Founded by James Coleman, the Department has had a distinguished and productive record during its more than four decades of existence. Despite its small size, it ranks as one of the major Sociology departments in the nation according to the latest surveys. The department is strong in the sociology of education, social structure and personality, family, social policy, cross-national research, sociology of development, race and gender, sociology of immigration, and world-systems studies. Its graduates teach and conduct research in many of the major universities in the nation and abroad.

The Sociology Department at Hopkins is among the smallest of the major graduate training centers in the United States. We presently have twelve full-time faculty members and forty-one predoctoral students. The intimacy afforded by such numbers has allowed us to design a unique environment for graduate study. The term "research apprenticeship" probably best characterizes our structure and philosophy. Graduate training at Hopkins rests upon a careful blend of formal instruction, faculty-directed individual study, and supervised as well as self-initiated research experience. This balance has been a strength of the department since its inception in 1959. The social climate is informal, and the mix of students and faculty, both drawn from a wide variety of geographic and social backgrounds, constitutes a rewarding intellectual community.

We believe that a small department need not be narrow. The interests of the faculty are diverse and the requirements of the department flexible. The department is particularly strong in three broad substantive areas, these being Comparative and International Development, the Sociology of Human Development, and Sociology of Education. The department's Program in Cross-National Sociology and International Development and its Program on Social Inequality, with which students can affiliate at their discretion, coordinate activities in the first two areas, and several faculty share an interest in the third. We also retain our long-standing commitment to rigorous preparation in quantitative research methods. Other interests represented in our core faculty include the family, demography, urban sociology, race and ethnic relations, economic sociology, political sociology, the sociology of intelligence, and world systems analysis. A listing of the full-time faculty and their areas of research interest is included in both the catalog and in one or both of the special program brochures.

The research and training opportunities available in the department are further enriched by the active participation of a distinguished part-time faculty. These faculty have their primary appointments in social science research institutes located on the Homewood Campus or in the School of Hygiene and Public Health, which offers first-rate programs in population and demography, mental health and mental hygiene, and health care organization, to name but a few.