Research and Teaching Opportunities
Research Opportunities
The Sociology faculty are active scholars and students have the opportunity to apprentice with faculty in several ways. Students on assistantships are assigned to help faculty with their research for 7 to 14 hours per week. Faculty often have ongoing research projects (both funded and unfunded) that students work on and use for their thesis data. For instance recently students have worked on such projects as: College Underage Drinking Project; Rural Prostitution; Prison Culture; Violence Against Women; Rural Welfare Reform Project. There have been several journals housed in the department (Rural Sociology, Sociological Focus, Criminal Justice) providing opportunities for students to learn about publishing. Another way in which students apprentice with faculty is through original MA thesis research. Finally, there is research money available through Ohio University specifically for student research.
Teaching Internships
In recent years we have significantly increased our use of graduate students for teaching lower division introductory level courses. In order to promote high quality teaching by graduate students we have enhanced our coursework related to teaching sociology. With the dual purposes of providing valuable preparation for teaching to interested graduate students and engaging the assistance of exceptional graduate students in the teaching mission of the Department, we formalized teaching internships for graduate students in 1998. Teaching internships are offered in addition to, and in complement to, the orientation program that is offered to all graduate teaching associates by the Center for Teaching Excellence at Ohio University. The teaching internship (SOC 691) is a five-credit course in which a graduate student undergoes intense training as an apprentice with a Group I faculty member in the teaching of an introductory sociology course (most often SOC 101 or SOC 201). When the course is complete and the enrolled students have evaluated the teaching intern, the faculty member advises the Graduate Chair regarding the appropriateness of the teaching intern being assigned full teaching responsibilities. Teaching G.A.s continue to receive guidance during all quarters in which they teach through enrolling in SOC 692: Teaching in Sociology, a 1-hour credit course per term that provides regular meetings with the Graduate Chair, supervision, and pedagogical discussions for graduate students who have grade-book responsibilities. In keeping with the goals of the sociology graduate program, the course requirements enable students to develop sociological skills that are highly useful in their pursuit of further graduate training, and in employment in the human services and criminal justice system.