Sociology & Anthropology Mission

The Sociology & Anthropology Department supports the mission of Ohio University and the College of Arts & Sciences "to advance the interrelated areas of teaching, research, and outreach in a learning-centered community" that "foster(s) creativity, scholarly discovery, academic excellence and global citizenship." Its two distinct but complementary disciplines, sociology and anthropology, emerge from different intellectual traditions. However, both seek to provide training in foundational critical learning, analytical, and research skills combined with breadth and depth of knowledge about social, cultural, and behavioral processes that span the globe and the diversity of human experience to prepare students with the knowledge and skills they need to be productive community members and global citizens.

Sociology's Mission Includes:

Excellence in instruction on the social causes and consequences of criminal and deviant behavior, social inequalities, and social policy that spans general education, undergraduate majors and graduate students in sociology and interdisciplinary programs across the campus.

• Nationally and internationally prominent research in criminology, poverty and inequality, rural development, gender, and social interaction.
• Enhancement of critical and analytic learning skills in both undergraduate and graduate education through emphasis on writing and qualitative and quantitative research methods.
• Diversity education through instruction and research on diverse forms of human society and social organization, with emphasis on gender, race/ethnicity, class, and place as organizing principles of social life.
• Service to the university, the discipline, the region and beyond through applied research, instruction and outreach on issues of poverty, crime, inequality, and social and economic development.

Anthropology's Mission Includes

• Excellence in instruction for undergraduate majors, general education, and interdisciplinary and graduate programs across the university.
• Nationally and internationally prominent research in Mesoamerican archaeology; Ohio Valley archaeology; forensic anthropology; African, Southeast Asian, and South Asian ethnography; and applied anthropology.
• Enhancement of critical and analytic learning skills in both undergraduate and graduate education through training in research methods and writing.
• Fostering values of diversity and inclusiveness though anthropology's uniquely holistic, comparative, and scientific approach to the study of the biological, social, and cultural aspects of human life.
• Student preparation to be global citizens in a rapidly changing and multi-cultured world.
• Service to the community and region through instruction, research, and outreach in environmental archaeology, forensic anthropology, applied anthropology, and the Ohio Valley International Council.