Letter from the Chair

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Our department is the sole department in sociology at Jeonbuk area. For more than 30 years, since the establishment of the department in 1978, we have raised many of our graduated students with sociological imagination. They are actively working in prestigious research centers, the press industry, and NGOs. In fact, they are all around in our society such as private companies and public services. What impresses me is that they do not hesitate to say that “although I studied sociology in quite a short-term, sociological knowledge and its perspective are really invaluable resource to me.”

Our department has been teaching our students to imagine their social life in the trajectory of their career. Lessons we taught came from pursuing scientific explanations about characteristics of Korean society and its history of social changes. Our young students, living in the world where continuous global changes and following local changes in their regions are everyday life, are curious about themselves and our society. Therefore, we believe the role of sociology is more demanding for the purpose of bringing up valuable human resources. Especially, this is true in the era of emphasizing interdisciplinary studies and people having integrative creativity. In this sense, our department put our goals to train students armed with sociological imagination and ultimately to lead them as reflective and creative democratic citizens.

Nine faculty members in our department have interests in diverse areas of sociology: sociological thoughts; dual movement of regionalization and globalization; poverty and class; ecological paradigm; civil and information society; family and marriage; sociology of gender; mathematical sociology and so on. They all work for increasing insights and sensibility of understanding Korean society. As a matter of fact, I am proud of our department and faculty members. They are professionals to train our students in many areas of sociology. The department is tightly organized to teach methodology and statistical analysis.

Students in our department are developing their careers depending upon their interests. In this process, our department provides key knowledge and keen analyzing skills to interpret our society. In addition, our department has traditions of democratic atmosphere between students and faculty and of vigorous activities in students’ community. Furthermore, Jeonbuk National University provides many opportunities of oversea exchange programs and public services. These are a few examples that Department of sociology at Jeonbuk National University can only offer as a “national university” in this region.

I wish you to invest yourself in sociology.