Resource Collections

April 7, 2023

The climate crisis is a major contemporary problem that affects all of us. Some of us are teaching in places seeing direct impacts via more extreme "natural" disasters. While others may be located in places where the impacts are less direct or obvious. Regardless, sociology instructors should strive to incorporate climate change and environmental sociology more directly in our instruction. In the Climate Change and Environmental Sociology resource collection, you will find teaching modules, assignment instructions, and a syllabus to help you add sociological insight to the climate crisis. 

February 23, 2023

This collection contains resources that are useful for teaching sociology on the high school level. It includes resources that were submitted by high school instructors, as well as 100-level college material that is easily adaptable for high school students. 

January 13, 2023

Many of us seek to engage our students with our community. This resource collection includes activities that focus on service learning, social justice, and social change. 

January 13, 2023

Few job ads explicitly say they want a sociologist or sociology major even though, sociology majors have a lot of the skills employers desire. Therefore, instructors are tasked with helping students make connections between what they are learning for their degree and what employers want. This resource collection includes materials for helping students with career planning and getting jobs. There are assignments and activities that can be used as part of a capstone course, but also that can be integrated throughout the sociology curriculum. 

October 27, 2022

The MacArthur Fellows Program (“Genius” grant) provides support to outstanding individuals (not projects). Two of the 2022 recipients, Jennifer Carlson (gun culture) and Reuben Jonathan Miller (incarceration), are sociologists. One of the 2022 recipients, Steven Ruggles (statistics), is a historical demographer and created the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), used by many sociologists. The 2022 MacArthur Fellows Resource Collection includes resources related to their research areas: gun culture, incarceration, and statistics.

October 13, 2021

Proficiency with statistics is one of the many valuable skills sociology majors can gain through their studies. It connects students to the empirical basis of the discipline and represents a marketable job skill. Sometimes viewed with dread, the resources in this TRAILS Collection demonstrate that teaching statistics can be engaging, and even fun.

October 27, 2021

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many campuses are moving more of the sociology curriculum online. This resource collection highlights recent contributions of high quality resources designed for teaching online, with all of the unique pedagogical challenges that modality brings.

October 20, 2021

In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd on May 25 2020, conversations about racial disparities in policing surged in the news and on social media. This resource collection helps sociology faculty take those conversations to the next level, going deeper by giving students the opportunity to engage with relevant data, and going broader by considering how racial disparities play out across the criminal justice system, from crime victimization, to policing, to incarceration and re-entry.

February 23, 2023

TRAILS, the Teaching Resources and Innovation Library for Sociology, provides a way for you to easily locate peer-reviewed teaching materials, showcase your teaching ideas, develop professionally, and join a community of scholarly teachers. You will find great assignments, syllabi, lectures, and other teaching ideas at TRAILS. Please also consider submitting your great ideas for teaching. The Featured Resources include some of the newest additions to our collection.

-Stephanie Medley-Rath
TRAILS Lead Editor

Browse the entire collection of TRAILS resources here.