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Mission Statement & Learning Outcomes

The Whitworth Sociology Department's mission is to prepare students with the skills to describe, explain, interpret and make a difference in social life. The department equips students to promote well-being in the arenas of social life around them and encourages students to explore the relationships between sociology and faith. To these ends, students are expected to master the substantive content of sociology and its methods of research and data analysis, develop an ideal vision of social life as informed by sociology and their deepest convictions, and be prepared to advance that vision through a career and social engagement. The faculty is committed to providing excellence in teaching, scholarship and mentoring, and to modeling community engagement through research, writing, consultation and service. In addition, the faculty helps foster a stimulating and supportive learning community and offers perspectives on social life and social issues from a variety of value frameworks and Christian traditions.

The learning outcomes of this major prepare the student to do the following:

• Demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of humans as social and cultural beings and the implications of that for responsible participation in social life.
• Demonstrate a mastery of the content of sociology in terms of the following:
  • understanding the theoretical and conceptual core of sociology and one of the three specialized tracks within the major;
  • understanding the breadth of human social experience across cultures, race, class, gender and social contexts;
  • understanding the nature of social problems and being able to propose effective ways to treat harmed persons and make preventive structural changes in light of a vision of social well-being;
  • having a critical appreciation of sociology, its promise and limitations, and its connections with broader conversations about the human story.
• Demonstrate skills in the following:
  • conducting and assessing social research, computing, and data analysis;
  • accessing and using reliable sources of sociological data and analysis;
  • evaluating the adequacy of ideas, assumptions, and data about social life that they encounter within and outside of sociology;
  • oral, written, and presentational communication.
• Be able to understand, respect, communicate and work with people different from themselves.
• Work to clarify their faith commitments, values and deepest convictions, and relate them in meaningful ways to sociology, to social issues, and to the way they conduct their lives.
• Be prepared for engagement with the world by doing the following:
  • identifying a career of service and social action that expresses who they are and that makes a difference in the world;
  • being able to act as responsible participants in social life, attentive to the social life around them and prepared to promote social well-being among their neighbors here and across the globe.