Sociology
Bachelor of Arts, Accelerated Master's, Minor
About this program
The Bachelor of Arts in Sociology helps you understand how social forces shape politics, culture, relationships, and identity. You will study individuals, groups, and institutions while building strong skills in research, writing and analysis. Courses cover topics like inequality, law, media and global change. Through theory and real-world investigation, you will learn how to explain and challenge the structures that shape society. This degree prepares you for careers that focus on people and change.
Program Curriculum and Requirements
Program Scope
Sociology examines the social aspects and dimensions of most everything human beings do in the realm of politics, economics, culture, technology, relationships, and identity. Studying sociology provides students critical and reflexive perspectives with which to understand the world. It pushes students to develop the analytical, research, and compositional skills necessary to investigate, understand, analyze, explain and improve the world around them.
Courses cover a broad range of topics including: the study of individuals as social actors; the analysis of social processes such as social interaction and deviance and conformity; the study of institutions such as law, family, media, popular culture, medicine, education, and religion; and the investigation of the social organization of entire societies in the global context. The department offers a variety of courses of interest to non-majors as well as to majors and career outlook.
Program Learning Outcomes
- Understand and identify the social origins and context of diverse individual and group experiences.
- Apply key concepts of sociological inquiry in social analysis. For some given social phenomenon, students will be able to:
- Construct a reasoned argument based on a theoretical perspective.
- Articulate the broader theoretical perspective, the social origins, and limitations of that perspective, as well as alternative perspectives.
- Utilize this theoretical perspective to illuminate the social arrangements and lived experiences of people.
- Collect and analyze information, including empirical data, and develop appropriate interpretations directly from the analysis. Students will be able to:
- Conduct a literature review of relevant information.
- Construct an appropriate research design taking into account the research question, previous research, methodological concerns, and material constraints.
- Articulate clearly their research methods, their findings, and the conclusions drawn from those findings
- Ability to identify and discuss fundamental social processes contributing to and the consequences of social inequality in the United States.
- Ability to identify and discuss fundamental social processes contributing to and the consequences of social inequality worldwide.
Minor in Sociology
The Minor in Sociology helps you see how inequality is shaped by social forces, both past and present. You’ll study how beliefs, values, and identities form through group life and institutions. Courses explore how history shapes today’s social problems and how people, ideas, and systems connect across borders. This minor adds context to many fields and gives you tools to better understand power, identity, and global inequality.
Learn more about the Minor in Sociology