SSA History
Author: mgoldinSSA History
By Marianne Goldin and Sophia Chang
6/9/09
Once upon a time, the Sociology Student Association existed, and then didn’t and then did again. This is all myth now, and only Kevin Mihata or Dana Pietromonaco or Richard Huff or Sociology Faculty would know the story better. All we know is what we’ve done to re-establish SSA and make it more solid.
The reinvigoration of the SSA
June 2007 – At the Sociology New Major Orientation, Susanna Hansson announces that the Sociology Student Association, a group that has existed before, is vacant and needs new leadership.
September 2007 – Marianne Goldin approaches the Sociology Department administration about the SSA opportunity announced at the prior Spring Major New Major Orientation. Dana Pietromonaco tells Marianne a little bit about the organization and offers to send out a message to the list serv.
Late September 2007 – First informal meeting of the SSA at Café Allegro on 40th @ College Inn (now a different business). In attendance (or involved by email): Marianne Goldin, Phaedra Boyle, Jonathan Wagner, Tina Abrams, Serena Mitchell, Kyle Albert, Hannah Parker and Mindy Szeto. Other founding members include: Shanota Allen, Alexandra Barnes, Matthew Bennett, Michael Burgher, Janelle Davis, Roxanna Gonzalez, Sandy Lam, Shih Yeh Lin, and Christina Long. Meetings happened at UW-area coffee shops before we realized it was a lot cheaper and easier to hold them in the HUB or in other UW conference rooms.
History of Officers 2007-2010
2007-08 SSA Officers
Marianne Goldin (President)
Tina Abrams (Vice President, Fall/Winter)
Serena A. Mitchell (Secretary, Fall/Winter)
Mindy Szeto (Treasurer)
Sophia Chang (Publicist - VP Elect for Spring Qtr)
Sarah Lee (Publicist)
Chelsea Christensen (Publicist)
Marcus Luce (AKD Chair)
2008-09 SSA Officers
Sophia A. Chang (President)
Jonathan D. Wagner (Vice President)
Kyle Albert (Treasurer)
Marianne Goldin (Secretary, Fall/Winter) / Lidia Jozefowicz (Secretary, Spring)
Mihran Akopyan (PR Co-chair)
Melissa Matugas (PR Co-chair)
2009-2010 (incoming)
Lidia Jozefowicz (President)
Melissa Matugas (Vice President)
Mihran Akopyan (Secretary, Webmaster)
Hyun Suh (Publicist)
Semhar Negassa (Treasurer)
Accomplishments for 2007-8
• Governance
o Established the club with the SAO RSO office
o Codified officer roles and duties
o Created website with duties, calendar, instructions, resources, contact info,
o Created Facebook and Myspace group
o Created UW Mailman mailing list
o Created website on www.sociologystudent.org using WordPress software, linked from our UW webspace
o Created an account in the HUB Student Group Resource center
o Created a US Bank Account
o Set up a nonprofit Tax ID # (linked to Bank Account)
o Established regular meeting schedule and posted on the website, announced to list-servs
o Marianne recruited and on-boarded new officers
• Networking
o Established the club with the Sociology Department, notably the Academic Director (Kevin Mihata), Department Chair (Professor Stew Tolnay), PR/Outreach (Dana Pietromonaco), Experiential Learning (Gretchen Ludwig), Front Desk (Emily Beyer), Advising (Susana Hansson),
o Established relationship with faculty who had helped SSA in prior incarnations – Kate Stovel, Andy Cho, Julie Brines, Nika Kabiri, the GSA President Maureen Eger, and others.
o Re-established relationship with Richard Huff, former SSA president and webmaster-at-large, who helps the group to create a powerful web presence
• Awards
o Marianne Goldin received a yearlong Mary Gates Leadership Scholarship for her work in reinvigorating the undergraduate experience in the Sociology department through the SSA
o Marianne Goldin received a Sociology Featured Student mention for her work in the SSA
• Sub-groups/Honor groups
o Marcus Luce re-established the AKD chapter at the UW – graduating class of ~10 AKD members, Professor Tolnay as chapter chair
o Marianne Goldin worked to connect the Sociology honors cohort with the goings-on of the SSA
o AKD petered out at the end of the year after Marcus graduated—Marianne took over the project when he left and ensured that diplomas and cords were delivered to the AKD graduates
• Events
o Re-started Signature SSA event “Soc Cinema” – at least quarterly movie night with a professor or TA facilitating Sociologic discussion of the movie afterwards – with free food (pizza) – open to all UW’ers
• Facilitators included Julie Brines and others
o Lynching Memorial was co-organized with the Lynching Project under the guidance of Prof Tolnay and direction of Grad student Amy Bailey. Involved a day-long action on the HUB lawn where we read from a list of 10,000 names of Lynching Victims from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries and drew attention to the concept of extra-legal crime and remembrance of these murders. Professors, grad students, staff and many SSA members participated in the action and it drew the attention of many people on campus and area press.
o Sleep-out for the Homeless – SSA mobilized people from the department for a protest against Mayor Nickels’ sweeps of homeless encampments. The action was organized by Real Change and involved a group of people camping out overnight in front of the Seattle Federal Building.
o Quarterly New Major Presentation – Marianne made a schpiel for the SSA at each new major orientation for about 5-10 minutes and this is where we gathered the most membership forms (100 membership forms handed out at each one and this was coordinated with the Soc Admin staff)
o Created Sociology Undergraduate Career Workshop (was a recommendation by the SAO office as a way to engage the Soc students by meeting their needs for career prep) by partnering with Gretchen Ludwig (Soc) and Lynnea Erickson (Career Center) - Attendance of 12-15 people with an interactive portion, a door prize ($15 Bookstore card) and free pizza. Event was a successful pilot project and funded by the SSA
o Free-Rider Café: A weekly “honors system” coffee stop in front of the 2nd floor Condon advising office. We had drip coffee, tea, creamer, sugar, and sometimes donuts or pop-tarts. Reason for this was that there was no coffee in Condon, and we wanted to create a watering hole concept that would informally bring students, professors and staff together. Sometimes it made money (not often) but mostly it was a way to get the SSA name out and to get people to realize that there was a student group on campus. The office staff liked it.
• Exposure
o The SSA reached the greater UW community through its aggressive marketing through list servs and UW website/department calendars
o The Soc Cinema event was featured in the A&S Perspectives (Alumni) magazine for Summer 2008 - in an article about film groups on campus
Accomplishments for 2008-9
• Governance
o Re-designed the website (new Wordpress “theme”), Mihran Akopyan led the effort and selected a new skin that emphasized that we were a student group and made the site look more personal and colorful – less bureaucratic and institutional
o Mihran Akopyan created a multicultural SSA button design which may be chosen as the SSA logo in the future, unless a new logo is designed b the 2009-10 class
o Sophia ensured regular and timely meetings, scheduling of meeting and other logistical details that ran like clockwork
o Constitution was not updated
o Sophia Recruited and on-boarded new officers
• Events
o Continued the Soc Cinema tradition – once a quarter
• One of the Soc cinemas was held at the Seattle Nortwest Film Forum in partnership with their “1969” Film Series – Prof Mulcahy facilitated the film “They Shoot Horses Don’t They?”
• Other Soc Cinema facilitators included Rafael Mondesir, and Brittin Wagner
• The last Soc Cinema of the year for “Born into Brothels” was in partnership with the UW UNICEF chapter and was big! (20 people came) – there was a great discussion and there were different perspectives (J-school, Econ, Soc, UNICEF, etc) and felt a lot more diverse and applicable than limiting the conversation to Sociology
o Soc Café happened weekly through the year, on Mondays.
o Every first week of the quarter and finals week, there was a special collaboration with the department – they provided free donuts and we provided free coffee
o Sociology Symposium (5/20/09) - THE BIG EVENT• What it was: The Symposium was the major event of the year and planning for it started a year prior to it. It was held in the HUB West Ballroom over 3 hours. Over 100 people, including Sociology professors, grad students, undergraduates and families of the students, attended (we needed to bring in more chairs!). There were 7 oral presentations (10 minutes each) and 7 posters. Overall, there were 17 total participants represented, including individuals from 2 Soc practica and an individual from Anthropology. The presentations were split into two sessions and were peopled entirely by Soc honors students. Between the sessions was a poster session and there were snacks (fruit, cheese, chips, drinks, cookies, crudités, pinwheel sandwiches) throughout the event. The event was opening by Soc Department Chair Prof Crutchfield who presented keynote speaker Prof Pepper Schwartz. Prof Schwartz spoke for 20 minutes about her career as a Sociologist of Sexuality and about entering a field that did not yet exist.
• How it got started: The idea of a Soc Symposium was brought by Prof Tolnay to then-president Marianne Goldin in Spring 2008. Marianne was excited by the idea to showcase not only Soc undergrad research, but also experiential projects and projects abroad. She was also excited to include individuals from other departments, and possibly other schools. Marianne then discussed the idea with the GSA president Maureen Eger, with Kevin Mihata and others. It was a good fit for Sophia to work on the project and to make it the focus of her Mary Gates grant application.
• The planning: Sophia did the heavy lifting on the planning from Summer 2008-the event itself and post-event debriefing. The event was promoted through tabling throughout the year, flyers, word of mouth (huge!) especially in the department. Through Prof Tolnay’s help, the honors class was required to present their work. Prof Alexes Harris gave extra credit to her students who attended the symposium. The event was grassroots in that it was totally organized and staffed by the SSA members and volunteers. It was funded by the ASUW Services&Activities Fee and by the Sociology Department. The event drew great accolades, notably from the Soc Dept Chair Prof Crutchfield who supported the event for 2010 and implied that the Sociology department would once again partner with the SSA on it.
• Debriefing: The incoming 2009-2010 president Lidia Jozefowicz was briefed by outgoing president Sophia Chang on improvements for the next year’s event.
o Our fun event was the “Friends Family and Lover – Getting to Know One Another” mixer. There was an ice-breaker, followed by charades and then a Q&A session (people wrote questions on slips of paper and tossed them in a hat) and then we discussed the anonymous questions in groups and offered individual advise to that question. Individuals used their personal wisdom, sociological education, etc to answer the questions. It was lots of fun and we spent most of the time doing charades. There were various snacks that the officers brought - a lot of food that got eaten.
• Networking
o Continued to cultivate a relationship with the Soc admin staff, notably the new chair – Professor Robert Crutchfield, Dana Pietromonaco (PR/outreach), Gretchen Ludwig (experiential learning and Kari Young (front desk).
o Cultivated a relationship with our Department Advisor Professor Susan Pitchford, who suggested doing a social awareness fundraiser in the future
o Cultivated a relationship with Jennifer Kiest in the SAO office regularly over the year – Jennifer helped the SSA with event planning and budget proposals.
• Awards
o Sophia Chang received a yearlong Mary Gates Leadership Scholarship for her work in creating the inaugural Sociology Department Undergraduate Symposium and ensuring continuity of the SSA
• Exposure
o The SSA was featured in the Soc Department Newsletter in Fall and Spring Quarters.
• In the fall quarter, we had a short writeup by Sophia Chang about the club, what we do and our goals
• In the spring quarter (yet to be released), Sophia Chang and Marianne Goldin wrote articles about the Sociology Symposium, and experiences doing research as an undergraduate, respectivelyo Tabled twice
• Dawg Daze in Fall quarter for club publicity
• Beginning of Spring quarter for the Friends/Family/Lover event and club publicity