Many students first learn about sociology in courses in community colleges. ASA recognizes that faculty at community colleges bring a wealth of experience and pedagogical skills to our discipline. We are committed to supporting community college faculty and connecting them to each other and to resources for the classroom and beyond.
Connect with ASA Community College Professionals
Faculty teaching sociology in community colleges can connect with those on the Community College Faculty listserv. When you indicate Two Year College as your current employment sector in your ASA member profile, you are automatically added to the Community College Faculty listserv.
Report of the ASA Task Force on Community College Faculty
This Task Force was charged with gathering empirical data on faculty teaching sociology at community colleges to better understand their characteristics, credentials, professional identities, professional goals, and professional development needs, as well as the working conditions and structural arrangements that impact sociology curricula and its implementation in their institutions. Based on its findings, the Task Force made recommendations to ASA for how to best serve community college faculty.
The task force conducted a survey of community college faculty that received more than 700 responses. Results from the survey were reported in three articles published in Teaching Sociology.
Brown, Sonia, Stacye Blount, Charles A. Dickinson, Alison Better, Margaret Weigers Vitullo, Deidre Tyler, and Michael Kisielewski. 2016. “Teaching for Social Justice: Motivations of Community College Faculty in Sociology.” Teaching Sociology 44(4): 244-55.
Kapitulik, Brian P., Katherine R. Rowell, Michelle A. Smith, and Nicole V. Amaya. 2016. “Examining the Professional Status of Full-time Sociology Faculty in Community Colleges.” Teaching Sociology 44(4): 256-69.
Curtis, John W., Cynthia Mahabir, and Margaret Weigers Vitullo. 2016. “Sociology Faculty Members Employed Part-time in Community Colleges: Structural Disadvantage, Cultural Devaluation, and Faculty-Student Relationships.” Teaching Sociology 44(4):270-86.
Teaching and Learning Symposium at the Annual Meeting
This Annual Meeting event was established in response to the recommendations of the ASA Task Force on Community College Faculty in Sociology. The Teaching and Learning Symposium consists of four back-to-back sessions of workshops, roundtable discussions, and poster presentations that are focused on teaching and learning in the discipline. Proposals to present at the symposium (which are due in January of each year) consist of a 300-word structured abstract. The symposium creates new pathways to engage a broader array of sociologists in discussions of teaching and learning in the discipline—including both community college faculty for whom developing a full paper confers little professional benefit, and faculty in research intensive universities who care about teaching but whose areas of research do not include teaching and learning. The symposium is scheduled either the day before or the day after the main day of sessions organized by the Section on Teaching and Learning, resulting in two full days of programming focused on teaching at the Annual Meeting.
Note that community college faculty are eligible for a substantially reduced Annual Meeting registration fee. For more information, visit the Annual Meeting Page.
Teaching Resources
Faculty are at the heart of the discipline of sociology. ASA offers resources and programs to support pedagogical success for faculty and teachers across the full range of institution types. Visit the ASA Teaching webpage for information on online learning, TRAILS (ASA’s online peer reviewed library of high-quality teaching resources), and more. Additionally, our public sociology journal Contexts and our Sociological Insights video collection are excellent ways to communicate cutting-edge social research to general audiences.
Additional Resources
The Midwest Institute for International/Intercultural Education (MIIIE) is a self-funded consortium of two-year colleges located in the Midwest region. Its primary objective is to support curriculum and professional development by providing curriculum workshops, fall and spring conferences, overseas projects for faculty and students, assistance with grant development, and faculty mentoring and professional networking.
Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowships are tailored to the circumstances of humanities and social science faculty who teach at two-year institutions and are intended to support their research ambitions. These fellowships are made possible by the generous support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Stanford University’s EPIC fellowship program brings together a cohort of ten California community college faculty and academic staff from various disciplines (humanities, social sciences, mathematics, hard sciences, international programs, etc.) to work collaboratively with Stanford staff for one academic year (August-May) on self-designed projects aimed at developing global competencies and awareness among community college students.
Campus Compact is a national coalition of 1,000+ colleges and universities that are committed to the public purposes of higher education, focusing on civic education and community development. The coalition’s resources include sample syllabi, student fellowships, and professional development.
