Our department consists of 14 full-time, three adjunct faculty members and two full-time administrative members. On average, our department recruits 48 undergraduate students and 12 graduate students every year. The main campus is located in San Shia, a district in New Taipei City. The Taipei Campus, located on Min-Sheng Street in Taipei, offers graduate courses for working students.
Sociology is the fundamental science underlying research into the social processes shaping individual lives, group behaviors, social structures and social institutions. As a member of human society, a holistic understanding of social processes is a key to achieving success. The scope of sociology is very broad and diverse. Compared to other fields, such as accounting, social work and criminal justice, it is sometimes considered to have less clearly defined boundaries. However, the rich concepts and varied approaches of sociology produce powerful insights into the complex social problems and dynamic social relations in contemporary society. As evidenced by an emerging development embracing interdisciplinary studies in social science, the holistic perspectives and scientific methods offered by a sociology major can be widely applied to one’s future work in sociology or other fields. Following this new development, our undergraduate program emphasizes training in sociology as well as other disciplines such as psychology, cultural anthropology, political science, economics, and legal studies.
More specifically, all students pursuing a B.A. degree or an M.A. degree in sociology at National Taipei University must complete traditional core courses such as Introduction to Sociology and Social Research Methods; but also secondary core courses including Social Organization, Social Stratification, Political Sociology, Economic Sociology, and Social Psychology. We have a broad range of excellent faculty with expertise in these areas.
In addition to the core courses indicated above, we provide many elective courses in a variety of areas: education, social demography, family, health, youth study, social gerontology, deviance, media, and regional studies. In response to a tremendous demand for quantitative research and computer application in social science, a high proportion of our newly hired faculty members are well-trained quantitative researchers. Currently, we have seven faculty members with comprehensive quantitative research backgrounds who offer a range of quantitative research courses, including required social statistics (basic and advanced) and elective courses in statistical and survey methods. Quantitative skills are not only essential in sociological studies but are also highly transferable to research and work in other social science programs and disciplines, such as journalism and market surveys. Solid quantitative training is valuable preparation for professional participation in a field increasingly dependent on data that are too large or complex for traditional data processing to handle (big data).
