UCLA Department of Sociology: An Overview
Founded in 1948, the Department of Sociology at UCLA stands as one of the largest and most distinguished sociology departments in the United States. Recognized for its faculty of internationally renowned scholars, the department consistently secures high rankings, including its position as 3rd among public universities and 6th overall in the US News and World Report Guide to Graduate Departments. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the UCLA Department of Sociology, encompassing its mission, faculty, programs, research, and resources.
Acknowledgment of Indigenous Land
UCLA acknowledges the Gabrielino/Tongva peoples as the traditional land caretakers of Tovaangar (Los Angeles basin, So. Channel Islands).
General Information and Resources
The UCLA General Catalog serves as a primary resource for students, published annually in PDF and HTML formats. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, the catalog emphasizes that all courses, course descriptions, instructor designations, curricular degree requirements, and fees are subject to change or deletion without notice. Students are advised to consult the catalog for the most current, officially approved information. Additional information about UCLA can be found in materials produced by various schools, including Arts and Architecture; Dentistry; Education and Information Studies; Engineering and Applied Science; Law; Management; Medicine; Music; Nursing; Public Affairs; Public Health; and Theater, Film, and Television.
Faculty and Research
The faculty at UCLA's Department of Sociology are internationally renowned scholars who hold leadership positions in the discipline. Their research spans a broad range of sociological subfields, contributing significantly to the advancement of sociological knowledge.
Research Areas and Publications
The department's commitment to research is evident in its extensive collection of publications, numbering 643 between 1986 and 2026. These publications cover diverse areas, including:
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- Theory and Research in Comparative Social Analysis
- Other Recent Work
- Open Access Policy Deposits
Recent research examples include:
- Involuntary migration, context of reception, and social mobility: the case of Vietnamese refugee resettlement in the United States: This study examines the socioeconomic mobility of Vietnamese refugees in the U.S., utilizing American Community Survey data from 1980 to 2015. It considers the roles of policies, institutions, and social relations in shaping mobility.
- Paid Family Leave in California: New Research Findings: This research analyzes the impact of California's pioneering paid family leave program, finding that awareness of the law was limited, especially among women, low-wage workers, immigrants, and disadvantaged racial-ethnic groups.
- Quasiperiodic granular chains and Hofstadter butterflies: This study explores quasiperiodicity-induced localization of waves in strongly precompressed granular chains, using different setups inspired by the Aubry-André (AA) model.
Graduate Programs
The Department of Sociology at UCLA offers comprehensive graduate programs leading to both Master of Arts (M.A.) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees.
M.A. Degree Requirements
Students are allowed two years from entrance into the department to complete the M.A. requirements. This means that students must submit their M.A. paper and complete all related requirements no later than the sixth quarter of residence, regardless of the state of the paper. In exceptional cases, the department may permit an extension on the M.A.
Advising
Entering graduate students are assigned a faculty member as an entrance adviser. Students may change advisers at any time if they find another faculty member who agrees to serve as the new adviser. Students are advised to meet with faculty members as regularly as needed for their level of research, at least once per quarter.
Course Requirements
All required courses must be taken for a letter grade, except 201ABC, which is S/U grading only. 500 series courses may not count toward the 42 units of course work for the M.A. degree. Students who want to take courses outside the department may petition to count them either as elective units or, in the case of a two-quarter methods sequence, as a replacement method.
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A two-quarter graduate-level methodology sequence is required, with several alternatives available, such as the survey methods course or the demographic methods course. The methodology series is numbered Sociology 208A-208B-208C, 211A-211B through M213C, 216A-216B, 217B-217C, 244A-244B. Students are required to take one methods sequence before the master’s paper review and one methods sequence before taking the University Oral Qualifying Examination. Only one of Sociology 212A-212B or 216A-216B may meet the two-quarter methodology sequence requirement. In choosing a methodology sequence, students should note some of the Ph.D. field examinations require particular methodology sequences. While there is no statistics requirements for the M.A. degree, Sociology 210A-210B must be completed before students are permitted to take the first doctoral field examination, which typically occurs in the third year. Students are advised to take Sociology 210A-210B early in their graduate training.
Advancement to Candidacy and Master's Paper
Candidates have one calendar year from the date of advancement to M.A. candidacy in which to complete all requirements for the M.A. No later than in the sixth quarter of residence, students must submit an acceptable master’s paper for approval by the general faculty. As early in the graduate career as possible, students select two Sociology core faculty members who consent to serve as their master’s paper advisers. The master’s paper is reviewed first by the master’s committee, which is comprised of the two master’s paper advisers and overseen by the Director of Graduate Studies; then it is reviewed by the Graduate Committee, which is comprised of the Director of Graduate Studies and at least two additional faculty members; finally, the paper is reviewed and approved by the full faculty. Faculty serving should represent a broad range of professional interests.
Formation of the master’s committee may not be postponed beyond the beginning of the fourth quarter of residence in graduate work. Under the direction of the master’s committee, students develop a paper, often one that was originally written for a course that demonstrates intellectual attainment. For example, the paper may show that the student (1) has an accurate grasp of the intellectual traditions of sociology; (2) can bring evidence to bear on theoretical problems; (3) can describe how some aspect of the social order works; and (4) can adequately handle research and methodological issues. When the master’s committee determines that the paper demonstrates the required level of intellectual attainment, they submit the paper and an evaluation of it to the Graduate Committee. Based on the advisers’ evaluation of the paper and their own assessment of the student’s academic record, the Graduate Committee makes a recommendation to the department about the awarding of the degree. Recommendations are: 1) acceptance of the paper and award of the M.A. degree, with eligibility to continue in the Ph.D. program; 2) recommendation for academic disqualification from the doctoral program, with the M.A. degree awarded; or 3) recommendation for academic disqualification from the doctoral program without awarding the M.A. degree. Students should consult with the department for specific guidelines, procedures, and deadlines regarding the M.A. In exceptional circumstances, during the student’s sixth quarter, their M.A. Students who enter graduate study in this program with an M.A. degree in sociology from another institution normally come up for a master’s paper review in the first quarter of residence at UCLA, and under no circumstances later than the third quarter of residence. The standards for the quality and content of such M.A. papers is consistent with all other M.A. papers as described above. This review is carried out by an M.A. committee in accordance with the standards for all M.A. committees described earlier, and, similarly, is in turn reviewed by the Graduate Committee and the full faculty. Students with M.A. degrees from prior institutions may consult with their selected committee about whether their prior M.A. paper meets the standards of our department (or if, instead, an additional paper needs to be done, which will also be the case by default for students with M.A. degrees that did not include a paper requirement). Aside from the M.A. paper, students with a prior M.A.
Ph.D. Degree Requirements
Course Requirements
Doctoral students should complete the M.A. Departmental Requirements. Sociology 210A and 210B must be completed before students are permitted to take the first field examination. Students are advised to take Sociology 210A and 210B early in their graduate training. All students are required to take two courses (eight units) of an additional methodology sequence (Sociology 208A-208B-208C, 211A through M213C, 216A-216B, 217B-217C, 244A-244B), which must be completed before the oral qualifying examination. In order to ensure breadth and diversity of methodological training, only one of Sociology 212A-212B and 216A-216B may meet the two-course methodology sequence requirement. All required courses (210A and 210B, and the two courses of an additional methodology sequence) must be taken for a letter grade. Courses in the 500 series (Sociology 595, 596, 597, 599) are normally taken in preparation for the master’s paper review, the field examinations, and dissertation research.
Field Examinations
Two specialized field examinations are administered and evaluated according to guidelines specified by each field examination area. In the first week of the quarter following acceptance of the master’s paper, students must submit a proposal to the Director of Graduate Studies specifying two of the field examinations listed above and a time table for completing these examinations. These plans must be consistent with program benchmarks, which specify that students are expected to complete their first field examination by the end of the third year and the second field examination by the first quarter of their fourth year. Such proposals must be submitted to the Director at least four weeks before the beginning of the quarter in which the student intends to take an examination not previously included in the field examination plan. The Director must approve the proposed examinations. The Director assesses whether the two proposed fields, considered in tandem, are rigorous, coherent, and broad; plans that involve fields with substantial overlap will not be approved. If the performance on the field examinations is satisfactory and the foreign language requirement (if stipulated …
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Written and Oral Qualifying Examinations
Academic Senate regulations require all doctoral students to complete and pass university written and oral qualifying examinations prior to doctoral advancement to candidacy. Also, under Senate regulations, the University Oral Qualifying Examination is open only to the student and appointed members of the doctoral committee. In addition to university requirements, some graduate programs have other pre-candidacy examination requirements.
Major Fields or Subdisciplines
The UCLA Department of Sociology offers a diverse range of major fields or subdisciplines for graduate study:
- Computational Sociology:
- Conversation Analysis: This field examines talk and conduct in interaction through detailed analysis of naturally occurring instances. It considers talk-in-interaction as the primary site of sociality.
- Economic Sociology: This field provides an overview of the major debates in economic sociology, at both the macro and micro level.
- Ethnographic Methodology:
- Ethnomethodology: This field studies the common-sense resources, procedures, and practices through which members of a culture produce and recognize mutually intelligible objects, events, and courses of action.
- International Migration: This field is concerned with the causes and consequences of international migration, that is, the movement of peoples from one territorially defined, self-consciously delimited nation-state to another. The actors include not just the migrants but also their descendants, as well as the states that seek to control (encourage, impede, constrain) their flows, and the domestic entities of various kinds that react to the immigrants’ arrival in ways both positive and negative. The issues in play involve both migration and its aftermath. In particular, the field seeks to understand both those forms of social inequality that impinge immigrants and their descendants and the new identities and collectivities that the latter effect as settlement progresses. The study of international migration is, perhaps, unique in its interdisciplinarity and methodologically pluralist nature: stretching from the demography and economics of migration, through political science, sociological and geographical approaches, to the ethnography and oral history of migrants. Migration is also a crucial research site for exploring the possibility of doing sociology beyond the bounded nation-state-society focus of most sociological research. And, while opening the door to a crucial dimension of globalization, the comparative study of immigration and immigrants opens up fresh perspectives on conceptions of nationhood, citizenship, and the state. While the examination and the related courses principally focus on two migration systems, the North American and the European, extension to other systems, such as the Persian Gulf or the East Asian, adds much to our understanding of the phenomenon.
- Law and Punishment: This field maps the web of laws, actors, practices, technologies, and bureaucracies that manage, criminalize, and punish marginalized communities, considering formal criminal legal systems and their intersections with other systems.
- Political Sociology: This field examination is organized around a reading list in which the first section, foundations of political sociology, is required.
- Race/Ethnicity: The race/ethnicity field examination focuses on the nature and persistence of ethnic and racial categories and groupings in contemporary societies, and on how these structures relate to social stratification systems and political and economic dynamics. The field includes a variety of perspectives and concerns including race relations, racism, ethnic, stratification, immigration, ethnic economies and ethnic politics. today are the central substantive concerns, the field is explicitly comparative historical, viewing contemporary ethnic and racial structures in the context of the spread of European colonialism and imperialism.
- Social Demography: Social demography examines key issues and debates related to the biological, economic, social, and environmental causes and consequences of trends and patterns in demographic behaviors such as fertility, marriage, divorce, migration, social stratification, health and mortality.
- Social Stratification and Social Mobility:
- Sociology of Culture: This field examines social activity by which people negotiate meaning, express and interpret symbols, and construct the aesthetic dimension of societies.
- Sociology of Education: This field provides an overview of the major debates in the sociology of education, at the micro, macro, and meso levels.
- Sociology of the Family: Sociologists conceptualize the family as a social institution - meaning it involves a set of social roles (such as parent, partner, or child), with some shared understanding of expectations regarding how we should behave in these roles and what kinds of obligations are associated with them. As with any social institution, the family is malleable over time, across contexts, and can be difficult to define at its margins.
- Sociology of Gender and Sexuality: This field examination is concerned with gender inequality and gender differences and the social processes producing and reproducing them. It includes both macrosociological and microsociological perspectives on these processes.
- Sociology of Medicine and Science:
- Urban and Suburban Sociology: This field comprises the major topics in urban and suburban sociology.
Foreign Language Requirement
There is no departmental foreign language requirement for the Ph.D. degree.
Undergraduate Program
The Department of Sociology offers undergraduate students a unique opportunity to take the upper division course, Soc 188A - Careers in Sociology. It is designed to help Sociology students expand awareness of their interests, needs and skills to make deliberate career choices. Through interactive lessons and guest lectures, the course provides students with an opportunity to learn about the many components that go into making effective career decisions and the diversity of career options available to UCLA Sociology majors. “Interacting with the various alumni was great. “It was very nice to have a real time experience and hear from so many amazing, personable, honest, and professional people. “I thoroughly enjoyed all of the guest speakers and panels that the course offered. Class sessions have included alumni guest speakers and panels from the following companies: Los Angeles Lakers, VF Corporation, California Community Foundation, Showtime Networks, and HBO.
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