed students to use the concepts that they have studied and apply them in real situations ... A lot of the victims feel like their voices aren't being heard. There is a lot of dispute on how aid should be distributed and some do not feel like they are part of the recovery process." — Alice Fothergill

Internships

Sociology students in the field:

Students engaged in Hurricane Irene aftermath

More on sociologists in the field