Graduate Testimonials

Earl Brown, Graduate Certificate, Class of 2022

My name is Earl Brown, and I earned a Graduate Certificate in Sociology from SHSU in 2021. In 2014/2015, I was asked to work with the Chief Diversity Officer at the State College where I was a Temporary Full-time Professor of English and Speech Communication, to create what came to be known as “Courageous Conversations” around policing and race. After the first community panel discussion, I recommended that a course on “Race, Class, and Gender” be created and aggressively marketed. My thought was that I could use African American Literature to teach such a course. However, it was determined that one must be credentialed to teach Sociology. Then, I researched Graduate Certificate programs in Sociology. In my research, I found four (4) outstanding programs. However, Sam Houston State University’s (SHSU) program, as we said in the U. S. Navy “stood head and shoulders above the others.” For several reasons, such as being hired full – time as a tenure track professor, I did not apply and begin the program until August 2020. I completed the Graduate Certificate in December 2021. The professors at SHSU are the greatest I have encountered in the several online programs I have experienced (Graduate Certificate in Professional Writing and Master’s in Education in Teaching and Learning – English Cognate). Our college had been seeking a full -time Sociology professor for three years. So, as the Academic Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs reviewed my SHSU transcript to complete the paperwork to credential me to teach Sociology, the decision was made to ask me to volunteer to transfer from the English/Communication Department to the Social Science Department to become the full-time professor of Sociology. Without question, the Graduate Certificate in Sociology at SHSU combined with my wide-ranging academic and military training coupled with a plethora of life experiences make me preeminently qualified to take on this truly unexpected and exciting new challenge.

Tim Arthur, MA in Sociology, Class of 2017  

My name is Tim Arthur, and I graduated in 2017 from Sam Houston State University with a Master’s degree in sociology. The wonderful professors in the Sociology Department trained me to conduct original, publishable research and enabled me to go on to pursue a PhD in sociology at Florida State University, where I currently attend. My research at Florida State focuses primarily on health inequalities, specifically as they relate to racism and birth outcomes. I also recently published a co-authored paper with Dr. Emily Cabaniss in the Journal for Social Thought that was derived from my Master’s project at SHSU titled, “Queer Men and Smartphone Dating Applications: Navigating Partner Markets and Managing Stigma.” These accomplishments were made possible by the in-depth training I received during my time at Sam Houston. I am slated to complete my PhD by Spring of 2024 and plan to seek a tenure-track position teaching sociology so that I can offer future students the same opportunities I was given by the faculty at SHSU.