Welcome from the Chair
Welcome to the Department of Sociology at 吃瓜网.
Maybe you're a student deciding on a major, an applicant to our graduate program, or someone at a local organization looking for a research partner. Maybe you're just curious about how society works. Whoever you are, I'm glad you found us. Sociology asks how the forces of society shape our individual lives, and how people join together to push back on those forces. At FAU, we take that question into our classrooms, our research, and the communities of South 吃瓜网.
Our Faculty
The strength of this department is its people. Our faculty publish in the field's leading journals and presses. Their work has won national book and article awards and drawn support from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Fulbright Program. Increasingly, their work is rooted in South 吃瓜网 itself, from housing in Lake Worth Beach to dementia care in Boynton Beach to farmworkers in Immokalee. They are also devoted teachers who know their students by name, mentor their research, and stay in touch long after graduation.
Several faculty study the global forces behind work, migration, and the environment. Professor Phillip Hough has spent twenty years studying labor, land, and political violence in rural Colombia, and his award-winning research on coffee-growing communities has taken him to Kenya and Vietnam as well. Professor Yangsook Kim compares eldercare workers in South Korea and the United States. Professor Patricia Widener has written two books on oil and the communities that resist it, from Ecuador to New Zealand, and is now pioneering the field of marine sociology.
Other faculty focus on families, communities, and health. Professor Philip Lewin spent years studying communities in Central Appalachia and now studies the housing crisis in South 吃瓜网. Professor Will McConnell maps the networks of family, friends, and professionals who care for people living with dementia, with funding from the National Institutes of Health. Professor Matty Lichtenstein studies child welfare and maternal health and won an award from the ASA's Political Sociology section. My own research looks at families, childhood, and inequality in small and gentrifying cities and, with colleagues in FAU's School of Social Work, the experiences of Guardian ad Litem volunteers in the child welfare system.
Our faculty lead the discipline in theory and methods. Professor Ann Branaman is the co-editor of The Goffman Reader. Professor Lotus Seeley studies gender and work; an article she co-wrote in Sociological Theory won the Distinguished Article Award from the ASA's Sex and Gender section. Professor Tom Leppard uses network analysis and computational methods, with support from the National Science Foundation to study families, young adults, sports, and the music industry, and the free online coursebooks he writes are teaching network analysis to students far beyond FAU.
Our full-time instructors shape the experience of nearly every undergraduate who passes through our classrooms. Dr. Greg Lukasik teaches courses on social movements, environmental sociology, and social problems. 聽Dr. 聽Maritza Flores teaches theory, research methods, and our Careers in Sociology course. Dr. Robert Caputi builds his courses on culture, media, and sport. Dr. Gina Carre帽o-Lukasik won the university's Excellence and Innovation in Undergraduate Teaching Award. Her Sociological Perspectives course is the first introduction to the field for many students.
Why Major in Sociology?
Students sometimes ask what they can do with a sociology degree. The answer is almost anything that involves understanding people, data, or institutions. Which is to say, almost everything.
As a sociology major at FAU, you will learn to design a study, analyze data, read critically, write clearly, and build an argument based on evidence. Employers in every field say they need these skills and have trouble finding them.
Our graduates work in social services and nonprofits, public health, law, education, criminal justice, human resources, market research, urban planning, government, and journalism, and many go on to graduate or professional school. Students get something increasingly rare at big universities: real mentorship. Our BA Honors Program lets students design and complete an original research project with a faculty mentor.
You can also try sociology before you commit. Start with SYG 1000, Sociological Perspectives or take one of our many upper-division courses open to non-majors. A sociology minor fits alongside nearly any other major at FAU and only requires 4 upper-division courses.
Graduate Study
Our Master of Arts program pairs small classes and close mentorship with serious intellectual work. Students on the generalist path prepare for careers in the public, nonprofit, and private sectors; students on the thesis path carry out a research project one-on-one with a faculty mentor, often on the way to a PhD. Seminars on globalization, migration, gender, work, family, childhood, and social theory place students at the center of the field's debates, and many MA students hold teaching assistantships that cover tuition and pay a stipend. Our graduate students are researchers too: several recent faculty publications are co-authored by graduate students.
Join Us
Have a look around our website, read about our faculty and courses, and get in touch with questions. You can reach our office at 561-297-3270 or sociology@fau.edu, or write to me directly at lbackstrom@fau.edu. Any of us would be glad to talk with you about the department and the discipline.
We look forward to welcoming you.
Laura Backstrom
Chair, Department of Sociology
吃瓜网