Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work

The Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work is proud to sponsor a chapter of the Alpha Kappa Delta society, the International Honor Society in Sociology. Inductees must be junior year students who are officially declared sociology majors or minors.

Each year, at the beginning of the spring semester, the department's AKD chapter representative notifies eligible majors and invites them to join AKD. The department inducts those majors who accept this honor at the annual ceremony in the spring as part of a program that includes the Annual Stanley L. Saxton Address.

The department's AKD Chapter representative is Joy Kadowaki, Ph.D.

The Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Student Organization (SASSO) is comprised of majors, minors and interested others who meet and sponsor various activities and programs. Past events and activities have included schedule-planning sessions, student-faculty socials, film series, guest speakers and graduate school panels.

Undergraduate students are at the heart of the department and play an important role in department programming and social events. SASSO is a vibrant student organization open to all students with an interest in sociology, anthropology, or social work. Previous events have included course planning, career and graduate school advice, conversations with department alumni and opportunities to get to know department faculty.

Many sociology majors have also chosen a minor in social work. Both clinical and administrative placements in the field of social work are possible for sociology graduates with this minor.

Community Field Experience in Social Work is a 200-hour, supervised field experience with individuals and/or families in an agency setting. Students can be placed in settings where they can work with at-risk youth, older adults in residential and community centers and the homeless. Popular placements include the East End Community Center, The Other Place, Building Bridges, YWCA Shelter services and the Elizabeth New Life Center.

Students also participate in seminars that focus on basic social work knowledge, values, skills, application to graduate school (MSW) and guides to entry-level employment in human services.

This course is designed for students interested in graduate school and for students who desire future employment in the social services field.

Work with a faculty mentor on your self-directed research project through the Dean's Summer Fellowship.

Students can engage with pressing societal issues through the Gendered Injustices and Violent Extremism (GIVE) internship program, a federally funded project.

Interns learn and teach about violent extremism in Ohio through a gendered lens via a combination of training and collaboration with community organizations that include the Artemis Center, the Q+ Health Alliance and the Dayton Metro Library.

Fostering and facilitating immersive global learning experiences is a distinctive and core feature of sociology, anthropology and social work at UD. As a department committed to social justice, our primary interest lies in teaching students to understand, through direct and personal encounters, those in the global margins, ranging from the urban poor in India struggling for water in the era of water privatization, youth in El Salvador facing police brutality, to indigenous peoples in the Yucatan peninsula displaced by tourism.

We offer a transformative experiential learning opportunity by enhancing specific courses with a short term global immersive travel. For example, students have completed an immersion trip to El Salvador, facilitated jointly by Miranda Hallett, Ph.D., the Center for Social Concern and CRISPAZ, an NGO in San Salvador.

Please contact a faculty member for more information.

The Inside-Out Program challenges crime, justice and social stereotypes by facilitating meaningful conversations between individuals inside and outside of correctional facilities.

It goes beyond reevaluating basic notions of justice, providing outside participants with insight into correctional life and allowing incarcerated individuals to contextualize their experiences.

Leadership in Building Communities (SOC 426 / POL 426 / MPA 526) is a joint undergraduate/graduate community-engaged course centered on the development of leadership skills and the practice of ethical and mutually beneficial community partnership.

Students partner with community members, leaders and stakeholders to address relevant community questions through gathering data, compiling information and recommending strategies. Students also learn by observing how community partners tackle challenges and solve problems. Participants are encouraged to refine their notions of community and leadership and to recommend strategies that capitalize on neighborhood assets to improve outcomes and build community.

Hosted by the Roesch Chair in the Social Sciences, the Roesch Symposium is a day of stimulating ideas and research in the fields of social sciences which provides you with an opportunity to showcase your research.

The sociology internship is a supervised work experience related to course work in sociology in appropriate government, social service and private organizations. It's designed to allow students to receive academic credit for work experience. This work may be done in any of a variety of agencies or organizations. The internship experience serves as a transition between the world of the classroom and the world of work.

The internship gives students an opportunity to relate their academic study to work situations and provides more information on which to base a career choice. Students have worked in direct service with clientele like recent refugees, family services and survivors of abuse. Some students have chosen to conduct research, in which they collect and analyze data for various local agencies and organizations.

The Stander Symposium is a campus-wide day of student research and discovery. Each spring term, this annual event provides you an opportunity to present your research, as well as attend hundreds of sessions from all disciplines.

Research is a central component of the student experience in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work. All sociology majors take a research methods course and data analysis course, and complete a capstone research project. Students in all of our minors have the opportunity to participate in research through class projects.

Our students also have the opportunity to conduct research under the guidance of faculty through research assistantships and fellowships. Faculty work one-on-one with students to train them in various research methodologies and supervise data collection and analysis. These research partnerships may also continue through presentation of findings at professional conferences and submission of manuscripts to academic journals.

Senior Capstone Project

As the culmination of their studies, sociology majors design, conduct and present findings from their own independent research. This year-long project is completed through two courses taken during senior year and is conducted under the supervision of a faculty advisor. Students produce a full research paper and present their findings at the annual Stander Symposium.

Sociology majors select their own topics of interest for their capstone projects and use a variety of research methods including surveys, qualitative interviews, program assessments, content analysis, quantitative data analysis and more.