The grand majority of the undergrad students in our classes will not end up working in academia, and many will ask, “What can I do with a degree in Sociology?” We recommend our “Embedded Sociologists” feature–where Hollie and Kia, as well as Suzy Maves McElrath and Sarah Shannon take a closer look at sociologists who work outside of the academy–to help your students get a sense of a sociological perspective and what a background in sociology can offer them in the job market.
We think this article would work well in an Intro class because it offers a rich description of how a sociological imagination can be used outside of the classroom in future careers. It would also be a good addition to a senior thesis class, for those students who want to go to graduate school, but may not want to work in academia. We hope this article will also be useful to graduate students thinking about taking an alternative path.
A few questions to get a discussion of this article started:
1) Were you surprised at the range of careers sociologists can have?
2) According to the sociologists interviewed in this article, how can the sociological imagination be used to address real-world problems and solutions?
3) What are some ways that you have used your sociological imagination outside of the classroom?
4) Why have academic sociologists and non-academic sociologists generally not worked together? According to the authors, what are the possible consequences of such a disconnect?