Michael Schwartz
Department Chair

Timothy Moran
Director of Graduate Programs

The Department of Sociology, in the College of Arts and Sciences, offers a nationally ranked graduate program leading to the Ph.D. degree. It also grants an M.A. degree as a sign of progress toward the doctorate and as a terminal degree in a variety of specialities.

The Department provides graduate training in sociology that is informed by a global perspective. Whether a sociological question addresses individual-level processes, ideas, or organizations, there are often global influences and implications connected to that phenomenon. Students pursuing an advanced degree in sociology will have opportunities to focus on global sociology and to learn how sociological methods and theories can be applied to the study of global social, cultural, political, and economic processes.

The Sociology program grants the doctorate to three to six students per year. Most of these go on to university or college teaching positions or postdoctoral programs at other universities. A few enter government service or business.

The Ward Melville Social and Behavioral Sciences Building is networked by computers to a divisional network, University mainframes, and the Internet, as well as to the Social Sciences Data Lab’s computing facilities and data library. The Department of Sociology has the only laboratory for the study of social systems in humans and animals existent in a sociology department; it is devoted to basic research in social organization. The Department also has a Sociology
Reading Room.