Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Justice Studies

Teaching and Learning Outcomes

 Reviewed and approved on 18 October 2006.

 Three Undergraduate Programs and One Graduate Program

Departmental Pursuits

Because of its unique organization, the department draws strength from each of its disciplines and programs and the relationships between them in interdisciplinary teaching, learning and discovery. The department maintains interests in phenomena such as belief and value systems, culture, diversity, ecology/environment, economics, history, inequality, legal systems, social practice/material culture, politics, power structures, and social movements. The Teaching and Learning goals outlined below attempt to incorporate our shared interests throughout our curriculum.  It should be noted, however, that our teaching and learning goals are met in the combination of courses offered in the Department and are not assumed to be met in any single course

Teaching and Learning Goal 1: Comprehension

·Diversity and Inequality:  Explore the cultural and biological complexities of human kind and the manifestations of inequality and equality. Appreciate and understand the implications of human differences and learn to communicate cross-culturally, gaining cultural competency.

 ·Process: Learn how social structural and cultural practices contribute to lived experience, both personal and collective in nature.

 ·Connecting: Learn through an interdisciplinary environment, linking individual experience to social issues and social alternatives, relating events to broader social contexts and cultural landscapes/worldviews of others.

Teaching and Learning Goal 2: Application

 ·Thinking and Creating: This involves three broad elements: 1) Thinking critically and reflexively (reflective), which interrogates common sense reasoning and one’s relationship to it, 2) Examining empirical research, which requires learning research methodologies, epistemologies, analysis and interpretation, and 3) Conducting original research, which applies acquired skills to the exploration of a particular scholarly question, though not all students will have this opportunity.

 ·Communication: Promotes the refinement of writing skills; the retention of disciplinary principles and their comprehension; the articulation of positions through a variety of media, such as presentations, group work, creative work, etc.

Teaching and Learning Goal 3: Engagement  The department shares a commitment to student and faculty engagement.  Building on the disciplinary content and skills acquired in Teaching and Learning Goals 1 and 2, engagement involves personal and civic exercise in at least some of the following:

·Self reflection and self-critique

·Citizenship: connection between self and community

·Social critique

·Social justice

·Worldviews and Cultural Perspectives

Reviewed by the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Justice Studies on 16 October 2006; modified 17 October 2006; resubmitted to the faculty for review and approved on 18 October 2006.