The Department of Sociology offers four undergraduate majors, including a degree in sociology—the traditional discipline—and three sub-disciplines: criminal justice, gerontology and social services. All majors in the department share common goals: to provide students with a thorough understanding of the social factors that influence human behavior and to offer students the tools to continue their education in graduate school or assume careers in our rapidly changing social institutions. In each of the four degree programs, student learning is carried out through an integration of theoretical course work in the classroom and applied fieldwork in the community.
Graduates of the department are currently represented in careers in teaching, law enforcement, social work, health care, law, corrections, public administration, medicine and public policy.
The program in social services integrates a traditional liberal arts education with the specialized training and field background that a student will find helpful in pursuit of a career in the social services. Each student’s education occurs both in the classroom and in community agencies. The program—both in the classroom and out—is designed to acquaint students with the nature of social problems, examine how organizations deal with these problems, learn about the people who are being served, and discuss the major policy choices available to society. Students are prepared to enter careers in the social service arena or to continue their education in fields such as social work, criminal justice and public administration.
The state-licensed program in gerontology prepares students to work for and with older Americans. The interdisciplinary curriculum provides background in such additional fields as sociology, psychology, anthropology, health administration and biology, all of which are relevant to the study of aging. Through a combination of learning in the classroom and in the community, students receive a broad understanding of the aged in today’s society.
The program in criminal justice educates students in a wide range of issues on the social nature of crime and on the strategies and policies of social control. The interdisciplinary curriculum draws not only from criminal justice studies, but from sociology, psychology and legal studies as well. The integration of a liberal arts education and specialized training offers students a solid background in criminal justice. Students are prepared to enter careers in a variety of law enforcement agencies or to continue their education in fields such as criminal justice, law, social work or public administration.
Each of these programs has at least one required internship in the community, in widely varying sites that include governmental agencies, health-related settings, public school systems, probation offices, women’s shelters, nursing homes, hospital emergency rooms, prisons, police departments, substance abuse facilities, senior centers, and community homes for the developmentally disabled, to name only a few. Career opportunities for graduates are just as varied. The student who chooses to major in sociology, social services, gerontology or criminal justice must confer with the department chairperson at an early date to plan the program in the major.