OU Sociology is dedicated to understanding the social world both globally and locally. Several of our faculty work on a variety of projects exploring social process in and around Oklahoma. This is part of our ongoing mission to understand the State of Social Life in Oklahoma. Through community outreach and the development of strategic partnerships, we seek to collect, analyze, and disseminate sociological data and findings from urban and rural Oklahoma.
Several of our faculty are pursuing or have published projects about social life in Oklahoma.
We have partnered with several state offices and community partners including (but not limited to):
Since coming to OU, I have been so honored to partner with state agencies to help them meet their evaluation needs. The need is great, and our research skills and perspectives are in high demand. Making those connections and sustaining them is mutually beneficial. These partnerships are the most rewarding aspect of my work, as I know that research can have direct implications for policy and practice. Oklahoma has some talented and innovative leadership doing their best to improve the well-being of children and families in our state. I'm honored to work with them.
In January, 2020, Dr. Trina Hope and Dr. Connie Chapple (pictured) launched an innovative, ethnographic study of high-impact learning experiences inside an Oklahoma Prison. We partnered with Dr. John Carl and his Inside/Out course at OU, which is designed to connect incarcerated and traditional students inside a correctional facility. We traveled weekly to collect data at Mabel Bassett Correctional Center in McLeod, Oklahoma, which is the largest women's prison in the state of Oklahoma. We observed class interactions and focused on how the process of transformational learning occurs within a correctional environment presents challenges to high-impact learning, but the overall positive experience outweighs the challenges faced. Our work is ongoing and will inform academic research and local educational practices.
Dr. Meredith G. F. Worthen has conducted extensive research in the state of Oklahoma clustering around the areas of LGBTQ studies and gender and crime. Through her survey research focused on college students' LGBT attitudes in the state of Oklahoma, she has demonstrated the importance of understanding variations in LGBT stigma as well as the particular complexities that come about in Bible Belt and Southern U.S. regions that relate to LGBT attitudes. In addition, Worthen collected data about sexual assault education in the state of Oklahoma and found that intersectionality (especially gender, sexuality, and race/ethnicity) is integral to continued conversation about campus sexual assault. In an ongoing series of co-authored projects with Emeritus Faculty Member, Susan Sharp, and OU Sociology PhD graduate Melissa Jones, Worthen has focused on Oklahoma women prisoners and their adverse childhood experiences. Together, this body of research works toward uncovering the significance of multiple dynamics in the social life in the state of Oklahoma.
Dr. Mitchell Peck (pictured) has conducted several research projects with a specific focus on the state of Oklahoma. Partnering with Dr. Paul Ketchum (University of Oklahoma, College of Professional and Continuing Studies), he has examined various components of the juvenile justice system in Oklahoma. One study focused on the effectiveness of the two largest juvenile treatment strategies (group home and early intervention programs) aimed at reducing recidivism of juvenile offenders. The study results helped officials at the Oklahoma Office of Juvenile Affairs better target juvenile offenders to reduce recidivism rates. Another study examined the extent of disproportionate minority contact in the juvenile justice system in Oklahoma. The results from the study helped juvenile justice officials develop strategies for the reduction of disproportionate minority contact that are both feasible and cost effective.
Dr. Loretta Bass is a social demographer investigating inequality that affects children and youth as part of her Oklahoma research agenda. She worked with the Cleveland County Health Department and Norman Public Schools to examine what household and neighborhood factors are related to child well-being indicators, such as obesity and being on-track academically, and she found the highest obesity rates for 5th graders who lived in neighborhoods without full-service grocery stores and coming from families where parents were not active in physical activities with their children. Also, Dr. Bass directed a survey in partnership with the tribal government and OU Poll to assess the health and community needs of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes population in nine Oklahoma counties in and outside tribal service areas.
The faculty in our department are regularly seeking to develop strategic partnership to understand social life in Oklahoma. If you are interested in developing such a partnership, please reach out to our faculty directly, or view our faculty's research interests.
The Department of Sociology at the University of Oklahoma has a number of groups and workshops to facilitate our interdisciplinary research, create networking opportunities for undergraduate majors, and encourage graduate student training and collaboration.
The ADQUANT lecture series is a collaborative forum for the discussion, dissemination, and appreciation of the methodological diversity across sociology, criminology, and the social sciences. While historically this working group focused on quantitative and statistical methodologies (as our name implies), we have evolved and transformed into a general methods group that celebrates the multiple approaches to knowledge production within sociology and criminology. We seek to advance and facilitate methodological rigor, engage in interdisciplinary approaches to addressing sociological/criminological concerns, and encourage conversation between and across methodologies in our research. Each semester we invite faculty and students to present their ongoing research projects to our methods forum and we hope you will join us for an exciting semester that will showcase many fascinating presentations.
The Dialogues of Contemporary Sociology (DOCS) workshop is a student-run, collaborative forum for reading and discussing major contemporary work within sociology. We focus on exploring recent publications in the major journals of our field – American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, and Social Problems – in order to stay abreast of contemporary trends within sociology and better position ourselves to contribute to the ongoing concerns that motivate sociologists. In addition, each semester we invite several faculty members and advanced graduate students to present their research to our group to facilitate collaboration and to deeply engage both our students and faculty into the research that is happening at OU sociology. If you are interested in being added to our mailing list and joining us at our meeting, please contact the current president, Ami Frost.
DOCS is organized by several of the graduate students from OU’s Sociology department.
The purpose of the Sociology/Criminology Club (SCC) is to provide a forum for undergraduate students who are interested in criminology and sociology. The mission of the SCC is to inform its members about careers, internships, graduate study, and other opportunities available in criminology and sociology and to provide a setting in which they can meet and socialize with other students who share similar interests. Meeting dates and times as well as topics are published via OrgSync.
Alpha Kappa Delta (AKD) is an international sociology honor society first established in 1920. The purpose of Alpha Kappa Delta is to seek to acknowledge and promote excellence in the scholarship of sociology, the research of social problems, and other social and intellectual activities that will lead to improvement in the human condition. The University of Oklahoma's AKD chapter was established in 1958 as the Beta of Oklahoma chapter of AKD and is the longest existing AKD chapter in the state of Oklahoma.
AKD membership is open to undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty members. Currently, there are more than 101,000 members in Alpha Kappa Delta and over 630 chapters.
If you meet these requirements and are interested in joining AKD, complete the application form and return it with your $50 membership fee (required of all new initiates) to Dr. Christopher R.H. Garneau (the faculty advisor of AKD) in his mailbox in 331 Kaufman Hall. Applications and fees are due by October 30 for fall memberships and March 10 for spring memberships.
As the primary organization for Sociologists and complementary disciplines in the state, the Oklahoma Sociological Association, provides a network for exchanging ideas with other researchers, students, teachers, practitioners and public citizens. Working primarily at the state and local level, the Association seeks to articulate with other state, local, national and international organizations in the hopes of fostering discourse in an atmosphere of mutual respect, support and openness to otherness.
OSA also reaches out to allied disciplines and welcomes a wide array of people and ideas. In past recent conventions, for example, in addition to our core group of Sociologists we have been enriched and enlivened by the work of scholars from Criminology, Social Work, African & African-American Studies, Women’s & Gender Studies, Religious Studies, Environmental Studies, Biology, Human Ecology, Geography, Psychology, Political Science, Film & Media Studies, Rhetoric, Communication and Cultural Studies.
This is a time of renaissance for the organization. In November of 2017, the Oklahoma Sociological Association had its conference on the beautiful flagship campus of the University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK. By all measures, it was lively, successful, educational, and one of the most well-attended conferences in recent memory.
After several years of having gone dark, OSA’s journal, Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology, is open once again, and is planning on soon publishing an issue. Under the capable Editorship of Dr. Christopher Hill, the journal is housed in the Sociology Department of the University of Oklahoma.
