Land-Grant Universities and the "New" Public Engagement

The University is sponsoring a conference in celebration of the Lincoln Centennial entitled "Lincoln and the Morrill Act: The Unfinished Work of Public Universities." Lincoln signed the Morrill Act, creating land-grant colleges, in 1862. Their original mission was to provide training in agriculture and "mechanic arts" to "promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life" (7 U.S.C. Sec. 304). As a result, land-grant colleges and universities developed some of the programs that are still familiar to us today -- like the University's expansive public outreach through its extension program.

But since the 19th century, land-grant universities have been on the forefront of other forms of public engagement that have involved many other parts of the University community, including the Sociology Department. Our department is at the forefront of knowledge production that can assist in finding solutions to pressing social problems. Our own faculty have been doing research on the relationship between health, the environment, and inequality, participating in a collaborative research environment at a University that has placed research on health and environment at the top of its agenda for the future. That research could form the basis for creative solutions and policies for developing a healthier, cleaner society.

In addition, our students participate in our efforts to reach out to our surrounding community. This semester (and next) our undergraduates will be participating in a court watch project on behalf of a local domestic violence agency. They will attend court hearings on orders of protection sought by victims of domestic violence and collect data on what they observe. Their observations will help the agency serve their clients.

When he signed the Morrill Act, Lincoln probably wouldn't have foreseen that the tremendous changes in the meaning and extent of public engagement at state universities, but those of us who are proud to do research and teach in a land-grant institution know that our work here simply expands the long tradition of public service envisioned long ago.

For more information about the conference, follow this link. If you're interested in attending, let me know.

The "Mindset" List

Every year, Beloit publishes a "Mindset List." The ostensible purpose of the list is to make professors aware of the common experiences the incoming class has shared. The real purpose seems to be an annual reminder that I'm getting old while my students stay exactly the same age. (The authors of the list say that's not the point . . . yeah, right!)

The list is published here, and as always, it has a lot of thought-provoking items.

"50. Everyone has always known what the evening news was before the Evening News came on."

-- I remember watching the evening news with my family and being genuinely surprised to hear about what had happened that day. Now, I don't even consider watching any of the networks. By that hour of the day, I've not only heard about the day's events, but also formed an opinion about them. I can't say that the 24-hour news cycle has improved policy-making . . . or even made the public better informed -- death panels, indeed! Maybe we should return to the days of Walter Cronkite.

"56. The status of gays in the military has always been a topic of political debate."

-- Yeah, wow!! This has been such a huge change, and there's more ahead. The fascinating thing to me is how the political differences on the issue of lgbt rights are entirely generational. My most socially conservative students -- who oppose abortion and affirmative action, for example -- simply don't understand the point of allowing discrimination against gays and lesbians. When they take over, all this sturm und drang will just get wiped away.

"28. Bobby Cox has always managed the Atlanta Braves."

-- Okay, I think this has always been true. I'm pretty sure he was the manager when I was 18 years old.

Demystifying the Dissertation - Inside Higher Ed

We're just welcoming our latest cohort of graduate students into the program, which is a very exciting time in the department. Graduate students -- their curiosity, their openness -- are in many ways the life's blood of a sociology department.

We're particularly lucky to have so many students with expansive substantive and methodological interests. And we're proud of their accomplishments -- for example, on display in the Office (Room 57 in CAB), is Keith Guzik's latest book, Arresting Abuse, which examines the way that the criminal justice system's handling of batterers does not effectively change their beliefs about the wrongfulness of their actions, and instead exacerbates their feeling of injustice and inequality. Keith got his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois and now teaches at Bloomfield College in New Jersey.

For those graduate students in between -- working on dissertation proposals and their dissertations -- some great advice from a columnist in Inside Higher Education. Sometimes the enormity of a dissertation can just seem overwhelming, but this columnist is really committed to breaking it down into digestible steps.

Demystifying the Dissertation

It can be done!

Chang Wins SSRC Fellowship

We were very excited to hear that Cheng-Heng Chang, one of our graduate students, has won a fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, a program of the Social Science Research Council. Cheng-Heng will be studying agricultural practices of Japanese farmers at Osaka University.

Cheng-Heng is the latest in a long line of our graduate students who have attracted external support for their research. Clearly, our students are on the cutting edge of sociologlical research!

Congratulations, Cheng-Heng!!

Professor Asef Bayat Describes "Non-Social Movements"

Professor Asef Bayat delivered the Sociology Department's annual Florian Znaniecki Lecture to a large audience drawn from all across campus. Professor Bayat joined us from Leiden University where he is a chaired Professor of Sociology and Middle Eastern Studies, as well as the Academic Director of the Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World.

Entitled "Social Non-Movements: The Politics of Everyday Life in the Middle East," Professor Bayat's lecture described the activities of 3 different "non-movements" -- poor people, Muslim women, and young people who create social change simply by developing new, transformative social and cultural practices in their everyday lives. These groups mostly lack the self-consciousness and purposive motives normally associated with activists in social movements. But by "quietly encroaching" on public spaces, people in these groups make demands on society that reflect changing social values.

Although Professor Bayat's research has focused on the Middle East, I was struck by the relevance of his talk for understanding similar phenomenon here in the US, where many movements have made the claim that "the personal is political." We sometimes think of these movements as "identity-based," where activists encourage people to make changes in their personal lives that challenge existing power relations. So, for example, LGBT movements encourage people to "come out" to their families and friends, and years ago, activists helped same-sex couples develop the legal instruments that mimicked marriage. Indeed, "private" arrangements have developed into claims on the state -- for state-recognition of the right to marry. But these claims originated in the changes that people made in their daily lives as they tried to reach their goals.

We were lucky to have Professor Bayat offer us all such a thought-provoking talk and a spirited discussion! Thanks to all who made his visit such a rousing success!

Welcome to the Sociology Department Blog

Welcome to the Sociology Department at the University of Illinois! Our students and faculty study some of the most pressing questions facing society today -- the challenges of globalization, the persistence of racism in social arrangements, the experiences of immigrants, and the complexity of social factors that affect health and the environment. And we'll be using this blog to keep you up to date with faculty research, developments in our curriculum, and our students' accomplishments.

This week, we're excited about welcoming prospective graduate students to campus. Graduate students are crucial to the intellectual life of our department. Their scholarly interests and energy often inspires us to press our own research in innovative directions. Undergraduates across campus benefit from our graduate students' skills as teachers. So we look forward to meeting the next wave of graduate students and welcoming them to the department.

For our part, we offer our graduate students a unique environment where they can develop a rich scholarly agenda. Our graduate students learn the breadth of research methodologies that sociologists rely on. We have many interdisciplinary connections -- our faculty have positions in every area studies center on campus; they have appointments in units including Gender and Women's Studies, the Law School, the Center on Health, Aging, and Disability, the Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society, and other departments, including History, Geography, African-American Studies, and Latino/a Studies. These interdisciplinary networks provide students with opportunities to develop innovative research designs on the cutting edge of scholarship.

As a result, our graduate students have been extremely successful at attracting external support for their research. They have sought and received grants from the National Science Foundation and the Social Science Research Council, in addition to Dissertation Completion Grants from the University to support their graduate work. In fact, Cheng-Heng Chang has just received an SSRC fellowship -- congratulations Cheng-Heng!!

So we're looking forward to meeting our prospective students and introducing them to the expansive opportunities for pursuing a Ph.D. in the Sociology Department at Illinois.