First-generation students often feel alone on college campuses. These students can find themselves excluded from organizations, traditions, and spaces that require financial, social, and cultural capital they may not have. In my Sociology of Work course, I use a family work history project to center and validate their experiences. Using census…

This article presents an in-class exercise that teaches students how to call elected officials about a course-related issue of their choice. The goals are to connect classroom learning with real-life action, to show that contacting elected officials need not be difficult or intimidating, and to help students develop a sense of efficacy that can…

In the fall of 2000 the Department of Sociology at North Carolina State University (NCSU) implemented a Phase IV Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) initiative. The goal of this program was (and is) to ensure that doctoral students anticipating entry into a professional position be prepared for all expectations associated with faculty life in a wide…