Have you ever wondered why some people go hungry in the midst of plenty? How population changes and new industrial production practices affect Wisconsin’s environment? Do you care about the survival of community cultures or local food production in an increasingly globalized and homogenized world? Would you like to learn about new strategies for promoting social, economic, and environmental sustainability?
If so, a major in Community and Environmental Sociology may be what you are looking for.
Stats 301, Stats 371, Economics 310, Psychology 210, Psychology 280, Geography 360, Political Science 551, Math Stats 310, and General Business 303 can be substituted for the C&E Soc 360 requirement. Please be aware that Math Stats 310 and General Business 303 don’t fulfill the Quant B requirement.
All of our majors take a “capstone course” toward the end of their undergraduate studies. One capstone section is always “community-engaged”, with students engaging in a large impactful research project with a community group. Students have had the chance to be part of amazing projects. Five years ago the very first offering of the capstone worked with a diverse group of residents in southwest Madison who wanted to establish a new community center for their youth. The capstone class worked with residents on research to learn about zoning, building code, and accessibility law. And they studies how other community centers operated so that residents could put together a proposal to the city government. A second capstone class (because goals like this take time to achieve) did research with residents to learn not just what they would want from such a center but also what talents they could bring. The residents took that research and got a unanimous vote from the Madison City Council and there is now a new community center on Theresa Terrace in Madison. Two years ago another capstone class worked with Neighborhood House–Madison’s oldest community center. Digging in archives and interviewing people, the students’ pieced together all 100 years of Neighborhood House’s history in time for their centennial celebration in 2016. This past year another capstone class worked with the Urban Community Arts Network–a group of Hip-Hop artists and their supporters–to study the question of whether Hip-Hop performances were more associated with violence than other music genres. The students started with a database of eight years of police data on calls from all the bars in Madison–over 4,000 calls. They then added information on whether there was a music performance for each call, and what genre it was. The results, which found that Hip-Hop is not associated with greater violence than other genres, made a local media splash and helped UCAN convince the city government to establish an entertainment equity task force. And the project received a University of Wisconsin-Madison Community-University Partnership Award as the best example of The Wisconsin Idea.
Certificate Programs:
Community and Environmental Sociology students often build on their major by selecting one of the certificate programs available from the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences or from other UW-Madison colleges. Listed below are common certificates that C&E Soc students choose to add on with their major. See the UW Guide for a complete list of certificates offered.
Food Systems Certificate
This 16-credit certificate offered through the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology is open to all undergraduate students. It assembles an interdisciplinary curriculum, integrating different paradigms across all aspects of food production, distribution, and consumption, along with the context and values inherent to the system.
