Renee Beard will join the Department as an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the fall 2008. She completed her undergraduate work at Boston College, her Ph.D. in medical sociology at the University of California San Francisco in 2005, and is now completing an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship with the Institute for Health Reserach and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Professor Beard's teaching interests are in the sociologies of health, families, and aging.
General Information:
Sociology
and Anthropology challenge students to examine the social
and cultural dimensions of the contemporary world. As social
sciences, these two disciplines play a distinctive role in
the liberal arts curriculum. Each combines a humanistic concern
for the quality and diversity of human life with a commitment
to the empirical analysis of culture and society. The department
welcomes non-majors to courses and offers three avenues for
specialized study: a major in sociology,a
major in anthropology; and
a minor in anthropology for
majors in other departments. The department maintains an active
advising program. Faculty advisors work closely with individual
advisees to clarify course offerings and discuss academic
and career goals. The department encourages students to pursue
interdisciplinary concentrations, internships, and study abroad,
and it provides advice on how to integrate these activities
into a course of study. Student scholarship is annually recognized
by the department by induction in to Alpha
Kappa Delta, the national honor society in sociology,
or Lambda
Alpha, the national collegiate honors society for anthropology.
Both societies promote human welfare through the advancement
of scientific knowledge that may be applied to the solution
of social problems. And both societies sponsor annual student
paper contests, and support students to present their original
work at regional and national conferences.
