Do you ever find yourself watching what people do? Are you curious about how we are influenced by our social environment?
Do you search out stories about social issues, trends, or problems? If you answered yes to any of these questions, sociology is a good major for you.
In sociology, you learn to use scientific research methods to explore a wide variety of topics, including the organization of human interaction, the influence of groups on behavior, the structure of societies, patterns of social change, and the role of institutions in social life.
Students of sociology seek to understand the world around them from a historical, critical perspective, and the tools gained from studying sociology are relevant to both personal and occupational success.
After completing SOC 101: Understanding Society, students move into upper-division content and skills courses. We offer a variety of courses each semester that enable students to gain a better understanding of the complex social world in which they live.
Students can study topics focusing on social diversity and inequality, including race, gender, social class, and globalization; as well as topics such as the family, immigration, education, criminology, deviant behavior, health and medical issues, film, and social psychology.
There are Bachelor of Arts (BA) and Bachelor of Science (BS) degrees available with this major.
The degree includes additional courses in foreign language and humanities.
The degree allows maximum flexibility for including skills and content-based coursework leading to diverse career paths.
Sociology is a diverse discipline that can lead to a variety of successful careers. Graduates go on to careers in:
The goal of this course is to give students the tools to look analytically at something we all know very well: the family. We all have intimate experience with our own families, but we do not always see how social, economic, political, and cultural forces shape both our own families and families that are very different from our own.
What makes something “deviant” or “normal”? How do we know? Why do some people conform to what is expected while others violate norms? When you are labeled deviant, what impact does that have? This class will focus on these and other central questions in the sociology of deviant behavior.
The major purpose of this course is to introduce the student to the field of criminology, the concept of crime, and the dilemmas modern criminologists face when they conduct research. Through this course, student learns to understand that criminology is a multi-disciplinary approach and there are no easy answers to crime causation and crime control.
This course will focus on race and ethnicity from a sociological perspective and cover topics such as race and ethnic categories and identities, prejudice, discrimination, and multiculturalism, among many others. Based on scholarly research, this course gives students an understanding of race and ethnicity not only as groups but importantly also in relation to social processes that enhance or inhibit social equality.
This course focuses on the ways in which collective behavior and social movements relate to sociocultural change. Students study patterns in group behavior that arise outside of conventional norms. Students also explore social movements and how people come together to try to promote social change. Students will think critically about issues involved in social movement emergence, recruitment, strategies, and outcomes.
This course is designed to introduce students to the fundamental concepts and some of the keys issues surrounding globalization and international development. The course will address various dimensions of globalization in the modern world, including politics, economics, social and cultural diversity, human rights and the environment, while examining some of the major debates surrounding globalization.
This course is about exploring health and illness from a sociological perspective. As such, students examine how health is more than a biological concept. Topics covered include health care delivery, alternative therapies, social epidemiology, and the lived experience of illness.
This course explores the world of film through the eyes of sociology. In this online course, students study films from the U.S. and other nations in relation to sociological research on the media. Students address the role of the media in people’s lives, examine the organization of film industries, and analyze representations of race/ethnicity, gender, crime, and more in these movies.
The social sciences are in the business of trying to figure out how the social world works. To this end, students in this course will conduct their own original research that includes formulating research questions, devising hypotheses and theories, designing studies, collecting and analyze data, and producing reports.
Associate Professor
Favorite Course: SOC 425: Food, Culture and Society
Expertise: Health, the environment, the sociology of knowledge
Assistant Professor
Favorite Course: SOC 101: Understanding Society: Principles of Sociology
Expertise: Gender, justice, unpaid labor
Associate Professor and Department Chair
Favorite Course: SOC 405: Nonprofits and Social Change
Expertise: Volunteering, service learning, student civic engineering
Assistant Professor
Favorite Course: SOC 426: Education
Expertise: Sociology of education
Associate Professor
Favorite Course: SOC 360: Globalization
Expertise: International development, globalization, gender, race
Assistant Professor
Favorite Course: SOC 460: Quantitative Methods
Expertise: Social movements, immigration/border issues, contemporary racial/ethnic disparities, legacies of racial/ethnic violence and minority social control in the United States
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Be aware of our deadlines, $40 application fee and other items on our checklist. Admission requirements vary for freshmen, transfers, prospective Honors College students and others.
Southern Miss undergraduate degrees are available online, at the Hattiesburg campus, at the Gulf Park campus, and/or through a hybrid delivery that includes both online and on-campus courses.
All courses listed in the degree plan are available online. A student would not have to take a face-to-face course to complete this degree.
50 percent or more of the degree plan’s courses in Major Area of Study Requirements AND 50 percent or more of courses in Curriculum Requirement are available online. Remaining courses are face-to-face at the Hattiesburg or Gulf Park campus, as noted.
All courses are available face-to-face on the Hattiesburg campus.
All courses are available face-to-face on the Gulf Park campus in Long Beach.