delivery and education. Additionally, during the summer after your first year, you will have the opportunity to gain hands-on experience completing an internship in a private business or public service agency.

Overall, the program is designed to ensure close and informal associations with the faculty members. You will have the opportunity to become involved in a variety of applied research endeavors. These research endeavors often lead to internship or employment opportunities.

Location

Clemson is a small, beautiful college town in upstate South Carolina. The Upstate is one of the country’s fastest-growing areas and is an important part of the I-85 Corridor, a multi-state area along Interstate 85 that runs from the metro Atlanta area (home to nearly five million people) to Richmond, Virginia and encompasses Charlotte, North Carolina (the US’s second-largest financial center) as well as North Carolina’s Research Triangle. Atlanta and Charlotte are each a two hour’s drive away. Many financial institutions have regional offices located in the Upstate, including Wachovia and Bank of America. Other major industries of commerce in the Upstate include the automotive, healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. Corporations based in or with a major presence in the Upstate include BMW, Bon Secours St. Francis Health System, Bosch North America, Bowater, Charter Communications, Ernst and Young, Fluor Corporation, IBM, Microsoft, Michelin of North America and others.

Research Facilities

The Department of Sociology is located in Brackett Hall, a recently renovated building that includes an atrium and two public-access computer laboratories. As a graduate student in the program, you will be able to conduct research through the Center for the Advancement of Marketing and Social Sciences (CAMSS). Created in collaboration with the marketing department, CAMSS provides research services to a variety of clients in the private, public and nonprofit sectors. With this problem-specific approach to research, CAMSS creates numerous learning and funding opportunities. You will also have the opportunity to learn how to develop web-based surveys and how to conduct focus groups.

Faculty members and graduate students often collaborate on research projects with colleagues from other departments. Graduate students have conducted research for several campus entities, including the School of Education and the Departments of Nursing and English.

The department has a computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) laboratory. Graduate students are trained to use this 12-station state-of-the art facility, including the software programs needed to design and implement a telephone survey. This survey laboratory is designed to implement telephone surveys efficiently. Specialized CATI software allows the research team to tailor their questionnaires, randomly select a sample, contact respondents, enter the responses and conduct rudimentary statistical analyses.

 

Cost of Study

Tuition for 2007–08 is $3,960 per semester for in-state students and $7,923 per semester for nonresidents. Off-campus rates are $330 per hour for in-state students and $660 per hour for nonresidents. Graduate assistants pay a flat fee of $950 per semester. Graduate fellows pay South Carolina resident fees.

Student Group

The program currently has approximately 20 students. Eighty percent are women, and 81 percent participate on a full-time basis. Students come from a variety of academic backgrounds including sociology, psychology, business, communications and journalism.

Financial Aid

The department offers teaching and research assistantships. Graduate assistants work 10 to 20 hours per week in the department, and stipends are $9,465 per year. The department anticipates providing 12 assistantships per year. You will also have the opportunity to be funded through faculty research projects. For example, research funds help to support at least one graduate student per year who manages the survey lab in CAMSS. Students have also obtained assistantships through other departments and centers on campus, including the Department of Nursing and the Academic Support Center. Highly qualified graduate students can receive University fellowships.

Student Outcomes

Graduates of our program are highly marketable and have an excellent employment record. They have been hired by government, public and private organizations, including the National Opinion Research Center, Nielsen Media, Arbitron, Research Triangle Institute, United Way, Society for Human Resource Management, National Restaurant Association and US Bureau of the Census. Graduates are data analysts, evaluation researchers, policy analysts, statisticians and management consultants. Graduates have also pursued doctoral studies at outstanding universities, including Brown, Duke, Emory, Iowa State, Ohio State, SUNY Albany, Vanderbilt, Virginia Tech and Washington State universities.

Departmental Faculty

The faculty of the Department of Sociology have degrees from some of the finest doctoral programs in their fields. They have authored or edited over two dozen books on such topics as the impact of the mass media, parental bereavement, the Internet, folk culture in South Carolina, the sociology of emotions, the sociology of deviance, international organizations and the causes of child abuse. In addition, the faculty have also published over 200 articles in professional journals and have written scores of technical reports related to applied sociological issues.

Departmental faculty have also obtained research grants from private foundations and government agencies. Funding successes include a $487,000 National Science Foundation grant to study the impact of the Internet on society, participation in an $800,000 international project to identify the social factors in adopting and implementing integrated pest management and $250,000 to assess the impact of a community development and anti-violence project.

Faculty Listing

• Marjie Britz, Associate Professor, PhD, Criminal Justice, Michigan State University. Criminology; Criminal Justice; Organized Crime; Cybercrime; Police Subculture.

• Mike Coggeshall, Professor, PhD, Anthropology, Southern Illinois University. Cultural Anthropology, Traditional Cultures, Qualitative Methodology.

• Melinda Denton, Assistant Professor, PhD, Sociology, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Family, Sociology of Religion, Adolescents, Culture.

• Ellen Granberg Assistant Professor, PhD, Sociology, Vanderbilt University. Social Psychology, Qualitative Methodology, Organizations, Medical Sociology.

• William Haller, Assistant Professor, PhD, Sociology, University of Pittsburgh. Demography, Methods, International Migration, Development, Inequality

• Catherine Mobley, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, PhD, Sociology, University of Maryland. Environmental Sociology, Medical Sociology, Social Policy, Sociology of Food and Nutrition.

• Steven Nelson, Assistant Professor, PhD, Sociology, University of Arizona. Criminology, Social Psychology, Deviance, Law and Society.

• Kinly Sturkie, Professor and Department Chair, PhD, Social Work, University of Southern California. Mental Illness, Child Abuse, Marriage.

• Brenda Vander Mey, Professor, PhD, Sociology, Mississippi State University. Sex and Gender, Environmental Sociology, Community/Rural Sociology.

• Melissa Vogel, Assistant Professor, PhD, Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania. Archaeology, Latin America, Gender, Identity, Ethnography, Culture.

• William Wentworth, Professor, PhD, Sociology, University of Virginia. Sex and Gender (emphasis on Masculinities), Emotions, Medical Sociology.

• Sarah Winslow-Bowe, Assistant Professor, PhD, Sociology, University of Pennsylvania. Gender, Work-Family Intersections, Social Inequality, the Life Course, Quantitative Methods.

• James Witte, Professor, PhD, Sociology, Harvard University. Sociology of Work, Sociology of the Internet, Research Methods/Survey Design.