Ray Muller wrote: > Hello Everyone, > Our department is working on a lower-division (200 level) combined > introduction to sociological theory and research methods tentatively > called "Sociological Inquiries".
About fifteen years ago, we created a course called "Foundations of Sociological Inquiry" (SOCI 201) as an intro course for majors. It's a pre-requisite for the other core requirements like Methods and Theory and is also our "writing intensive" course (every department must designate one of its courses as its writing course). We created it because people teaching upper-level courses complained that too many of the students did not know basic sociological concepts. "Foundations" would guarantee that they get the basics first. It was a good idea in principle, but many of our students are transfers from community colleges, and they have already had several sociology courses. Also, quite a few of them somehow manage to get around the pre-req sequencing rules and wind up taking "Foundations" in their senior year. Which doesn't mean they don't need it. I teach the course, and even though most of the students have taken other sociology courses, when I ask about, say, Durkheim, very few recognize the name, and those that do are hard pressed to come up with anything more than that the name sounds familiar. Jay Livingston Montclair State University
