2109 - Linking Sociology Programs to Students' Career Readiness: Strategies from Practice

Session Submission Type: Workshop

Description

This workshop is designed to help department and program leaders develop strategies that will
help sociology students prepare to enter the labor force successfully. Specific objectives
include developing strategies to:
● Support faculty who would like to develop new courses
● Support faculty who are looking to integrate activities into existing courses
● Win over skeptical faculty

Our orientation is to suggest that faculty can make these modifications in courses and curricula
without reducing the rigor and analytical focus of the undergraduate major and without
committing to revisions that are highly taxing in terms of faculty time or the mastery of new
material.

The workshop draws on research that focuses on skills that employers want (e.g., Hart
Research Associates 2015, National Association of Colleges and Employers 2015), students’
goals and objectives (e.g., Eagan et al. 2017) and sociology graduates’ first labor market
experiences (e.g., Senter et al. 2015).

This workshop builds on the material published in The Sociology Major in the Changing
Landscape of Higher Education (Pike et al. 2017) and much of it draws from an article
forthcoming in Teaching Sociology , “Sociology Majors and Labor Market Success” (Ciabattari et
al. under review).

Sub Unit

• Workshops / Departmental Management and Leadership Workshop

Session Organizer

• Jeffrey Chin, Le Moyne College

Leader

• Jeffrey Chin, Le Moyne College

Co-Leaders

• Mary Scheuer Senter, Central Michigan University

• Renee A. Monson, Hobart and William Smith Colleges

• Teresa Ciabattari, Pacific Lutheran University