True Blue Core
Sociology 1010- Introduction to Sociology
- True Blue Core Knowledge Domain: Human Society & Social Relationships (HSSR) (6 hours)
- For all catalogs 2024-2025 and beyond, this course can be used to satisfy 3 hours of the True Blue Core curriculum requirement for Discovery in Social and Behavioral Sciences in HSSR. If you have already fulfilled the Discovery requirement for HSSR, this course can be used in the Explorations in HSSR category. To learn more about TBC requirements: https://truebluecore.mtsu.edu/core
- For all catalogs prior to 2024-2025, this course may be used to satisfy 3 hours of the general education curriculum requirement for Social/Behavioral Sciences. To learn more about general education requirements for catalogs prior to 2024-2025: https://w1.mtsu.edu/gen_ed/requirements.php
- The TBC outcome for Discovery in Social and Behavioral Sciences (HSSR): Students think critically by explaining issues/problems, selecting and using evidence, considering context and assumptions, and representing their position and conclusions logically and effectively.
Description
This course examines a variety of social issues ranging from problems of the environment to poverty, racial inequality, drugs and crime. Using a sociological imagination, students will develop a base understanding of what social problems are, why certain issues are seen as social problems, and the implications of this social construction. Building on this, students examine a variety of social issues and the effects of these social issues on individual’s lives. Students will leave the course with a comprehensive understanding of the sociological perspective on social problems with an eye towards solutions. Students evaluate issues and problems from an objective, empirical, and scientific perspective. Specifically, through online readings, discussions, debates, and assignments, students are encouraged to think sociologically and apply sociological methods to the analysis of social problems, providing them with a better understanding of the major social issues we face in the 21st Century and enabling them to take informed positions on these issues. One of the features of SOC 2010 is to develop students’ understanding of global connections. SOC 2010 highlights interconnectedness and aims to achieve the goal of fostering empathy for others’ social problems. Empathy is a part of the sociological imagination and is an excellent tool for examining assumptions related to social problems. This is not possible without first learning to see themselves as a product of society, their environment, friends, family, etc. To be able to effectively meet the objectives of this course, students will learn about how the problems they have faced in their life are related (or not) to the social problems we discuss.