Famous Sociology Majors

Famous sociology majors found at the ASA page here:  

https://www.asanet.org/about-asa/asa-story/about-sociology/famous-sociology-majors

And found on Ranker here: 

https://www.ranker.com/list/famous-people-who-majored-in-sociology/reference

And from Soc Images, an exploration into the sociology major and athletes here 

Jerry Harkness, Loyola University basketball player and 1963 NCAA Champion and star of the first NCAA D1 team to field 4 black starters. Highlighted on the History Makers page.

LaRue Martin - Loyola basketball player and #1 draft pick in the 1972 NBA draft. Active in the community, besides his corporate career, Martins's board memberships and civic affiliations have included the City Club of Chicago, YMCA Mentoring Program, the African American Advisory Council of the Cook County State's Attorney's office, the Urban League of N.W. Indiana, M.L.K. Boys and Girls Club of Chicago, The Leverage Network and De La Salle Institute Board of Directors.

Gabby Thomas, 3X gold medal winner and Harvard Grad (Honorable Mention), cites sociology as opening her eyes to health inequity and inspiring her to work with marginalized groups.

https://youtu.be/0ib_9AlsBT8?si=1YKspmbxuYkmJYvh&t=408

Amanda Gorman, Poet Laureate, Harvard University grad.  Read about her on the Everyday Sociology blog and on the ASA's page.

Bong Joon Ho, Director and Oscar winner 

Steph Curry, NBA All-Star and Champion, graduate of Davis U. Senior thesis was about advancing gender equity in sports.

Steph used his sociological mindfulness to respond to a 9 year old girl.

Megan Rapinoe, Crystal Dunn, Abby Dahlkemper and Rose Lavelle from the U.S. Women's Soccer team

 

Michelle Obama, lawyer and First Lady of the United States, read a review of her thesis on the Racism Review website.

Ronald Reagan, President of the United States

Cory Anthony Booker, an American politician and United States Senator from New Jersey, in office since 2013. Previously he served as Mayor of Newark from 2006 to 2013.

Jen Psaki, White House Press Secretary for President Biden 

"Kal Penn" Kalpen Suresh Modi, Actor and White House Liaison for Arts and Humanities under President Obama 

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Mitch Albom, author Tuesdays with Morrie, sports writer

Alexi McCammond, reporter for Axios and MSNBC

Daniel Edward "Dan" Aykroyd, "Blues Brother," "Ghostbuster" actor, comedian, screenwriter and singer.

Michael Savage, an American radio host, author, activist, nutritionist, and political commentator.

Nina Dobrev, actress and model, played the role of Mia Jones, the single teenage mother, on Degrassi: The Next Generation, from the show's sixth to ninth season. Since 2009 she has starred as Elena Gilbert on The CW's supernatural drama, The Vampire Diaries. 

Thomas "Tom" Joyner is an American radio host, host of the nationally syndicated The Tom Joyner Morning Show


Arne Duncan is an American education administrator who has been United States Secretary of Education since 2009. Duncan previously served as chief executive officer of the Chicago Public Schools district from 2001-2009

Chante Stonewall is a Depaul University Women's basketball player, and the 
Big East scholar-athlete of the year, 2020.








Francis Perkins, from Wikipedia: first female cabinet member for any US President, creator of social security.

Wellington Webb, mayor of Denver
Brett Schundler, mayor of Jersey City
Annette Strauss, former mayor of Dallas
Roy Wilkins, former head of NAACP
Rev. Jesse Jackson
Rev. Ralph Abernathy

Shirley Chisholm, former Congresswoman from NY

Maxine Waters, Congresswoman from LA
Barbara Mikulski, US Senator from Maryland
Tim Holden, Congressman from Pennsylvania
Saul Alinsky, father of community organizing
Saul Bellow, novelist
Emily Balch, 1946 Nobel Peace Prize winner (a social worker and social reformer)
Francis Perkins, social reformer and former Secretary of Labor
Richard Barajas, Chief Justice, Texas Supreme Court
Deepika Padukone, Indian film actress and model.

Sociology and Careers

Careers Beyond Academia

Research institutions and professional organizations are great places to do research and use your skills from sociology while also networking. For example:

ASA has a number of full time positions, see here: https://www.asanet.org/about/asa-staff-directory/

There are a number of positions at the ASA and some are entry level.  I know quite a few people who worked at ASA and then spring-boarded into other positions, for example:

Senior Consultant Training and People Development (DEI), Paradigm

Senior Social Scientist, National Institute of Health

Manager of Community Outreach and Enrollment, For the Love of Children 

Program Officer, National Academies of Science 

 

Here are some videos from the ASA: 

• Careers for Sociologists in Practice Settings, a 9-part video series for people considering careers outside of the academy.
• 
  
• Careers in Practice Settings: Personal Narratives, where you can hear directly from 7 sociologists working in a variety of positions.
• 
  
• Thriving Outside Academia: Advice from Sociologists in Practice Settings, a webinar with panelists reflecting on how sociology serves them in their work, and offering tips for the job search.

Other Research Institutions:

PEW  https://www.pewresearch.org/about/careers/

Census  https://www.census.gov/about/census-careers.html

National Center for Education Statistics

Brookings Institute https://careers-brookings.icims.com/jobs/search?ss=1

National Fair Housing Alliance https://nationalfairhousing.org/careers-in-fair-housing/

Governmental Agencies:

Federal - Government Accountability Office (GAO)

Lots of jobs across the country, esp. in D.C.

Search for jobs beyond just "sociology" with key terms like research, analyst, social science,

Chicago's Office

Ex. Social Science Analyst

General Search 

Ex. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Municipal - Office of Inspector General (OIG)

From Northwestern U. 

Sociology and jobs in:

Law

Advertising

Marketing

Arts

Business

Law

Medicine

Non-profits 

For Undergraduates with a Sociology major:

Professor Ben Schmidt's website:

the sankey visualization below shows the myriad careers that sociology majors end up in:

From Karen Sternheimer's blog:

1. Tech Industry Research
2. Financial Planning
3. Government Agencies

This is from the American Sociology Association's website:

The 21st century labor market is fast changing, increasingly global and technology-driven, the jobs that you may apply for as a graduate may not even exist yet. To navigate the 21st century means being able to keep up with the changing world.
As society evolves, you as a sociology major will have the tools to critically analyze the world and your place within it.


This page from Huffington Post will help allow you to explore why some students majored in sociology, what skill sets sociology students learn.

Here's a post from Everyday Sociology Blog about majoring in sociology.


Also, for finding jobs in sociology:

This is a link to the ASA page on jobs.  Here is a brief overview of where sociology majors end up after they complete their bachelor's degree.

Here is a video about careers in sociology, embedded below:

Sociology and MCAT

Since 2012, the MCAT has included sociological concepts on the MCAT.  In 2020, the MCAT was revised and according to The Saavy PreMed Blog by Ryan Kelly, it now includes more sociological concepts.

From the American Academy of Medical Colleges (AAMC), here are some review materials for the MCAT:

The AAMC's MCAT Guide details the sociological science portion of the test beginning on page 75 (photo below) and downloadable here.  

Overview of the sociology section on pages 75-80

Sociology Topics 90-102 

 

 

Khan Academy has an MCAT test prep.

Heather McKee Hurwitz provides resources on her weebly blog here.

MDhero review site has concepts and explanations.

Magoosh explains that because the MCAT is a norm-referenced test, it compares students to others taking the test.  Many students will neglect the social science portion so by learning this portion, you may give yourself a leg up.

Meditation 1: Listen for Where the Ringing Ends and the Silence Begins

 

Listen for where the ringing ends and the silence begins.

This will force your mind to tune into the present moment.  Be aware of the moment you are in; do not surrender this present moment to the past or the future. Let this remind you to turn off distractions that pull your attention from being in the moment. 

From Medium, 

Are you listening?
Do you take the time to simply stop and listen — to yourself?
Our world has so many distractions. Some are important. Most can be a total waste of time and genuinely rob us of who we are meant to be. 

Distractions rob us of our ability to be at our best. Research indicates that silence gives us the space to be creative and think deeply about what matters. And yet, where do we find silence today? And, do we even want to experience silence? Modern studies indicate we do not. Why?
Our brains are constantly seeking dopamine. These distractions can use up all of our time and keep us from knowing what we should spend our limited and precious time on. What is the solution? Silence is our best hope for success.

From Huffington Post Listening to Silence; 

Silence speaks the international language of reflection. In many ways, it allows us to become more self-aware, to think about profound and trivial matters. Lawrence Durrell, a British author, said, "Does not everything depend on the interpretation of the silence around us?" Most of us have experienced conflict that can arise from a lack of restraint in speech. Are there such faults associated with silence? Gandhi said, "It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart." If you see the wind in its calmness, it has a peaceful and pleasurable quality to it but the same wind once in motion can turn violent in stormy weathers. The same can be said of words.

 

From Time magazine,

Across disciplines—from neuroscience to psychology to cardiology—there’s growing consensus that noise is a serious threat to our health and cognition. And that silence is something truly vital—particularly for the brain.

“Noises cause stress, especially if we have little or no control over them,” explains Mathias Basner, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in sound processing and rest. “The body will excrete stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol that lead to changes in the composition of our blood—and of our blood vessels, which actually have been shown to be stiffer after a single night of noise exposure,” Basner says.

From TED, When Did You Last Take Some Time to Do Nothing?

Fired up and ready to go!

Saint Ignatius Loyola encouraged his followers in Latin, "Ite inflammate omnia" or, "Go forth, and set the world on fire!"

And so, I like to begin every class with another reference to fire:

"Fired up? Ready to go!"

This is a phrase I like to ask students as they enter my class.  It is a way of both checking in with students and reminding them that they are in my class and I want them to feel fired up about it.  Sometimes, if you are not feeling fired up, all it takes is repeating this and it can make you fired up.

But the phrase is also a fleeting reminder that we all have an influence on our world.  Maybe that influence is just the room we are in, but that influence ripples out.  So that phrase is a reminder to be sociologically mindful.  It is a reminder that we are a participant in society.  Society doesn't just happen to us; we are participants in the process.  That awareness is what Michael Schwalbe talks about as "sociological mindfulness."  It can change how we think and act and therefore how we influence the world.  As Present Obama said,

"One voice can change a room. 

And if it can change a room, it can change a city. 

And if it can change a city it can change a state 

And if it can change a state, it can change a nation 

And if it can change a nation, it can change the world."

(see the whole story by clicking on this link)

Regardless of your political affiliation, I think the sentiment here is true. You can change a room and that can change a much larger group. There's no telling where your influence stops. So, what do you want your voice to be? How do you want to change the world? Think with sociological mindfulness about the impact you have on the world even though it is small. 

The last reason why I like to use that phrase is because, as the video shows, even if you are not feeling fired up, after interacting with someone and saying that you are fired up, it just might get you fired up!

Go Forth and Set the World on Fire!

I will often end my classes with this phrase.  Fire is energy.  It spurs a process of change.  And, as Fr. Mark Bosco explains in Ite Inflammate Omnia: Setting the World on Fire with Learning published by Medium, 

...just as St. Ignatius wanted everyone to be set afire with passion and zeal for the Kingdom of God, we continually exhort our faculty, students, and alumni to be agents for change in the world, men and women for others.

Whether you are Roman Catholic or Christian or neither, there is much room and benefit for you to embrace the Jesuit values.  We can find reverence and appreciation for creation in all things.  We can embrace our agency and awareness of our role in that creation.  We can acknowledge our shared humanity with a desire to affect that humanity with loving nurture.  And education can be our guide to each of these.

I hope that my class can contribute to that sentiment.  

Collective Effervescence

It is in our human nature to be nurtured, to connect with other living beings especially people.  Cathy Malchiodi explains in Please Don't Take My Collective Effervescence Away, a 2021 Psychology Today article how at a basic, physiological level humans experience entrainment and at a psychological level they experience synchrony which can lead to collective effervescence, a powerful shared experience with intense emotion. 

Rime and Paez's 2023 Why We Gather: A New Look, Empirically Documented, at Émile Durkheim’s Theory of Collective Assemblies and Collective Effervescence is a meta analysis of research of "conditions of reduced self-other differentiation. Abundant data support that each successive moment of collective assemblies contributes to blurring this differentiation. Ample support also exists that because shared emotions are increasingly amplified in collective context, they can fuel high-intensity experiences. Moreover, recent studies of self-transcendent emotions can account for the self-transformative effects described by Durkheim at the climax of collective assemblies. In conclusion, this century-old model is remarkably supported by recent results, mostly collected in experimental settings."

Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the faculty director of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center has studied the power of shared human emotion, especially compassion and awe, and how humans express emotion, and how emotions guide moral identities and search for meaning. Keltner's research interests also span issues of power, status, inequality, and social class. He is the author of The Power Paradox and the bestselling book Born to Be Good, and the coeditor of The Compassionate Instinct. His most recent book, Awe, is a national bestseller. Keltner explains collective effervescence here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOKedWZU_wY

The Beauty of Collective Effervescence, a lesson from Keltner and the Greater Good Science Center.

Exploring the Sources of Collective Effervescence; A Multilevel Study by Lasse Liebst from University of Copenhagen:

Creating the sacred from the profane: Collective effervescence and everyday activities (2019) by Shira Gabriel, et. al. available from APA Psychnet

Abstract:

The current research examines the hypothesis that collective effervescence—the sense of connection and meaning that comes from collective events—is not just useful for understanding rare, unusual, and intense collective events, but also as a framework for understanding how seemingly insignificant and/or common collective gatherings (i.e. ‘everyday events’) may give meaning, a sense of connection, and joy to life. We found evidence for our hypothesis across nine different studies utilizing eleven datasets and over 2500 participants. The first three studies found that collective effervescence is best understood as a combination of feeling connected to others and a sensation of sacredness. The next four studies found that collective effervescence is found in common, everyday kinds of events and that it is related to various aspects of enjoying group activities. The last two studies found that collective effervescent experiences are common; three quarters of people experience collective effervescence at least once a week and a third experience them every day. Moreover, commonly experiencing collective effervescence predicts wellbeing above and beyond the effects of other kinds of social connection. Results are discussed in terms of the human need for social connection and the importance of groups.

From Protests, Parties, and Sports Games All Fill the Same Human Need (2017), an article in the CUT explains the benefits of a shared collective experience such as a concert and the research that supports the idea that these shared experiences are healthy for us.

The Covid-19 pandemic made it abundantly clear how much we need these shared experiences as Adam Grant explained in this 2021 op-ed for the NYT,

Most people view emotions as existing primarily or even exclusively in their heads. Happiness is considered a state of mind; melancholy is a potential warning sign of mental illness. But the reality is that emotions are inherently social: They’re woven through our interactions.  Research has found that people laugh five times as often when they’re with others as when they’re alone. Even exchanging pleasantries with a stranger on a train is enough to spark joy....Peak happiness lies mostly in collective activity.We find our greatest bliss in moments of collective effervescence. It’s a concept coined in the early 20th century by the pioneering sociologist Émile Durkheim to describe the sense of energy and harmony people feel when they come together in a group around a shared purpose. Collective effervescence is the synchrony you feel when you slide into rhythm with strangers on a dance floor, colleagues in a brainstorming session, cousins at a religious service or teammates on a soccer field.

 

This 2022 meta analysis from Frontiers in Psychology analyzes the connection between individual emotions and larger collective behaviors.

https://hii-mag.com/article/collective-effervescence

Collins 2004 Interactive Ritual Theory

Advice for New Teachers

I recently had a former student contact me because she is becoming a high school sociology teacher.  As a new teacher, I shared the following advice:

Be real  not ideal - First and foremost,  know this is a journey.  Do not expect yourself to be perfect.  And, know that your situation will change - there will be advantages and difficulties because you are a student teacher and because you are young that will change as you become a regular teacher and older.   I think good teachers will recognized these for what they are and therefore embrace the advantages and adjust for the challenges as you develop.

Connect - The most important thing that you can do is connect with your students.  If they see you as caring about them and genuinely interested in them as individuals, they will learn better from you and invest in your teaching.  Learn their names. Take an interest in who they are.  Show you care. Offer them opportunity to give you feedback.  Greet students when they walk in. 

Make your class authentic - the best teachers I know are not just masters of their subject, but they created an authentic class.  If you remember my class, I used the bell and "fired up, ready to go?"  Some people might call it a schtick or see it as theatrical, but students will be more excited and interested when they know that they are coming to your own unique place. This might take time to figure out what works for you, but I think it is important and should not be neglected for simply teaching based on pedagogy in books.

Don't take yourself or class too seriously or personally - Despite your best efforts, Students may not ty or appear to not care - 99% of the time, this is because of something going on in their own life.  You can try to reach them, but ultimately, don't beat yourself up about it. And often times, I have thought that things were not going well, but I persevered and devoted myself to it.  When the end of the year came, I expected very negative feedback from students, but I have almost always had more positive feedback than negative.  So, sometimes you need to keep devoting yourself and doing what you believe in even if at the time it feels like students don't care.  You will be surprised at how many of them are moved by your teaching even though they don't show it at the time. A great teacher I worked with used to say that as teachers, "we are planting shade trees that we will never sit under."