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NADINE SULLIVAN – Making Powerful Connections
Sociology instructor Nadine Sullivan is interested in making connections. Currently
teaching Introduction to Sociology at The Center for Continuous Learning,
she has also taught Equality/Inequality for the Center, and Marriage and
Family and Contemporary Social Issues for the Anthropology/Sociology Department.
Nadine recalls that her most rewarding moments in the classroom have occurred when
students began to grasp the sociological implications of events, past and present.
She reflects, “There are moments when I see students ‘get it,’ when they apply the sociological
perspective and come to understand that the lives we are leading are unfolding within the
context of the social world around us, that the choices we make are made within ascribed
master statuses of class and gender and race/ethnicity.”
A Philadelphia native and a Ph.D. candidate at Temple University,
Nadine teaches part-time at Ursinus. As an instructor at The Center, she has a personal
appreciation for adult students. “Although there are many excellent ‘traditional’ students,”
she says, “because adult learners tend to have a more focused idea of the part their education
plays in their careers, they can be quite dedicated to receiving the knowledge a professor has
to offer.”
This term at Ursinus, Nadine implemented the use of NetGain into her classroom, with much success.
Explaining that NetGain facilitates “blended learning” by having students spend equal time
working online and in the classroom, she finds that using NetGain allows her to cover a
wider range of topics in a shorter period of time. She says, “Sociology is a wide and
diverse field. Having students discuss portions of the assigned readings online frees
up classroom time for conversations on themes for which we would not have had time.
Those additional dialogues can help students further understand the sociological
perspective.” She adds, “One of the things about sociology is that we don’t look
at the thoughts of individuals. We look at social interaction and social groups.
We ask different research questions than, say, psychology. When you use psychology to
look at a social problem you may ask, ‘Why does this person have this problem? What
factors in individual personal development have contributed to this problem?’
In sociology, you use a wide-angle lens, pulling away from the individual to the group,
to ask, ‘What factors of social interaction contribute to the ongoing nature of this
problem in an individual’s social sphere?’ and/or ‘Why are there so many instances
of this social problem in our culture?’
Nadine has first-hand experience as a non-traditional student. After serving for
twenty years as an ordained minister and pastor, she returned to college at
The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. She graduated summa cum laude and
Alpha Kappa Delta in 2002, receiving dual bachelor’s degrees, one in sociology
and another in anthropology. She also completed three minors: one in women’s studies,
one in African American studies, and another in writing.
