The Department of Sociology records document the administrative history of the department and include annual reports, budgets, committee and departmental meeting minutes, correspondence, course evaluations, photographs, publications, and topical files. Records prior to 1950 and research records of individual faculty members are not well represented. The annual reports and the committee records—particularly the records of the Executive Committee—provide significant information regarding the development of the department.
While courses with sociological themes had been offered at the University of Michigan within the Departments of Political Science, Political Economy, and Philosophy since the early 1880s, the first courses bearing the name "sociology" were taught by Charles Horton Cooley in 1894. Cooley achieved a national reputation as one of the foremost sociologists of his day and was elected president of the American Sociological Society in 1918.
Despite the growth in course offerings and faculty during the 1920s, sociology courses continued to be offered within the Department of Economics until 1931. In that year, a separate Department of Sociology was created and Roderick Duncan McKenzie became its first chair. McKenzie's own interests were in the field of human ecology and he was instrumental in setting up an ongoing seminar on the Detroit metropolitan community. McKenzie died in 1940 and was succeeded by Robert Cooley Angell. During the 1940s, the department maintained a close relationship with the University of Chicago and a number of prominent sociologists from that school also taught at the University of Michigan as visiting lecturers.
At the end of World War II, Dr. Rensis Likert and a team of social psychologists were invited to Ann Arbor to establish a survey research center which, in 1948, became the Institute for Social Research. Their arrival had a twofold impact on the Department of Sociology. First, a close working relationship developed between the two units. Several members of the team were given part-time teaching positions in the department and graduate students were able to use the extensive data gathered by these researchers for their doctoral dissertations. Second, the presence of these noted social psychologists provided the momentum for the creation of one of the nation's first doctoral programs in Social Psychology in 1947. Theodore Newcomb was selected as the program's first director. Organized as an interdepartmental program, students were required to take courses in both the Departments of Sociology and Psychology. Although the program proved highly successful in attracting students and in achieving national recognition, it was dissolved in 1967. The reasons for ending the program appear to include administrative problems, disagreements over curriculum, and divergent theoretical interests in the two departments. Since 1967, students have been able to study social psychology within either department but joint degrees in this area area are no longer given.
In 1952, Amos H. Hawley became chair of the department. The 1950s and early 1960s saw the creation of a number of new programs either organized by the department or affiliated with it. In 1951, the Detroit Area Study (DAS) was established. A practicum for first-year graduate students that concluded in 2004, this survey program was designed to generate useful interview data and to train graduate students in the use of that data. In 1960, the Center for Research in Social Organization (CRSO) was established within the department. Designed to bring together those in the department whose research focused on changes in social organization, especially within a historical context, the center flourished during the 1970s especially under the direction of Charles Tilly. In 1961, the Population Studies Center (PSC) was established outside of the department but with the participation of a number of the department's faculty. The Center coordinated studies of changing fertility rates around the world as well as population distribution in the United States. The Population Studies Center became an autonomous unit within the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) in July 1991.
In the 1960s, student activists founded the Tutorial and Cultural Exchange Project, a service-learning program that saw University of Michigan students volunteering in hospitals, schools, and prisons across Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and Detroit. By 1970, the program, now called Project Community, had developed into a formal course. In 2013, Project Community—which had been previously overseen by the Office of Student Services and Ginsberg Center—was operating as part of the Department of Sociology.
The department had six chairs during the 1960s and 1970s: Guy E. Swanson (1961-1964); Albert E. Reiss (1964-1970); Howard Schuman (1970-1973); Walter Reynolds Farley (1973-1974); William A. Gamson (1974-1978); and Walter Reynolds Farley (1978-1981). By the mid-1970s, it was clear just how much the department had expanded from the immediate post war years. There were three times as many courses given in 1975 as there were in 1945. In that same time period, more than six times the number of doctorates were awarded, and the departmental budget rose six-fold. Outside research grants to departmental faculty which totaled only a few thousand dollars in 1945 had risen to $650,000 in 1975. Nevertheless, faculty turnover was unusually high. From 1962 to 1975, six senior faculty members resigned to accept positions at other universities and during the subsequent ten years several others followed. In a 1979 draft of the history of the department, Robert Cooley Angell noted that, despite increases in funding, the budget crunch at the University of Michigan was clearly a factor in the high turnover rate (see Executive Committee minutes of January 23, 1980, Box 5).
Starting in the late 1980s, graduate studies within the department focused on three major areas: human ecology and population, social psychology, and social organization. According to Howard Kimeldorf, a former chair of the Department of Sociology, the social organization area was the most intellectually varied of the three. The department later developed several cross-cutting areas—that focused on topics such as health and aging—to enhance the preliminary exam experience of social organization graduate students as well as facilitate collaboration between faculty of all three departmental areas. By the mid-2010s, seven areas had been established: Culture and Knowledge; Demography; Economic Sociology; Gender; Health and Aging; Power, History, and Social change; and Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration.
In 2022, the Department of Sociology consisted of 49 faculty teaching across 19 disciplines, including Family, Life Course, and Society; Inequalities and Stratification; and Sociology of Culture. Undergraduate students can receive a sociology major, with one of the following three submajors: Law, Justice, and Social Change (also offered as a minor); Sociology of Health and Medicine (also offered as a minor); or Sociology and Social Work. Additionally, the department's graduate program is organized loosely within seven different areas: Culture and Knowledge; Economic Sociology and Organization; Gender and Sexuality; Health and Healthcare; Power, History, and Social Change; Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration; and Social Demography.
Approximately one third of sociology students also participate in a variety of joint degree and interdisciplinary programs. The Department of Sociology offers joint doctoral programs with the School of Social Work and the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, although sociology students have also studied at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business. Sociology students have also participated in LSA's Afroamerican and African Studies, American Culture, Latino/a Studies, and Women's Studies programs.
For additional information about the Department of Sociology, consult the Sociology entry in the University of Michigan: An Encyclopedic Survey (online bicentennial edition).
Chairs of the Department of Sociology
| Date |
Event |
| 1931-1940 | Roderick Duncan McKenzie |
| 1940-1951 | Robert Cooley Angell |
| 1952-1961 | Amos Henry Hawley |
| 1961-1964 | Guy Edwin Swanson |
| 1964-1970 | Albert J. Reiss Jr. |
| 1970-1973 | Howard Schuman |
| 1973-1974 | Walter Reynolds Farley |
| 1974-1978 | William A. Gamson |
| 1978-1981 | Walter Reynolds Farley |
| 1981-1986 | Mayer N. Zald |
| 1986-1987 | Walter Reynolds Farley (acting) |
| 1986-1990 | James S. House |
| 1990-1992 | Mayer N. Zald |
| 1993-1994 | Howard Schuman |
| 1994-1995 | Howard A. Kimeldorf (acting) |
| 1995-1998 | Richard O. Lempert |
| 1998-2000 | Duane F. Alwin |
| 2000-2010 | Howard A. Kimeldorf |
| 2010-2017 | Alford A. Young |
| 2017-2021 | Karin A. Martin |
| 2021- | Alford A. Young |
