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Child & Family Studies - Albright College
Child & Family Studies - Albright College
Child & Family Studies
Support families. Strengthen communities. Make a meaningful difference.
Child & Family Studies at Albright examines the social, developmental, and systemic factors that shape children's lives and family dynamics. Students explore the ways communities, institutions, and policies affect well-being.
About the Program
Despite restructuring, the department remains strongly committed to student success through advising, community engagement, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Hands-On Learning
Students gain hands-on experience through internships, service programs like Community Cubs, and participation in community-based projects.
Program Goals
Course Requirements
Opportunities
Faculty
Advising Sheets
Foster intellectual curiosity.
Achieve breadth of knowledge across socio-anthropological substantive areas and depth within one area
Write and speak clearly and fluently while also incorporating the socio-anthropological knowledge (i.e. terms, concepts, and theories) that they have gained in their socio-anthropological coursework.
Practice the skill of connecting social observations with theory so that the theories alluded to in #3 can be used by graduates throughout their lives to develop sophisticated assessments about the causes and effects of human actions.
Develop a foundation of socio-anthropological theory about the way humans interact with the social and physical world such that they can use them to understand and assess a variety of human actions around the world.
Develop the skills and knowledge to conduct basic socio-anthropological investigations. This would include being familiar with the process by which an individual can: develop sociological hypotheses; collect pertinent sociological data; analyze data qualitatively and quantitatively; develop conclusions about the issue(s) in question.
Find, understand, and critically assess scholarly and analytic socio-anthropological literature.
Break free from the leash of cultural conformity by learning to think critically and creatively about issues for themselves without relying on others (authorities) to make the assessments for them.
Full Course Catalogue
Course Descriptions
Major Requirements
Complete Core Research Methods and Statistics sequence and Senior Seminar (PSY200
or
SOC 211 fulfills GS quantitative requirement)
SOC 210 Research Methods & SOC 211 Statistics & SOC 490 Senior Seminar
PSY 200 Research Design & Analysis I & PSY 201 Research Design & Analysis II & PSY405/406 Senior Seminar
Psychology Requirements
Core Psychology requirement:
PSY 100 General Psychology
Developmental Psychology Requirement:
PSY 230 (Lifespan Development) or PSY240 (Child Development)
One from Group I (Social, Developmental, and Clinical Approaches):
PSY 206 Social Psychology
PSY 210 Health Psychology
PSY 250 Personality
PSY 390 Adult Psychopathology
PSY 391 Child Psychopathology
One from Group II (Biological, Cognitive, and Evolutionary Approaches):
PSY 205 Biological Psychology
PSY 319 Evolutionary Psychology
PSY 340 Cognition
PSY 355 Motivation
One from Group III (Child-Focused Elective courses):
PSY 345 Language Development
PSY 346 Social Development
PSY 347 Adolescent Development
Psychology Elective: Any additional psychology course not previously taken
Sociology Requirements
All of the following core requirements:
SOC 101 Intro
SOC 213 Social Theory
Additional specialized family course requirement:
SOC 261 The Family
The following lower level specialized courses:
SOC 203 Human Services
Two of the following intermediate specialized courses:
SOC 302 Juvenile Delinquency
SOC 311 Domestic Violence
ANT 320 Sex, Gender, Culture
The following advanced application courses:
SOC 470 Immigration & Transnational Families or another 400-level advanced application course in the family
Field Study Experiences:
The Albright College sociology and anthropology department hosts a variety of opportunities for field study within the City of Reading, and the city, in a way, becomes a socio-anthropological laboratory. Students have worked with faculty to assess local social service agencies, study changes in neighborhoods experiencing reinvestment, explore the impact of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on communities, measure gang involvement and risk factors for gang membership, interview community members on town-gown relations, and compare religious services, among others.
Some of the field studies in which students have engaged took place in:
Barber shops
Pet stores
Roller rinks
Childcare facilities
Nightclubs
Homeless shelters
Agricultural animal auctions
Abortion clinics
Internships and Career Support
Students can connect with the
Career Development Center
to find internships where they can apply language proficiency in real‑world settings, locally, nationally, or internationally, and these can count toward major requirements with faculty approval.
ACRE Undergraduate Research
Students in any major can engage in interdisciplinary undergraduate research through the
Albright Creative Research Experience (ACRE)
, partnering with faculty mentors to pursue independent research or creative projects and present their work beyond the classroom.
Carla Abodalo , M.S.
Senior Instructor of Sociology & Anthropology
Charles Brown , Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Sociology & Anthropology
Brandon Clinton
Part-Time Faculty of Sociology & Anthropology
Erin Deneke
Adjunct Faculty
Tracey Estriplet-Adams
Adjunct Faculty
Sarah Gerloff
Adjunct Faculty
Jillian Gosselin
Adjunct Faculty
Julia Heberle , Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Psychology
Kyle Hosking
Adjunct Faculty
Susan Hughes , Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
Brian Jennings , Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Sociology & Anthropology
Adrienne Lodge
Adjunct Faculty
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Curriculum Highlights
Cross-program faculty support and advising
Internships in family services, legal settings, and community organizations
Research and fieldwork opportunities
Integration with public health and psychology initiatives