About Our Department
Welcome to the Department of Sociology at Baylor University! My name is Jeremy Uecker, and I am only the fifth chair of the department in the last 60 years. The consistency in leadership over the decades speaks to the collegiality of our department and is one of many reasons sociology continues to excel at Baylor.

The department has a strong history at Baylor. The course “Science of Society” was first taught by Baylor President Samuel Palmer Brooks in 1910, marking the introduction of sociology to the American Southwest. Across the Baylor century of sociology, the department has enjoyed a stellar reputation for its teaching and training. Our undergraduates score well into the upper quartile on the ETS Major Field Test in Sociology—a test taken by seniors at more than 160 institutions. More than 120 Baylor undergraduates have gone on to be successful professional sociologists. The department is the only department thus far named a Distinguished Teaching Department by the Southwestern Sociological Association.
Our PhD program has established itself as a national leader in both the sociology of religion and the sociology of health, and we are actively building out an emphasis on social stratification and inequality. Our PhD students routinely publish original, peer-reviewed research articles and our PhD graduates are employed in university and corporate settings.
The sociology faculty are well-regarded for their scholarship in the field, with our scholarly productivity ranked in the top 15 of over 120 US sociology programs by Academic Analytics (2023). Our faculty and graduate students are routinely recognized for their outstanding achievements in both research and teaching.
Over the last 10 years we have made a concerted effort to hire the best candidates who have graduated from the strongest PhD programs to serve as faculty in the department. The quality of teaching instruction and research output by Baylor sociology faculty has never been better. This is a department on the move, and we welcome your interest!