Careers of UWEC Sociology Alums
A sociology degree affords an individual a broad range of careers from which to choose. According to Indeed, careers are possible in banking and industry, education, government, working with numbers, and more.
Below is a list of careers UW-Eau Claire sociology graduates have pursued:
- Career and life design coach
- Corporate sale recruiter
- Non-profit executive consultant
- Victim witness coordinator
- Rural rehabilitation specialist
- Non-profit program and development coordinator
- Veterans employment representative
- Software company product owner
- Independent living skills, youth engagement coordinator
- Community response coordinator and family support specialist
- Sexual assault program coordinator
- Director of human resources
- Veteran housing program manager
- Student services enrollment advisor
- Director of training
- Assistant professor of sociology
- Hall director
- Executive team leader
- Community corrections lead
- Line therapist
- Career services advisor
- Conference coordinator
- National digital account manager at ESPN
- Customer account analyst at 3M
- Senior intellectual property paralegal
- Associate director of intertribal child welfare
- Research administrator
- Evening news co-anchor
- Employment and training counselor
- Senior university lecturer
- Worksite wellness coordinator
- Corporate relations manager
- Advising outreach coordinator
- Assistant director for leadership programs
- AmeriCorps Vista, community liaison and resources development
- Addiction counselor
- Organizational and individual coach and change facilitator
- Recovery facilitator
- Assistant program manager
- Program coordinator
Sociologists Who Have Made Impacts
- Francis Perkins – first woman appointed to presidential cabinet (FDR) as labor secretary from 1933-1945.
- Jane Addams – social reformer and activist, first American woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize (1931), one of the founders of the field of social work.
- Michelle Obama – lawyer, former First Lady of the United States, and former Bice-President at the University of Chicago Hospitals.
- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. – Civil Rights leader known for the Montgomery bus boycott, the March on Washington where he delivered his powerful “I Have a Dream” speech, and Nobel Peace Prize winner (1964).
- Roy Wilkins – former Civil Rights activist, long-time head of the NAACP (1955-77) where he played a pivotal role in Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
- Shirley Chisholm – first African American woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress, first woman to seek the nomination for president of the U.S., first African American to seek the nomination for president of the U.S., and co-founder of the National Women's Political Caucus.
- Saul Alinsky – viewed as the father of community organizing, author of Rules for Radicals, and a strong advocate for empowering residents of poverty-stricken areas to organize for change and improvements in their own backyards.
- Ronald Reagan – actor, president of the U.S. (1981-1989), and contributed to the end of the Cold War.
- Emily Greene Balch – noted pacifist, leader in the women’s peace movement, 1946 Nobel Peace Prize winner for her work with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.
- Saul Bellow – renown novelist (e.g., Hezog, Seize the Day, and Mr. Sammler’s Planet) and winner of both the Pulitzer Prize (1976) and the Nobel Prize (1976).
- Gene Baur – undercover investigator exposing factory farm cruelty, inspiration for international farm sanctuary movement, and called the “Conscience of the Food Movement” by Time magazine
- Amanda Gorman – American poet and activist, youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history, widely known for her poem, “The Hill We Climb.”
- Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the “sex doctor” – Holocaust survivor, sex therapist and talk show host, revolutionized open conversations about sex and sexuality on radio and television.
