Department of Sociology

Learning Outcomes in Sociology

• Students will demonstrate familiarity with essential sociological concepts: socialization, stratification, social structure, culture, ideology, institutions, differentiation by race/ethnicity, gender and age, and deviance.

• Students will demonstrate an ability to apply the sociological imagination to contemporary social issues.

• Students will develop an understanding of how sociological analysis could inform policy.

• Students will value inquiry of social inequality, focusing on the association of race, class, and gender with social inequality

• Students will demonstrate knowledge of basic descriptive statistics, multivariate analysis, probability issues, inferential statistics, and use of statistical computer software.

• Students will demonstrate an understanding the benefits and limitations of different data collection strategies.

• Students will demonstrate knowledge of the basic theoretical positions and concepts of Marx, Durkheim and Weber.

• Students will demonstrate understanding of one or more contemporary debates in sociological theory.

• Students will demonstrate the ability to critically assess published sociological research.

• Students will demonstrate an indepth understanding of at least one area of sociology.

• Students will successfully identify a research question and appropriate methods for answering that question. They will write a research report and/or term papers that address this research question.

• Students will demonstrate the ability to write effectively.