BriefHistoryoftheSociologyDepartmentatMichigan SociologyattheUniversityofMichiganhasalonganddistinguishedintellectualhistory.

.Thecampuswas introduced to the emerging discipline through the teachings of faculty member John Dewey, the eminent philosopher,whosegraduatecoursesinthelastdecadeofthenineteenthcenturycoveredmanyofthenowclassic works in the field. One of Deweys students, Charles Horton Cooley taught the first class bearing the name sociology,teachingbothPrinciplesofSociologyandProblemsofSociologyin189495.AlthoughCooleytaughtout of the more established political economy department, he was instrumental in laying the ground work for sociologyatMichiganandbeyond,becomingacofounderoftheAmericanSociologicalSocietyandoneofitsearly presidents. Cooleyhadamajorimpactonthenewdiscipline.HerejectedtheviewsofhisAmericancontemporaries whosawsociologyasabranchofthenaturalscienceswiththegoalofdiscoveringnaturallaws.Cooleyslasting contributions include the concept of the looking glass self, the idea that society and the individual are interwoven and codetermining, or in his words, twinborn, and his recognition of the inherently meaningful characterofsocialpractice.Sociology,forCooley,wasatoncescience,philosophy,andart.Underhisleadership, MichiganwastheonlymajorAmericansociologydepartmentthatwasinitiatedonanonscientisticfooting. Cooley never pushed to form a separate department of sociology during his lifetime, although he supervisedthePhDdissertationsofseveralscholarswhowentontoplaymajorrolesinsociology.UponCooleys death in 1929, Roderick McKenzie was lured away from the University of Washington to become head of Michigans newly created department of sociology in 1930, which was granted budgetary autonomy from economics the following year. McKenzie introduced the human ecology perspective which would remain a cornerstone of the departments strengths in the decades to follow. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression, sociology at Michigan grew dramatically during the 1930s, doubling its undergraduate enrollments, developingamoreseriousgraduatecurriculum,andexpandingthesizeofitsfaculty. McKenzies successor as Chair in 1940 was Robert Cooley Angell (the nephew of C.H. Cooley) who presided over the departments dramatic postwar growth and transformation. Angell positioned sociology to capitalize on the two major developments shaping the national discipline. The first was influenced by an interdisciplinary and more explicitly comparative model of sociology, best represented at the time by Harvards department of social relations, which Angell sought to emulate at Michigan by hiring such outstanding comparative scholars as anthropologists Horace Miner and David Aberle, along with sociologists Guy Swanson, GerhardLenski,MorrisJanowitz,EdwardLaumannandotherswhocontributedtothedepartmentsleadershipin comparativeandmacrosociology. Thesecondpostwardevelopment,spurredinpartbytheexpansionofresearchfundingfromgovernment andprivatefoundations,wastheintroductionofmorerigorousmethodsofdatacollectionandanalysis,whichled in1946totheformationoftheSurveyResearchCenter,aprecursortotheInstituteforSocialResearch,stillthe worlds leading center for quantitative social scientific research. Driven by such distinguished hires as Theodor Newcomb, Rensis Likert, Leslie Kish, Angus Campbell, and Ronald Freedman, and with the addition a few years laterofPhilipConverse,HubertBlalockandOtisDudleyDuncan,MichiganemergedafterWorldWarIIasaleading centerforsurveyresearch,socialpsychology,andquantitativemethods. Anchored solidly in both traditions of sociological scholarship, Michigan continued building over the next few decades a truly worldclass, methodologically diverse scholarly community that included such influential former facultyasCharlesTilly,AlbertReiss,HowardSchuman,ReynoldsFarley,WilliamGamson,MayerZald,andWilliam SewellJr.Currentfacultyhavecontributedadditionalhistoricalandethnographicmethodstothedepartments existing menu of research strategies while providing national leadership in several vital areas, including comparativeinternationalsociology,socialdemography,socialtheory,historicalandculturalsociology,economic sociology,stratification,raceandurbansociology,genderandfamily,andhealth.