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Graduate Program
Graduate Advisor: Dr. Mary C. Sengstock, Ph.D., C.C.S.
Office: 2237 FAB, Phone: (313) 577-2157
Advanced degrees in sociology serve several interests. Chief among them are those students intent upon a teaching career at the secondary, community college, or university levels. In addition, advanced sociology degrees are valuable preparation for employment in government agencies, marketing, or applied research in a variety of settings such as health care systems. The graduate programs of the Wayne State University Department of Sociology provide sufficient flexibility to serve the needs of students with other career goals where an understanding of sociology is crucial (e.g., business, counseling, law, journalism, medicine, social work) or indeed those whose interest in the discipline is avocational.
The Department of Sociology offers programs leading to the degrees of Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy. For graduate students, it provides close contact with a faculty committed to excellence both in scholarship and in teaching.
General responsibility for supervising all the graduate programs within the department falls upon its Graduate Committee, and the Graduate Program Director. The Director administers the programs with the authority to enforce degree/program requirements of the department, the college and the university, and to approve satisfactory completion of those requirements. For general information about admissions, financial assistance, and requirements, students should confer with the Graduate Program Director or his/her delegate. The Graduate Director will assist students in selecting individual academic advisers from among the faculty. However, each student will be responsible for observing all requirements established by the department, the college, and the Graduate School of Wayne State University.
Descriptions of our areas of specialization:
Family - The Sociology Family specialization focuses on the broad range of dimensions which characterize families in the modern world. Families are studied in their broadest perspective, including nuclear as well as extended families, as well as differential family structures in varying racial and cultural settings. Interaction patterns within the family life, such as socialization, age and gender composition, marriage and divorce, are analyzed. The impact of the larger community on the family, through community demands, economic structural requirements, and public policy issues are also considered. Sociological analysis of the family includes theoretical perspectives on the family, both in the discipline of sociology and from an interdisciplinary perspective as well. Methods of empirical research on the family are also studied, including qualitative and quantitative approaches, as well as special approaches which might be required due to the unique character of the family as a group or institution.
Inequality - The Sociology of Inequality encompasses a broad range of research topics and methods that revolve around the social causes, manifestations, and consequences of the unequal distribution of resources, opportunities, privileges, power, status, prestige, and various other favorable outcomes/attributes in society. The sociology of inequality is particularly, but not exclusively, concerned with disparities between categories of race/ethnicity, sex, gender, age, sexual orientation, ability (or disability), religious beliefs, and socioeconomic or social class background. The sociology of inequality often considers questions about systems of stratification, as well as mobility (or lack thereof) within such systems, including the intergenerational reproduction of social location.
Medical Sociology - Medical Sociology applies the perspectives, conceptualizations, theories, and methodologies of sociology to phenomena having to do with human health and disease. As a specialization, medical sociology encompasses a body of knowledge which places health and disease in a social, cultural, and behavioral context. Medical Sociology studies: people's attitudes and beliefs about health, disease, disability and medical care providers and organizations; medical occupations or professions and the organization, financing, and delivery of medical care services; medicine as a social institution and its relationship to other social institutions; cultural values and societal responses with respect to health, illness, and disability; the role of social factors in the etiology of disease, especially functional and emotion-related disorders and what are now called stress-related disease.
Urban/Labor - The Urban/Labor specialty area focuses on a range of topics related to both our urbanized society and the organization of and experience in the workplace. A sociologist of work is concerned with (but not limited to) questions of: gender and race in the workplace, the transformation of work processes, national and international labor movements including unions as social movements, work and family, labor markets and immigration, workplace organizations like unions, politics, and organizational/workers' culture. An urban sociologist focuses on urban experiences locally, nationally, or internationally, including but not limited to an examination of economic, social, and political transformation of cities throughout the world, with respect to race/ethnicity/gender, immigration, urban social movements, poverty, residential patterns, and urbanization and gentrification. Urban/labor research utilizes all methodologies including statistical analysis, qualitative interviews, participant observation, comparative and historical, and content analysis.
Admission Deadlines
Fall semester: May 15
NOTE: BEGINNING WITH THE 2005-2006 ACADEMIC YEAR, NEW STUDENTS WILL BE ADMITTED INTO THE SOCIOLOGY MA AND PHD PROGRAMS ONLY FOR THE FALL TERM.
New students are not admitted for the winter & spring/summer semesters but required undergraduate prerequisites may be taken during this period.
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