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Sociology Graduate Courses

Graduate courses include the required theory and methods/statistics courses and electives.  The electives are offered in the department’s six fields of sociological specialization:

On-line list of courses offered at the West Lafayette campus

Dual Title PhD in Gerontology
Purdue University offers a dual-title PhD linking several established, discipline-based programs of study with an interdisciplinary perspective on aging.

Sociology doctoral students are eligible to complete a dual-title PhD in Sociology and Gerontology. There is no separate application process. Students apply as usual to the doctoral program in Sociology via the Electronic Application for Graduate Study.

Once admitted to the Sociology program, students choose a faculty advisor who is also a Faculty Associate of the Center on Aging and the Life Course. Students complete 24 graduate credits in aging-related courses, notify the Graduate School of their intention to complete a dual-title degree, and write a dissertation on a topic related to aging in order to receive the dual degree in Sociology and Gerontology.  For more information contact the Center on Aging and the Life Course.

 Purdue Sociology graduate students have access to the Joe and Maggie Kernan Experimental Social Science Lab (JMK Lab), a dedicated facility for collecting original data. Run jointly by the Departments of Sociology and Political Science, the lab gives faculty, postdocs, and graduate students the space and equipment to run experiments and to conduct and record interviews and focus groups.The lab maintains a steady pool of undergraduate participants, so researchers don't have to recruit subjects from scratch. Beyond computers and recording equipment, it offers tools for collecting physiological measures, virtual reality headsets, and even 3D printers, which make a wide range of experimental manipulations possible.Few sociology graduate programs offer a facility like this. At Purdue, graduate students can design and carry out their own primary research. This is further facilitated by the JMK Lab being an affiliate of the Methodology Center at Purdue (MCAP) which offers small grants to graduate students to aid in original data collection.

Sociology students may also be interested in the following in the following programs: