Senior Experience

The senior experience requirement can be satisfied through a senior seminar, senior thesis (honors program) or internship.

Senior Seminar

Senior Seminar is offered each spring. The topic changes each year. Through an original research project, students apply the theoretical and methodological knowledge gained in the major to a concrete research question (or issue) studied throughout the semester. This option provides opportunities for students to consider the range of sociological sub-specialties comprising the discipline, collect and analyze relevant data to enhance sociological knowledge, and effectively discuss research and the research process. The seminar also allows students to make use of and develop their own sociological interests, by selecting a topic within the framework of the course.

Students will spend 6-8 hours a week (for a total of 90 hours) collecting and analyzing original data, as well as take part in a discussion-centered seminar facilitated by Professor Jade Aguilar. Course requirements include classroom discussion and facilitation, two written exams, oral reporting and presentations of research, and a "staged" research paper.

Overview of Last Year's Seminar- taught by Professor Emily Drew

The creation and proliferation of WalMart at the end of the 20th century marks a compelling global and local phenomena, which the discipline of sociology offers valuable tools for wading through. The store, and all that it represents, is ripe with meaningful layers, paradoxes and complexities that the sociological imagination can help to navigate.

A sociological investigation of WalMart might inspire curiosity about:

How and why the stores attract tremendous amounts of customers who need and/or want the store, and employees who will go to bat to protect a company whose wages maintain their poverty;
How WalMart symbolically reflects and creates social status, self-concept; and how employees manage emotions to perform the work of customer service and dignity;
What WalMart reveals about the values, norms and mores of society in general, and, in particular, of the context in which it comes about, grows, thrives or dies;
How and why stores choose products (e.g. gender specific toys, morning after pills, guns and ammunition, videos and music without explicit language);
How WalMart has given birth to a surprising number of protestors challenging "Spawl Marts" through social movements, while simultaneously birthing major public relations machines and media campaigns.

Through weekly readings and discussions, as well as through media and possible guest speakers, the course will use the intersection of race and education as a site to investigate our social world. Students will initiate original research projects in which the ways race and education come together becomes a window for understanding modern society.

Senior Thesis (Honors Program)

Any student invited to participate in the Department of Sociology's Honors Program must:

Submit a thesis proposal. Once the thesis proposal has been approved, the student will be formally admitted to the Honors Program.
Within seven days of formal admission, arrange an Honors Committee comprised of two faculty members with at least one of them from the Department of Sociology.
Enroll in SOC 497 Senior Thesis.
Pursue an original research project in consultation with her/his Honors Committee.
Complete a thesis of exceptional quality.
Present the completed thesis before a group of faculty and peers
Maintain a 3.5 GPA overall and a 3.7 GPA in the major

View the course description

Internship

To apply for an internship, you must write a three to five page personal statement in which you include the following information:

Introduction
Description of possible internship site(s)
Reason for your interest in these sits(s) that touches on both your personal and professional goals
Identification of sociology courses that may apply to your internship experience
Specific concepts, theories, or methods from these courses that may pertain to your internship
Conclusion that may include an explanation of why you believe the internship will be an appropriate capstone experience for you

View past internship locations