This table summarizes the activities listed on six sociology departments’ websites that provided easily retrievable information on activities beyond the classroom. We share this information to provide a sense of the substance behind the survey response of sociology department chairs that their departments provide “a great deal” of emphasis on application and peer networks, and to provide other departments with examples of how they might organize their own websites if they wish to promote these types of activities. Please click on the table to view it at full size.
Sample of Sociology Departments’ Websites Promoting Career Information
Are you using or going to use data from our 2012 Bachelor’s and Beyond survey for assessment purposes? If so, how? For what other purposes do or will you use it?
According to the most recent academic Department Survey, more than eight out of 10 sociology departments carry out departmental assessments that are often demanded by college or university administrators. Faculty members have mixed feelings about doing such assessments, especially when they are ordered from the top down.
The ASA Research Department on the Discipline and the Profession has just added a new PowerPoint presentation—Program Assessment with Benchmarks: Using Data from the ASA—to our collection of free downloads. The presentation describes how ASA resources—especially data collected from our Bachelor’s and Beyond Survey, can be used to “solve” common assessment problems. These problems include the following:
Lack of faculty time to work on assessment
Lack of departmental consensus about what should be assessed
Lack of student commitment to engage seriously in assessment activities
Lack of comparative data
Concern about reliance on “self reports”
The presentation provides examples of how these survey data can be used and how they can be enhanced through combining them with questions that test students’ conceptual and methodological knowledge.
An example of data on assessment activities.
Source: Spalter-Roth and Scelza, 2009. What’s Happening in Your Department with Assessment? Washington, DC: American Sociological Association.
We’d like to hear from you about the issues that you are having with doing assessments. Also, are you adapting or have adapted the Bachelor’s and Beyond survey or other ASA data for your department’s assessment needs? If so, how? Was this effort successful?
Recently, College Funding Resource conducted an interview with Roberta Spalter-Roth, PhD–Director of the ASA Department of Research and Development. Listen as Dr. Spalter-Roth discusses what becoming a sociologist entails, and why she places this career field among the top 100 of the decade.
The data from ASA Research Department’s newest study of nearly 2,700 senior sociology majors have just come back from the field, and women represent the overwhelming majority. Three-quarters of the respondents who reported their gender are women, while one-quarter of respondents are men. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) support the claim that women comprise the majority of sociology undergraduates, showing that the percentage of women receiving sociology BA degrees has held steady at just about 70% since 1980 (see here).
Is this imbalance a problem for the discipline or not? If yes, what can the discipline and/or individual departments do to recruit more male undergraduates?
The Research Department has begun a new longitudinal study of senior sociology majors from the class of 2012. To conduct this study, the ASA has asked participating departments for the names and email addresses of students that will be invited to take the survey in the Spring. Department chairs and undergraduate program directors tend to face obstacles in providing this information, including sometimes strict Institutional Review Board requirements. We invite faculty to use this space as a forum for questions and to share experiences that might help other departments facing the same obstacles.
For those of you unfamiliar with the study, visit our website to learn more, download the Phase I questionnaire, and view a list of participating departments.
In September, the ASA released Launching Majors into a Satisfying Career, a faculty manual and student dataset, which includes a variety of easy-to-access resources for sociology faculty and their undergraduates in an effort to help prepare students for navigating a difficult job market by increasing the likelihood that they will satisfying careers using their sociological knowledge and skills. Included in the handbook is a dataset based on the Bachelor and Beyond survey, ASA’s longitudinal study of baccalaureates and ideas for ways in which it can be incorporated into the curriculum.
We would like to hear from faculty members who have used (or will be using) this dataset in their classrooms. In what ways are your students using this data? Post your comments below.
(Note: comments are publicly visible. Do not include your name if you wish to remain anonymous).
What did they do with a bachelor’s degree in sociology? In our latest brief, Mixed Success: Four Years of Experiences of 2005 Sociology Graduates, the fifth installment in theBachelors and Beyond series, we continue with our examination of the use of human and social capital in careers. For example, what types of graduate degrees did they pursue? In what fields are they employed? What sociological concepts do they use in their jobs? What skills should be taught? And, what aspects of their jobs are they most satisfied?
Our colleague, Mary Senter of the University of Central Michigan, has been working with us in our longitudinal study of sociology baccalaureates from the class of 2005. As part of a workshop on the findings from the this survey presented at the Eastern Sociological Society’s 2009 annual meeting, Dr. Senter discusses the curricular, departmental and pedagogic implications of the findings. You can also find Research Director Roberta Spalter-Roth’s presentation from this workshop previously posted in this blog.
Click here to learn more about the study and view the research briefs.
Feel free to post your comments and questions by clicking Add Comment at the end of this post. Please do not include your name if you wish to remain anonymous when commenting.
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