It is hard to believe that another academic year has come and gone. 2025-2026 will be one remembered for a great deal of change. Among other things, we welcomed three new faculty members - Aidan Combs, Emily Ekl, and Bethany Everett - and said goodbye to Claudia Buchmann, who retired after XX years at Ohio State and an illustrious career studying gender stratification in education. Through all these changes, however, our departmental mission remains the same. Every year we strive to achieve excellence in all our pursuits. Research and contributions to the scientific understanding of social structures and processes are, of course, fundamental to this mission. But we also seek to train the next generation of sociologists to critically evaluate, apply, and create this knowledge.
The latest issue of our newsletter describes both the local impact and the global reach of our research. Closer to home, Dr. Chris Browning is analyzing complex data from 1,405 adolescents in Franklin County to ascertain how they interact with multilayered social contexts to produce a wide range of outcomes. Professor Nima Dahir is studying how Somali immigrants in central Ohio navigate race, identity, and neighborhood environments as they go about their daily lives.
On a broader scale, Dr. Mike Vuolo is leading an NIH funded study that investigates what happens to substance use and overdose deaths after a disaster, like a hurricane or wildfire, devastates a community. Professor Sarah Hayford is trying to better understand the sociological reasons behind falling birth rates. What she and her research team are finding is that young people still want the same number of children as before. They are just less likely to actually achieve these fertility goals.
What all of this research has in common is our unfailing efforts to more fully comprehend recent developments in our complex social world. Whether it is how teens interact with their social networks or how communities cope with recent disasters or how Americans try to balance the number of children they would like to have with the economic realities they face, sociology can help to answer these important questions.
I am often asked, “What is the value of a sociology degree in this day and age?” Although I could answer this question in a multitude of ways, I always come back to the fact that our discipline helps us to better understand complicated and often confusing social issues and help to identify creative, data-driven solutions.
I hope you enjoy reading this newsletter and getting a better idea what the Department of Sociology at Ohio State has been up to this past year. Please keep in touch. We would love to hear from you!
Warmly,
Cynthia Colen
Professor and Chair