Dr. Douglas C. Smith - Associate Professor of Sociology

PhD, Pennsylvania State University

 

Research interests: Community, Environment and Natural Resources Sociology, Quantitative and Qualitative Research Methodology, Social Psychology, Social Movements, Education, Rural Health and Poverty.

 

E-mail: douglas.smith@wku.edu

Office: 127 Grise Hall

Phone: (270) 745-2376

Website: www.wku.edu/~douglas.smith

 

I consider myself the eclectic sociologist.  My main research interests are concerned with community members' negotiation of and adjustment to their environment.  In the last five years, I have co-authored (with James Grimm and Amy Krull) an introductory text/reader in sociology, Basics and Applications of Sociology.  I also have an article on the relationships among gender, environmentalism and feminism in Sociological Inquiry and another article (with James Grimm and Zachary Brewster) on health care and insurance in Research in the Sociology of Health Care.  

I also have an interest in education reform (Before coming to WKU, I worked for two years as a research sociologist with the Kentucky Department of Education.).  During the summer of 1999, I obtained a grant from the Kentucky Department of Education to examine differences in performance on the statewide assessment by gender and race.  I currently am revising two articles on performance differences by geographic region (Appalachian vs. non-Appalachian) and concentration (rural vs. urban).  I am also working on a series of articles with professors Stephen Miller (University of Louisville) and Larry Ennis (Lindsey Wilson College) on the ways that instructional practices affect academic achievement in science.  In addition, I am working with one of our recent MA graduates to publish a paper examining how high school teachers' perceptions of school-related violence differ by rurality.  

I would be willing to talk with students about research on any environmental, rural, community, economic development, geographical, or social movements topic.  However, some areas of particular interest to me include: ecofeminism; rural isolation; forest land stewardship; community studies and restudies, and regional social movements [e.g., the protests surrounding the attempt to site an airpark in Warren County, community action in the wake of the contamination at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, or social mobilization surrounding contract hog or chicken operations in southwestern Kentucky].