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 6 to 20 hours per week. Faculty often have ongoing research projects (both funded and unfunded) that students work on and use for their thesis data. 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, American Review of China Studies) 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. Students who have received a graduate assistantship will often act as teaching assistants during their first year. In the spring semester students also have the opportunity to take Teaching Sociology (Soc 6910), a 3 credit course. In addition to discussions of pedagogy, an opportunity for in-class teaching students also prepare a syllabus and other course materials for a course they might hope to teach in the future. When the course is complete students may apply for competitively awarded graduate student teaching position for the second year. If awarded, students will be able to teach a course during the upcoming year.
Teaching G.A.s continue to receive guidance during all semesters in which they teach through enrolling in a teaching course (Soc 6300) that provides regular meetings with the Graduate Director, 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.