Many academic departments are making efforts to increase faculty and student community engagement as part of a movement to revitalize the civic function of higher education. A case study of the development of a public sociology program provides examples of steps that can be taken to involve educators and students in communities in multifaceted…

The benefits of community-based research (CBR) in the sociology classroom go beyond those associated with traditional service learning. Here, students use their sociological skills to examine and propose solutions to local social problems addressed by community organizations. Through analyzing students' course reflection journals and the results…

Prepared for a symposium, "The Social Sciences in Japan Today, held at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies (Chicago, March 22, 1967).

Examines these questions: What are life histories? What problems and people are best suited for them? What motivates people to write them? Does the collection procedure affect the content? and How should the material be analyzed? (Author/SK)

Reviews a community training program for undergraduate students at a small liberal arts college in Alton, Illinois. The program involves students in a community work placement, a community studies course, and work study experience in a small industrial town near the college. (Author/DB)

Uses a class exercise that tests the folk wisdom concerning small-town friendliness. Students are assigned to express random friendliness to strangers so they can determine whether friendlier responses are elicited in small towns or large cities. (KO)

A melding of community professionals, graduate students, and sociology faculty to identify and study urban community problems proved to be a viable technique for an experimental seminar program. (Author/KM)

Attempts to delineate some grounds for expansion of the knowledge base within the field of minority studies and more generally within sociology: minority research is seen as one acute instance of a general malaise in sociology. (Author/JM)

The purpose of this study was to test House's and Mason's hypothesis (1975) that only a weak relationship exists between political alienation and traditional demographic definitions of social position. Such demographic variables include age, sex, socioeconomic status, length of residency in the community, and occupational prestige. Data was…

Documenting the development of monographs on the rural community in Poland, this paper discusses: (1) development of monographic community studies from the beginning of the 19th century to the contemporary period (ethnographic, socioeconomic, socio-historical, economic, historical-sociological, and sociological monographs); (2) the present state…

Focus is the measurement of power at the community level considering the social organizational context. (SE)

North Carolina State University offers a course designed to help students evaluate the community in which they are student teaching. In the first phase of the course, emphasis is on the understanding of and planning for the research. In phase two the student studies community life in detail. (LRA)

Offers suggestions for a sociology course in extraordinary groups, utopian studies, or alternative communities to help broaden awareness and understanding of human behavior, past and present groups, and cultural pluralism. Includes ideas for field trips, projects, readings, and films and videos. Discusses basing lectures on commitment, conversion,…

The purpose of this research is to determine if it is possible to build an inner-city community with socioeconomic and racial mix and have it work. The findings from a study carried out in the Near Southside Chicago community of South Commons, built in the late 50's are presented. Methodology included informal conversations, interviews with adult…