At present, this page provides alumni with the annual newsletter. This particular newsletter addresses 2001-2002. If you have ideas on how to improve or add to this page, please e-mail 
Susan L. Schrader, Chair of the Department.
This is the fifth newsletter for Sociology at Augustana. We are enthused about this as a way of communicating with you as alumni. We are hopeful you will find the Sociology newsletter to be an informative addition to the news you regularly receive through Augustana Today and other college publications.
Five people graduated from Augustana in May with degrees in Sociology. They are Katie Acosta, Jaime Holmes, Sara Kock, Carrie Parrish, and Briana Smith. Congratulations to these fine people on their accomplishments here at Augustana! We will miss them!
As a department, our goals were to engage in excellent teaching in the classroom and to increase the number of students declaring Sociology as a major. Much of the faculty's efforts were directed towards these aspirations, with good results. Numbers of majors are steadily increasing, and student evaluations of courses remain high.
Dr. Martin Brokenleg, Professor of Native American Studies, assumed the Chair responsibilities for one year. Susan Schrader was granted a sabbatical for the 2001-2002 academic year; with that in mind, two adjunct faculty members (Elizabeth Williams and Brian Fletcher) covered Sue's courses and did a fine job in the classroom. Bill Swart and Denise Copelton were busy with their courses and research interests (they'll each speak later in the newsletter), and Harriet Scott and her team of adjuncts shepherded the Social Work students through a busy and productive year.
By April 2002, the shape of the departmental faculty was revised again. Denise Copelton announced her resignation, after accepting a teaching position at East Stroudsburg State University in Pennsylvania. With that vacancy, the College administration followed the directives of an ad hoc task force (which developed an Academic Master Plan for the College) and decided to convert Denise's tenure-track position to a one-year, non-renewable appointment. Also this Spring, Harriet Scott was asked by the University of Sioux Falls to begin the move of the Social Work Program to its on-going home there. So, the composition of the department will be quite different for the 2002-2003 year compared to several years ago! A search is underway to fill the department's vacancy. Susan, Bill, and Martin will be visiting this next year to see what strategies might be used to strengthen the department, both in terms of faculty and student numbers.
"I'm on leave!" What a wonderful sentence! What is wonderful about a sabbatical, of course, is the opportunity to engage in research, reflection, and renewal -- even if it meant being away from colleagues and classrooms. Being on leave for a year also allows a person to disengage from the politics of the place, though for me, that wasn't entirely possible, given the changes we faced departmentally this year.
Without sounding like a travelogue (which most people sleep through!), let me briefly share some of the highlights from my sabbatical.
During the Summer 2001, I spent a week at the Missoula (Montana) Demonstration Project learning about End-of-Life Care. It was a very interesting opportunity to see how one of the premier research and applied settings engages in ways to enhance the quality of end-of-life experiences in one community--Missoula. From that conference, I have become involved with the Partnership to Improve End-of-Life Care in South Dakota, and currently serve on its Education Task Force. I have taken the lead in developing a training manual (with the Partnership) for an innovative 5-week interdisciplinary seminar. The seminar has been held on three occasions this year, and has brought together students in social sciences (social work, gerontology, and sociology), nursing, medicine, pharmacy, and chaplaincy. Relatedly, I have assisted in the research Sioux Valley Hospital has conducted on in-patient palliative care, and that manuscript will soon be published in the South Dakota Journal of Medicine. I have found this work to be very interesting and relevant to the study of gerontology.
As I considered my sabbatical, I really felt a calling to learn more about Native Americans, particularly since I had been chair of a department that claimed "Native American Studies" as one of its programs. So, I received financial support from a Bush Faculty Development Grant to spend the month of September on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. I stayed at the Pine Ridge Retreat Center in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. The experience was unfathomable. I learned so much, yet came away knowing that I really couldn't understand all of the complexities of this rich and complicated culture. In the area of Native American studies, I am also submitting a manuscript for publication (on Sioux Falls' urban Indian population), and I was asked to write a book review (American Indians and the Urban Experience by Lobo and Peters)for the American Indian Culture and Research Journal.
In the area of gerontology, I received funding from the Augustana Research and Artists' Fund (ARAF) to engage in the study of South Dakota's centenarians. The work entitled, "A Century on the Prairie: South Dakota Centenarians Tell Their Stories," has been a marvelous experience for me as a gerontologist, scholar, and person. There is something sacred about being among those who have lived a century, and yet curiously, I found we have more similarities than differences! Currently, I am trying to find a publisher for this material (book ideas, anyone?). Related research during the sabbatical year also included the completion of work on the South Dakota Health Care Association's Century Club, too.
Renewal and reflection was accomplished during my time at Pine Ridge, visits to my parents in Florida, and opportunities for travel and camping. Recently, a friend and I went on the Crazy Horse Volksmarch, climbing 10K to the top of the Black Hills mountain that is being transformed into the sculpture of Crazy Horse. What a powerful experience!
So now I am ready to return to the classroom. The sabbatical was refreshing, challenging, and renewing. While I accomplished a lot, I don't want to suggest that I "walk on water!" There were many things that I expected to address that I didn't quite get to. And, I guess that's OK, too.
As I near the beginning of my sixth year at Augustana College, arranging my tenure and promotion dossier has allowed me to reflect on my career trajectory - both in teaching and research - since leaving graduate school. I have grown as both a teacher and a scholar at Augustana. Although my teaching rotation, with the exception of the recent introduction of Social Psychology, has remained fairly stable over the past five years, I have had the opportunity to explore new directions, texts, and technological enhancements that have made my course content and teaching more in-depth and practical. For instance, funded by a grant from Project JSTOR, I developed and implemented an information literacy component to my Social Psychology course designed to help student better locate and evaluate information as they do online research.
I took students to Ireland and Northern Ireland again during my January course Social Conflict and Reconciliation in Ireland, and will collaborate on this course during January 2003 with History department colleague Margaret Preston. I’ve also been asked to lead a group of Augustana’s Regent Scholars to Ireland and Northern Ireland during Spring Break 2003. Finally, as a new twist, I will be offering my first Augustana workshop, entitled Teaching and Learning in a Multi-cultural Classroom, during this coming fall semester.
My scholarship also continues to evolve. This year I published two articles: "National Identity and Post-Industrial Democracy: Regional and Local Tensions in Contemporary Ireland and Northern Ireland" in the Humboldt Journal of Social Relations and a selection on “Irish Nationalism” for Academic Press’s recent Encyclopedia of Nationalism. I have also continued to explore the growing interrelationship of food and national identity (what I and others call “Gastro-nationalism) under the economic and cultural influences of the European Union, and presented paper this research to my faculty colleagues as well as at a session of the Midwest Sociological Society.
I am grateful for the ongoing support of my colleagues and department. It’s been another year of change at Augustana College - we will miss Denise Copelton and the strengths she brought our department and program, but we also look forward to great things during the 2002-03 academic year.
As a department, we were saddened to learn of Denise's decision to leave us. We have been enriched by the quality of her teaching and her scholarship and have found her to be a quality sociologist and reliable and fun colleague. Augustana has been blessed by her contributions in the classroom, certainly, but also in her efforts to strengthen the Gender Studies Minor and Coalition for Social Justice.
Now as she prepares to move to Pennsylvania, we wish her every success, a completed dissertation (go, Denise!), and much happiness.
Obviously, you are reading this newsletter on the Internet. However, some of your Sociology alumni friends may not be connected to the web. Our year 2002 newsletter is available only on the Internet, so if you'd like to share your web newsletter with them, do so! Otherwise, please suggest to them that they request a paper copy of the newsletter in the mail by completing the following information and sending it to us at:
So, all in all, we have had a good year. We watched with pride as five Sociology majors graduated in the Class of 2002 and we are pleased with growing enrollment within the major and the College at large.
Should you have occasion to return to campus, please know that the welcome mat is out for you!