Aminzade PublicSociology ASA Brochure

Endnotes
1
More than an exercise in beneficence, the Princeton-HAP collaboration represents the logical
extension of sociological insight and an invaluable learning experience. Last year, at a poetry
reading sponsored by HAP, a young woman addressed an audience of nearly one hundred
prisoners in these terms: “When in hell they tell you not to speak, then sing.”That, in a nutshell,
is what Jesús Sanabria and his associates try to do.There lies the intellectual discovery, there,
the moral wonder.
2
For a discussion, see: Western, Bruce, Meredith Kleykamp, and Jake Rosenfeld, “Crime,
Punishment, and American Inequality.” In Social Inequality (forthcoming) (Kathy Neckerman,
Editor), New York: Russell Sage Foundation Press.
Originally published in the July/August 2004 Footnotes newsletter.
The Engaged Department: Public Sociology

in the Twin Cities
BY RONALD AMINZADE, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA-TWIN CITIES
Public engagement is not new in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota
(www.soc.umn.edu). From its creation in 1901, the University of Minnesota Sociology
Department has been committed to public sociology. Pitirim Sorokin, exiled from Russia for
his political opposition to Lenin, launched his path-breaking work on social mobility and
democracy in our department.Arnold Rose was a member of the Minnesota State Legislature,
and Caroline Rose established the American Sociological Association’s Rose Monograph Series
to bring sociological works to wide audiences and forge links between social science and social
policy.This commitment to publicly engaged scholarship and teaching continues today.
Among the Department’s diverse faculty research projects that contribute to critical public
awareness and policy debates are studies of dual-earner couples, adolescent work and path-
ways of attainment, cultures of criminal punishment, uses of technology in American
schools, high-stakes graduation tests, immigrant responses to post-9/11 changes in immigra-
tion laws, changing religious communities, foster parenting and care work, family friendly
workplace policies, adolescent sexual activity, medical error and patient compliance, compa-
ny investments in job skills training, patterns of violence against women, and certification
processes in the juvenile court system.The public scholarship of our faculty members takes
them around the globe, to study social movements in opposition to production of geneti-
cally modified food, environmental protest in Japan, World Bank environmental policies,
global expansion of higher education, gender differences in political participation and par-
tisanship in Europe, ethnic conflict in Latin America, affirmative action policies in Africa,
and homelessness in European and American cities.
50 2004 ANNUAL MEETING—PUBLIC SOCIOLOGIES

Going Public
Although good sociological research is often difficult to reduce to a sound-bite, sociologists

have an important part to play in providing useful, accurate, and scientifically rigorous infor-
mation to policy makers and community leaders. As sociologists who have neither the lux-
ury nor the desire to stay in the ivory tower, our faculty members are committed to mak-
ing their work—and themselves—available in a variety of public forums.They have served
on the boards of a variety of nonprofit organizations, including Books for Africa and Civic
Ventures, spoken to and consulted with various community organizations, testified at leg-
islative hearings, and served as court consultants. Faculty members have appeared in local
and national newspapers and been interviewed on radio and television about their research
and its relevance to various publics. For example, the American Mosaic Project, directed by
Doug Hartmann, Penny Edgell, and Joe Gerteis, has recently completed a nation-wide sur-
vey on how Americans understand religious, national, and racial differences and the findings
are now making their way into local and national news media. Phyllis Moen’s research on
aging and retirement was recently featured on 60 Minutes and Jeylan Mortimer’s book on
working and growing up in America was featured on the NBC Today Show and in the Wall
Street Journal. Christopher Uggen’s research on felon disenfranchisement was highlighted in
a New York Times magazine article on the most important ideas of 2003. Kathy Hull recent-
ly testified at the Minnesota State legislature against a proposed constitutional amendment
to ban same sex marriage.
Students Included
A strong commitment to public engagement is also evident in our teaching activities. In

June 2002, Ron Aminzade, chair of the University of Minnesota Sociology Department, led
a delegation of Sociology faculty members, the University’s service learning coordinator,
and a long-term community partner to participate in the National Campus Compact
Summer Institute for the Engaged Department. Participants focused on how to more fully
integrate community service learning into the undergraduate curriculum and provide more
students with civic learning opportunities. The conference helped us assess departmental
progress in developing community-based teaching and scholarship.To date, 20 faculty mem-
bers and instructors have worked closely with the Career and Community Learning Center
to incorporate community service learning into more than 15 different courses. Faculty
members have recently created two new courses that feature service learning, “Service
Learning in Criminology” and “Sociology of Work.” We are now seeking external funding
for a service learning graduate fellowship and developing a new capstone course
(“Sociology and Society”) for our 600+ majors. This course is designed to encourage our
graduating seniors to think critically about the role of sociological knowledge in the con-
temporary world and to reflect on how the knowledge, skills, and insights of the sociologi-
cal enterprise can be used and applied in their lives and careers outside of the university.
PUBLIC SOCIOLOGY IN ACTION 51

Community-based Research Workshops
The Department of Sociology has sponsored a series of workshops on community-based
research and invited numerous speakers to campus to discuss strategies for integrating com-
munity-based research into our teaching. The departmental Teaching Resources Center
(TRC), created in 1989, has continued to expand its collection of books, articles, and videos
on community service learning. One recent graduate student TRC project involved com-
piling a comprehensive list of available community partners and their histories, along with
valuable information on how to incorporate service learning into coursework. This year’s
annual departmental celebration, the Sociology Research Institute, featured a lively talk on
“Public Sociologies” by Michael Burawoy. Professor Burawoy’s presentation prompted the
creation of a new departmental award for public sociology.
Academic Reward Structure

Strong institutional support for public scholarship has provided a catalyst for thinking more
broadly about the meaning of public engagement in all aspects of our work. In June 2002
University of Minnesota President Robert Bruininks issued a call for the University of
Minnesota to reassert its civic mission as a land grant public institution. He created a uni-
versity-wide Council on Public Engagement (COPE) and charged the Council with the
task of developing a systematic strategy to integrate public engagement across the full range
of university activities. COPE initiatives include efforts to create rigorous standards for out-
reach work and a plan to acknowledge significant student involvement in community serv-
ice learning by including a “community service scholar” designation on student transcripts.
COPE has generated an interdisciplinary discussion of the meaning of public engagement
and encouraged and recognized civic engagement through the Provost’s Outstanding
Community Service Award and the funding of 34 Seed Grant Projects. The Council has
developed measures for assessing the impact and outcome of publicly engaged activities,
worked on making the university more accessible to external groups, and outlined a strate-
gy for better informing broader publics about our academic work. Colleges across the uni-
versity have begun to rethink reward structures so as to facilitate public engagement.Annual
budget requests from each College now include a section in which they must identify their
public engagement goals.
Our experience at the University of Minnesota underscores the crucial importance of pro-
viding institutional support and altering incentive structures to foster publicly engaged
scholarship and teaching. Both the University of Minnesota and the sociology department
are committed to continuing efforts to promote public sociologies through our teaching,
research, and outreach. For many in the larger community, the university remains an intim-
idating and unapproachable elitist institution.With the recent decline in public support and
funding for the university, the need for academics to connect with local and global commu-
nities is greater than ever. We seek to develop future practical innovations that will build
mutually beneficial community partnerships, transform our academic culture and institu-
tional identities, and make public engagement an institutional priority. Our department
strives to be in the forefront of the discipline’s efforts to reclaim its heritage of active pub-
lic engagement as we face the daunting challenges of the twenty-first century. ■
To be published in the November 2004 Footnotes newsletter.
52 2004 ANNUAL MEETING—PUBLIC SOCIOLOGIES

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Endnotes

Originally published in the July/August 2004 Footnotes newsletter.

The Engaged Department: Public Sociology

50 2004 ANNUAL MEETING—PUBLIC SOCIOLOGIES

Although good sociological research is often difficult to reduce to a sound-bite, sociologists

A strong commitment to public engagement is also evident in our teaching activities. In

PUBLIC SOCIOLOGY IN ACTION 51

Academic Reward Structure

52 2004 ANNUAL MEETING—PUBLIC SOCIOLOGIES

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