The University of Chicago. The Department of Sociology

The Department of Sociology, established in 1893 by Albion Small and Charles A. Henderson, has been centrally involved in the history and development of the discipline in the United States. The traditions of the "Chicago School" were built by pioneers such as W. I. Thomas, Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess, and William F.Ogburn. It is a tradition based on the interaction of sociological theory with systematic observation and the analysis of empirical data; it is interdisciplinary, drawing on theory and research from other fields in the social sciences and the humanities; it is a tradition which seeks to fuse together concern with the persistent issues of social theory and attention to the pressing social and policy problems of an urban society.

Continuous developments in social research have marked the department's work in recent years. Faculty members have been engaged in the development of systematic techniques of data collection and in the statistical and mathematical analysis of social data. Field studies and participant observation have been refined and extended. There has been an increased attention to macrosociology, to historical sociology, and to comparative studies, in which the institutions of other societies are compared with those of the United States. The staff is engaged in individual and large-scale group projects which permit graduate students to engage in research almost from the beginning of their graduate careers. The student develops an apprenticeship-type relation with faculty members in which the student assumes increasing amounts of independence as he or she matures.