DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY OUTCOMES ASSESSMENT
The Department of Sociology at Catholic University has a number of outcomes that the program is intended to provide for undergraduate students working towards a Bachelor of Arts degree. First, it is assumed that students will develop a “sociological imagination”. That is, as sociologists it is important to be able to see the influence of larger social forces on the individual. Second, the program should provide insights into a variety of theoretical approaches to understanding the social world. Third, each student should leave the program with a set of quantitative skills. These skills involve insights into the methods of sociological research as well as the ability to perform and understand the statistics necessary to analyze and understand social data. Fourth, the student should leave the program with an understanding of two or more substantive areas of sociology. Areas covered by the department include, for example, sociology of gender, economic sociology, political sociology, sociology of religion, criminology, deviance, sociology of sport, issues in globalization, social demography, and sociology of death and dying. Fifth, students in the Sociology program are encouraged to take a social justice approach to thinking about the social world. Finally, students are encouraged to apply and expand their knowledge of the social world in real world settings vis-ŕ-vis the large number of internships opportunities available in the Washington D.C. area.
There are a number of ways in which these outcomes are assessed. First, students are required to take a series of introductory courses, a methods course, a statistics course, and a series of courses in substantive areas. Credit for internship experiences is also offered. Whenever possible, professors in these courses encourage and instill the “sociological imagination” and a social justice approach to studying the social world. A number of the classes include volunteer opportunities in line with the social justice approach. Each class that the student takes in the Sociology department measures success in the course. This is done using exams, small group projects, papers, and consultation with internship supervisors. Second, students in the Sociology program are required to enroll in a two semester senior seminar during their senior year. This seminar allows the student to review and coordinate the knowledge gained through the series of sociology courses taken in the freshman through junior years. It asks the student to use this knowledge to critically think about important contemporary social issues. Additionally, each student is required to take a comprehensive exam or write a senior thesis in their senior year. Students with a 3.0 average or higher are allowed to choose the thesis option. The comprehensive exam tests the student in methods, statistics, theory, and substantive areas. Students who write a thesis are asked to develop a research question about a social issue and consider it within a conceptual framework. The thesis includes a review of relevant work on the topic and a test of research hypotheses using primary or secondary data.
