Students and professors with a stake in the social sciences flocked to Wayne State College last Thursday and Friday to take part in “The 49th Annual Nebraska Undergraduate Sociological Symposium” (NUSS).
NUSS is a volunteer organization of faculty from any school in Nebraska that has programs in social science.
The event covered broad topics in sociology, had a panel of graduates who speak on their experiences, and gave students a chance to present their independent research.
This year, topics included LGBT challenges, addictions, immigrants, refugees and genocide.
“Students from all over Nebraska are presenting their independent research they conducted,” Associate Professor of Sociology Todd Greene said. “They get an opportunity to present, other people get an opportunity to see what they did and learn from them, learn from their findings, and to talk about the issues raised by the research.”
Greene also said it gave the participating professors a much needed chance to get together and share ideas.
James Ault III, an associate professor of sociology at Creigton University, said that the opportunity students received to give presentations was invaluable and that Wayne has remarkably strong support for undergraduate education.
The location alternates yearly between the eight colleges and universities and, as Ault put it, “everybody that has a dog in the fight participates.”
“There’s a tendency, if folks aren’t careful, to confuse the size of the town where a college is located with being an indicator of quality of the college,” Ault said. “The Latin phrase for that is ‘it ain’t necessarily so.’”
The presentations gave sociology students a chance to look at new ideas in the field and let them learn about the job opportunities that are available upon graduation while gaining experience of their own.
“Watching students do more than they thought they could and do it better than they thought they could do it. That’s what this is all about,” Ault said.