Stories

Sociology Majors Conduct Research to Improve Resources for Students

By Laura Nichols and Cara Chiaraluce

Thanks to generous funding to the department from one of our munificent alumni, we are currently conducting a study to understand the experiences of our sociology majors that are also transfer students. Because transfer students usually spend two years at SCU, mainly in the major, we determined that transfer students could give us excellent information on the needs of students not only during their time at SCU, but also what supports they need to transition to their future careers and/or further education. Current transfer students Jessica Cuellar and Celeste Perales are conducting the interviews and will work with Drs. Nichols and Chiaraluce to do the analysis and provide summaries to the department on the findings as well as make suggestions for improvements we can make that will benefit all of our students. We hope to have preliminary findings in the winter quarter and might extend the study to conduct focus groups to get feedback from a larger group of students on any proposed changes. We thank our alumni for allowing such projects to occur that will not only help our department serve our students better, but also provide an opportunity for our students to practice their qualitative and quantitative research skills on an applied sociology research project.