Departmental Goings-On

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Handel advanced methods course description November 24, 2006

Filed under: Uncategorized — gradsociology @ 12:02 am

Soc G213 will be a very hands-on class.  The focus will be more on doing than on reading.  The reading will be designed mostly to support student projects.

The course will be centered around translating each student’s substantive interests into an original research paper.  I hope to hold the class in a computer lab.  On the first day students contribute their research interests to the group and we go to the online data repository known as ICPSR and search for data sets that can speak to the students’ different interests.  Everyone downloads a data set that is relvant for their interest in class.  In class, we open up the codebooks and collectively try to makes sense of them and look for variables that might be useful for analysis.  We read the data sets from ascii format into a stats package’s system file format for analysis and run frequencies on the variables that look promising.

The following several classes we do a condensed review of statistics and of how to use the stats package (Stata), as well as covering some research principles and methods that perhaps were not in your methods course. Weekly assignments will be to apply the statistical and methodological principles learned to your data set and to gradually develop a research plan for the final paper.  Then the course will move to more of a seminar format in which students discuss their progress and solicit ideas and feedback from the group.

The goal will be to move from general ideas you may have about a topic to testable propositions, which the final paper will test.  Students will do literature searches to help derive hypotheses, but this will also be done as through short class presentations and open discussions.  If people need help or even ideas for research topics, I’ll act as a backup and facilitator.  I have a backlog of research that students can work on for the class and we can collaborate on making them joint publications afterward, but this is not the aim of the class.  The goal is to equip you with the tools to conduct your own research on topics that interest you.

I’d like to demystify the research process and ideally even give people a head start on dissertation projects or at least a paper that can be presented at a conference or even submitted for publication.  At the end of the class, everyone should feel comfortable doing quantitative research on their own from start to finish: finding the data, putting it in usable form, exploring it for its potential, discovering the ways it can be used to answer interesting questions, conducting quantitative analyses, and communicating findings in a professional research paper.

 

grant opportunity November 23, 2006

Filed under: Uncategorized — gradsociology @ 11:54 pm

The Stanford Center on Adolescence is pleased to announce that it will be awarding up to $10,000 to graduate students and post doctoral researchers conducting empirical research on a broad range of topics that shed light on purpose in life among young people.  Researchers from all disciplines are encouraged to apply for the awards, and applications are due on January 17, 2007.  Applicants must be affiliated with an accredited college or university and should be U.S citizens or permanent residents. Postdoctoral applicants  must have received their Ph.D. within the past five years. More information and application materials can be found at http://coagrants.stanford.edu

 

printing from your laptop at school November 9, 2006

Filed under: Uncategorized — gradsociology @ 10:27 pm

here is how to connect to our printers from windows laptops: (from Judy Perrolle)

1. Go to Control Panel and open Printers
2. Select “Local Printer”
3. Unselect “Auto Detect”
4. Create a new port
5. select Standard TCP/IP port
6. enter

 

November 9, 2006

Filed under: Uncategorized — gradsociology @ 10:27 pm

here is how to connect to our printers from windows laptops: (from Judy Perrolle)

1. Go to Control Panel and open Printers
2. Select “Local Printer”
3. Unselect “Auto Detect”
4. Create a new port
5. select Standard TCP/IP port
6. enter

 

New Spring 2007 Schedule November 9, 2006

Filed under: Uncategorized — gradsociology @ 2:04 pm

Hey, everybody!  New schedule!

Check the registrar’s website.  Many of the conflicts for grad sociology courses this spring have been eliminated.  http://www.registrar.neu.edu/ocs-mn-sp07-g-c-ez.html#CSOC

 

Oct 25 COGS meeting November 4, 2006

Filed under: COGS — gradsociology @ 10:04 pm

COGS Oct. 25, 2006

Combined 5 year BA/MA degree:

- The current thinking among the faculty is to require a 3.75 GPA to apply to the BA/MA program; one faculty member concerned about the 3.75 requirement; thinks we’ll be leaving out some desirable candidates who have a lower GPA

- Issue: should we construct a separate MA for the combined or do the same MA that we have now

- The BA/MA students will NOT be eligible for traditional funding (so would not take it away from MA/PhD funding)

- The point of the BA/MA is to generate money for the university; we intend for students to then go on to a professional job

- Will our BA/MA students have access to our PhD program? Blanks stares all around

- As far as nailing down the specifics of the BA/MA, one faculty member suggested putting together a specific proposal and emailing it before the faculty meeting so that the meeting could be used to discuss specifics and elaborate on the proposal

- One faculty member suggested putting together an ad hoc committee between members of COGS and undergrad committee

- COGS would like to hear from the graduate students about all this

- Chase suggested calling other universities who have a sociology BA/MA already in place

- The BA/MA program could be in place as early as fall 2007

- According to one faculty member: BA/MA students would be strongly discouraged from applying for the PhD, because it looks really bad to get your BA, MA, and PhD from the same school (others agreed)

- There are currently no plans to change the curriculum for this program, they will be in the same academically-oriented courses as MA/PhD students

- The college keeps asking us to do a professionally-oriented MA; we’ve been talking about this for a while, but it’s not going to happen any time soon


Course Restrictions for non-sociology students:

- There are 2 options: restricting through the use of a major code when registering (the registration system will not let you register unless you are a declared member of the dept); required permission of instructor

- Our department, as a way to limit enrollment to sociology students, could require one or both

- Theory 2 and methods are already restricted (major code and/or perm. of instructor)

 

Ethnography through Sport course:

- COGS rep reported to the committee that Alan had told a student that the final project would have to be a combination of their specialty AND sport, not just their topic through ethnographer; rep reported that this had upset some students

- One faculty member asked if there was any way to require Alan to be more lenient on the final paper topic requirement

- Another faculty member said there’s no way to require this of him

- Another faculty member was very surprised that Alan had this requirement

- Conclusion: COGS will inform the department/faculty that there’s a concern that there will be very low enrollment

- There was some discussion of trying to get other faculty members to teach the course in a non-sport related way; there seemed to be general consensus that this prob. wouldn’t happen

 

Informal Research Events:

- COGS wants to know from the graduate students: if we arrange informal research events, will you attend regularly? This would include workshops as well as brown bags with faculty discussing their latest research

     - Judy is considering hosting a workshop for computer users: 1) how to print from your laptop using the sociology dept. network, 2) viruses, 3) backing up your data on your school machine

Reminder: November 14 is the last day to bring non-perishables for the Thanksgiving food drive; drop off cans, etc. in the box near the front office

Reminder: the front office needs to receive updated bios for the website; many of the bios there currently are outdated. Send these to Mary in the front office at m.ramsey@neu.edu.

Next COGS meeting: November 29

 

undergrad TA’s? November 4, 2006

Filed under: COGS, Uncategorized — gradsociology @ 9:54 pm

This is an idea a graduate student shared: undergrads as TA’s – this would encourage those grad students who turn down funding because it’s too much work to teach sans TA to now take the funding and teach

 

Other schools do this and pay TA’s as little as $100 a week – they do it because they can put it on their CV and it looks really good….

 

Spring Schedule November 1, 2006

Filed under: Uncategorized — gradsociology @ 4:51 pm

Some particularly attentive and concerned graduate students have brought to our attention the unusually high number of conflicting graduate classes in the Spring 2007 schedule (if you haven’t checked yet, you can find this on the NU Registrar’s website).  Specifically:

On Mondays (6:30 - 8:30) – Kathrina Zippel’s methods course (required for first-year students); Alan Klein’s field methods (and sport!) course; Wini Breines’s “Race, Class, Gender: Feminist View”; and Barry Bluestone’s urban policy course (this course actually is scheduled 6:15-8:15)

On Tuesdays — Mike Handel’s advanced methods (6:30-8:30) and Ineke Marshall’s deviant behavior (4:30-7:00)

On Thursdays — Mike Brown’s contemporary theory (6:30-8:30) and Danny Faber’s master’s paper course (4:30-7:00)

 The only course offered on Wednesdays is Deb Kaufman’s “Ethnic, Race, and Religious Identity.”  Are any of you interested in registering for this course?  Otherwise, we will recommend that some courses be moved to Wednesday.

These scheduling conflicts will lead to obvious problems, including students having to choose between two courses they want to take, and first year students (for whom two required courses are already put into their schedule) having little selection from which to choose an elective.

If you are concerned about the proposed spring schedule, or if you have suggestions about how it could be improved, please leave a comment on the blog before Monday, November 6, so that your COGS representatives can take action before the schedule is solidified, leaving little room for manipulation.