Sociology Department

How is social life possible? What do patterns of social life tell us about the world? What is the relationship of the individual to the social order?

In the Sociology Department, you’ll learn to recognize individual issues as the issues of the larger society, exercising what sociologist C. Wright Mills calls  “sociological imagination.” In that way, sociology is deeply personal. We seek to understand society, but in doing so we learn much about ourselves.

Sociology addresses the most pressing social issues in contemporary society: racial and ethnic tensions, gender inequality, poverty, health and illness, social movements, crime and deviance, educational inequality, immigration, and problems in urban environments, just to name a few. 

Our devoted faculty will provide you with a theoretical framework with which to help make sense of an increasingly complex world and the place of the individual within that world. We will equip you with the tools to investigate the social world we live in, prepping you for future careers in teaching, social work, criminal justice, journalism, and beyond.