Affiliated Research Centers

The Sociology department encourages faculty-student collaboration in the conduct of research outside the classroom. The department is affiliated with the following research centers that serve as hubs for these kinds of collaborations.

1. The USC Andurus Gerontology Center

   is an interdisciplinary research institute which includes faculty and students from fields such as sociology, psychology, architecture, and biology. The center provides support for graduate students in aging, family, socialization, and human development. Federal traineeships and research assistantships are available.
   
   

2. The USC Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life

   supports research that aims to spur dialogue and achieve greater understanding not only about what it means to be Jewish in America, but what it means to be American in a pluralistic society.
   
   

3. The USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture (CRCC)
   

   is a multi-disciplinary research unit of the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences. Its mission expresses the high priority which the university assigns to the academic study of its host region and to the development of civic leadership within this region. Research activities at CRCC document the civic role of religion in Southern California (especially Los Angeles), interpreting faith-based community development and organizing for scholars, religious institutions, funders, public officials, and the media. The center collaborates with faith-based community organizations in identifying and analyzing public policy issues; documenting faith-based human sevices and community organizing programs; creating archival resources; developing planning and evaluation models; and facilitating cooperative relationships among community leaders, funders, and public officials.
   
   

4. The USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration

   (CSII) has as its mission to remake the narrative for understanding, and the dialogue for shaping, immigrant integration in America. Our intent is to identify and evaluate the mutual benefits of immigrant integration for the native-born and immigrants and to study the pace of the ongoing transformation in different locations, not only in the past and present but projected into the future. CSII thus brings together three emphases: scholarship that draws on academic theory and rigorous research, data that provides information structured to highlight the process of immigrant integration over time, and engagement that seeks to create new dialogues with government, community organizers, business and civic leaders, immigrants and the voting public.
   
   

5. The USC Department of American Studies & Ethnicity

   integrates humanistic and social scientific perspectives and brings them to bear on an examination of the United States with a particular emphasis on comparative study of the peoples, cultures, history, and social issues of the Western United States. The department offers four separate majors and minors in American Studies, African American Studies, Asian American Studies, and Chicano/Latino Studies, as well as a minor in Jewish American Studies. The graduate program offers a Ph.D. for students interested in broad interdisciplinary training at an advanced level for the study of people, cultures, and institutions of the United States in courses that integrate modes of inquiry from the humanities and social sciences. Sociology students might take courses offered through the program to facilitate their research endeavors.
   
   

6. The USC Gender Studies Program (GSP)

   explores, across disciplines and cultures, the changing relations, identitie,s and images of women and men. Roughly 30 sociology Ph.D. students are simultaneously working for an interdisciplinary Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies. The research arm of the Gender Studies Program, the Center for Feminist Research, organizes and sponsors conferences and speakers, and offers a limited number of research-related travel grants for graduate students.
   
   

7. The USC Longitudinal Study of Generations

   (LSOG) is one of the longest, continuously running studies of intergenerational family relationships.  The LSOG began in 1971 as a cross-sectional study of 2044 individuals nested within 358 three-generation families. The study was unique for its time because respondents were linked to each other on the basis of common family membership allowing the study of parent-child, grandparent-grandchild, sibling, and spousal relationships. This cross-sectional study turned into a longitudinal panel study in 1985 and continued collecting data at three-year intervals up to 2000, followed by a survey in 2005. A fourth generation was added in 1991. As the study progressed through the 1980s and 1990s, the protest generation moved into careers and family life, women entered the labor force in large numbers, divorce and remarriage became more prevalent, nuclear families became smaller but more complex, and digital technology created new avenues for intergenerational communication. These changes had profound effects on the structure and function of family life, and the LSOG has kept pace by incorporating them into its empirical design and measurement schemes. This project has supported many students and faculty over the last four decades, many from the Sociology Department.
   
   

8. The ONE Institute & Archives

   is the world's largest research center for gay and lesbian studies. Graduate students with research interests related to gay and lesbian studies might access the institute’s vast collection in order to further their projects.
   
   

9. The USC Science, Technology & Society

   research cluster seeks to foster individual and collaborative inquiry into the production of scientific knowledge and the societal impact of technological innovation.The Research Cluster has several components, including graduate training, a postdoctoral fellowship, and an annual research workshop.