ACADEMIC PROGRAM REVIEW
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY SELF STUDY
CHAIR’S REPORT 2014
The Department of Sociology is now in its “the third cycle” of Academic Program
Review, having conducted self-studies in 1995 and 2004. The department has benefited by our
earlier development of three areas of concentration which guide faculty recruitment,
undergraduate course offerings, and graduate programs. We wanted, and have achieved, a
faculty with overlapping areas of specialty to support high quality collaborative research and to
maintain our commitment to the department’s undergraduate and graduate instructional missions.
The first self-study led to substantial growth in our faculty and student enrollments. The second
self-study sharpened the focus of the graduate program and infused new vitality into the
undergraduate major. The last ten years has been a trying time for higher education with
economic downturns and reduced state budgets for higher education, as well as prolonged
periods without raises for university staff and faculty. Moving forward, this third self-study
reflects the need to be targeted and strategic as we plan for the future, while maintaining our
goals to enhance our national reputation in research and scholarship, sustainably growing our
undergraduate enrollments, and continuing to increase the size and quality of our graduate
programs. Comparisons with four sociology departments (North Carolina State University,
University of Pittsburgh, University of California at Riverside, and Wayne State University) on
key indicators provide a helpful perspective to aid our planning and development.
Beginning with an overview, in 1995 we had 14 faculty members which grew to 21 in
2004, and 22 in 2014. This summary belies a major generational change. In 2010 we had 26
faculty members, but since then two Professors and three Associate Professors retired, two
Assistants and one Associate Professor left the University, and one Assistant was not retained.
In this period one Professor and four Assistant Professors were hired, and two new Assistant
Professors will join us in January 2015. We have gone from a stable and relatively senior
department to a more junior department, with 8 Assistant Professors and 6 Associate Professors.
The faculty members are well-trained and committed to success in research and teaching, as
reflected in our promotion and tenure guidelines. Our goal is to attract and retain faculty to
support our research and instructional programs, with additional senior faculty hires coming
through special university initiatives.
The faculty have been research and grant active. The self study reports that in the three
year period under review, faculty “have produced a total of seven books (including three new
editions of previously published books), 72 articles in professional journals, eight chapters in
scholarly books, 11 book reviews, two encyclopedia entries, and 11 essays, reports, and other
writings” (p. 13). Our scholarly output compares well with our peers—we are below University
of California, Riverside, similar to North Carolina State, and produced more journal articles and
chapters per faculty member than the University of Pittsburgh and Wayne State. We received
almost $750,000 in external grants from 2010-2012, which is below North Carolina State’s total
and above the other three peer departments. I strongly believe that with the arrival of our new
2CI scholar, Eric Wright, not only will his research agenda generate additional grant support,
but that his mentoring and collaboration will assist several of our Associate Professors in their
pursuit of external grant support. Indeed, I fully expect that in the next few years we will
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increase the number of faculty submitting and receiving external support as well as increasing
the size of individual grants and the total amount of external funding generated by the faculty.
We are also actively involved in forming new interdisciplinary research teams. We currently are
members of a team seeking 2CI support to hire senior faculty across three colleges to pursue
research in aging and demography, and we are actively involved in the university’s Cities
Initiative. I strongly support the recommendation to create a Research Center to coordinate
collaborative research projects and to generate synergy between faculty and community partners
on new external grants and funding opportunities.
Turning to our undergraduate program, most freshmen enter college without any previous
exposure to sociology as a discipline. It is through gateway courses, either our lower division
introduction to sociology or social problems courses or through attractive elective courses such
as race relations, gender, and family sociology, that students find sociology as a major. We are
one of the largest programs in the Southeast, with more than 600 majors. Indeed, among our
self-study peers, only the University of California, Riverside has more sociology majors than we
do and we have substantially more than the other three departments. We also have the second
highest undergraduate to faculty ratio, 33 to 1, which is less than UC Riverside, but much larger
than North Carolina State, Pittsburgh, or Wayne State. The strength of our undergraduate
program includes: high quality in-house academic advising; well-trained undergraduate teaching
assistants; lecturers committed to careers in college teaching; and tenure track-faculty balancing
teaching and research activities. While we have a model internship program, I strongly support
the self-study recommendation that we provide our undergraduates with more opportunities to
work with faculty on research projects. This goal is consistent with the American Sociological
Association’s initiative to encourage research universities to involve undergraduates in the active
process of research, from formulating research questions to data collection and analysis, to the
dissemination of findings at professional conferences and in publications. I also concur that
better ties with alumni may aid undergraduates in advancing their careers, as well as increasing
donor-sponsored scholarship and undergraduate awards.
We have the largest doctoral program in sociology in the southeast, with 103 active
graduate students. Our graduate enrollment is less than Wayne State’s and greater than our other
three self-study peer programs. Our graduate program is larger today than in the previous selfstudy, and the self-study report attributes our growth to active recruitment, modest increases in
the number and level of our assistantships, and significant programmatic changes (p. 7). We
have also increased the quality of enrolled students as measured by GRE scores, while
maintaining student diversity, with 28% of our students identified as African American, 5%
Asian American, 5% multi-racial and 74% as female. In terms of outcomes, over the three year
self-study period, we graduated 20 PhD students and 10 MA students, which is comparable to
our peers. Further, since 2010, 46 % of our graduates are employed in higher education, of
which 67% are in tenure-track appointments, 23% in social science research jobs, and 17% are
pursuing additional degrees. Two of the self-study recommendations are especially noteworthy.
We need to increase the number and size of our doctoral student stipends if we are to
successfully attract well-qualified and high achieving doctoral students. In addition, we need to
increase our 32 funded lines by at least 10. The self-study reports that this can be accomplished
by seeking additional 2CI fellowships, increased grant productivity, restructuring graduate
funding in the department, and developing alumni and donor support. I also strongly support the
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recommendation that we create a sustained program of professional development and career
advising for graduate students as well as the other initiatives to strengthen the graduate program.
In closing, over the course of three academic program review cycles covering 20 years,
we have grown and changed as a department and benefited by the opportunity to engage in
systematic and reflective self-study. We have a high-quality faculty with a clear and coherent
mission that is consistent with the University’s Strategic Plan. Our goals are to: broaden our
research base; become central to the University’s global and cities initiatives; enhance the
educational experiences of our undergraduate majors, and significantly strengthen our graduate
program. The Self Study Committee has done an outstanding job in identifying 16 initiatives to
achieve our goals. I fully expect that the 2014 Department of Sociology’s Academic Program
Review Self Study Report will provide the framework for us to continue to build on past
accomplishments and provide a guide for the future.
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