Our Students

About 90 students with diverse backgrounds and interests major in the department. The department annually presents the Everett V. Stonequist Award, the O. Roger Gallagher Award, the Betten and Betten Award, and the Nancy Beth Rautenberg, '83, Award to outstanding students in Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work. The department also has a chapter of Alpha Kappa Delta, an international honor society recognizing and encouraging superior academic achievement in sociology.

Department majors play active roles at Skidmore and win a number of awards each year. For example, department majors are regularly elected to Phi Beta Kappa and the Periclean Honor Society. Two majors have received an American Sociological Association summer grant for the MOST program at the University of California at Berkeley and at the University of Wisconsin. Two graduating seniors have recently received prestigious Fulbright grants to conduct year-long research projects abroad.

Active faculty-student collaboration takes place in all three department disciplines, and student-faculty teams regularly receive collaborative research grants. In recent years students and faculty collaborated on projects on "Constructing Social Problems: The 'Deserving Poor'," "Alternative Use: An Ethnography of a Saratoga Sub-Culture," and "An Exploratory Study of the Effectiveness of Residential Care."

Many department majors go on to graduate or professional studies. Recent department majors are now continuing their academic work at such schools as the University of Washington, Emory University, SUNY at Albany, Smith College, the University of Pennsylvania, and Florida State University.

Among jobs held by students who have majored in Sociology, Anthropology, or Social Work at Skidmore are: