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The paper presents the address given by the author during the general session of the Midwest Sociological Society's 25th anniversary meeting on April 13, 1962, in Des Moines, Iowa. It discusses the author's experience with the society and his participation in its previous annual conferences. During his term as secretary of the society he has observed the changes in the structure and the functions of the society since its reorganization in 1937. The most important phenomenon having implications for a regional society is the decline in regionalism of American sociology. Regionalism, in the sense that it existed in 1937 has disappeared. The birth of the society have a significant impact on the origins of modern American sociology. The educational institutions established by notable members of the society have contributed to the production of doctor of philosophy degree in sociology.

The article discusses issues related to subjective powerlessness in the U.S. The paper focuses on changes since 1952 in citizen efficacy or feelings of control over government for various sub-groups in the U.S. population such as blacks, blue collar workers, Southerners, Jews, young and old people. As with most issues in the study of social change, there is widespread disagreement on trends in citizen efficacy for industrial societies such as the U.S. Most theory predicts trends in objective powerlessness, rather than subjective powerlessness, although it is possible that trends in objective powerlessness do not match trends in subjective powerlessness. Within the U.S. at each point of observation, powerlessness does not vary much by stratum, except when education and race are used as indicators. And within the white population, some of the differences are heavily explained by educational differentials. It therefore seems fair to conclude that white subordinate interest groups are not oriented toward government as a result of what would seem to be objective powerlessness but more on the basis of their educational achievement.

The article presents information on a survey within the eleven Southeastern States of the introductory sociology course in U.S. The purpose of the study was twofold: (1) to provide a general factual description of the situation of the introductory sociology course within the Southeastern states and (2) to provide a technique for stimulating interest in one's common problems as teachers. This paper briefly presents the results of the survey. A general social science course is available to freshmen or sophomores in 41 percent of Southeastern institutions. Of these, only two-fifths require that the course be taken by all students in the college. This indicates that the burden of responsibility of the introductory course by no means has shifted to the general social science course. The survey presented 18 objectives of the course for the respondents to rate along a three-point continuum, as very important, of some significance, or as unimportant. One respondent demonstrated the logical interrelation of all 18 objectives, showing that all comprise the fundamental aim of "understanding the society in which the student lives" and that by implication all are involved in the learning process.

The article focuses on the aim to select titles that illustrate theoretical and research trends in studies of mythology and folk in the U.S. The terms mythology and folklore are often linked together in both lay and academic discourse. Mythology is an independent study devoted to Greek and Roman myths which had broadened to cover myths of people but had lost its status as a separate branch of learning and become an adjunct to several subdivisions of the humanities and social sciences. The sign of the coming of age of folklore studies is the appearance of historical and biographical explorations.

In the minds of educators and sociologists, the concept, sociology of education, is associated with the concept, educational sociology. For that reason any discussion of a sociology of education which this article proposes to define must take into consideration the development of educational sociology. At the turn of the present century, there was considerable enthusiasm for the development of a new discipline or at least a branch of sociology to be known as educational sociology. By 1914, as many as sixteen institutions were offering courses called educational sociology. In the following period numerous books carrying some type of educational sociology title came off the press. These involved various concepts of the relationship between sociology and education. By 1923, National Society for the Study of Educational Sociology was organized. Sociologists interested in problems of education have met as the educational section of the American Sociological Society at the annual meetings until 1948. The early demise of National Society which was made up of both education specialists and sociologists is indicative of the divergence of interests in this group. The apparent demise of the educational sociology section suggests a lack of interest, among sociologists, in what has been known as educational sociology.

This article presents a study on the context of international development education in the U.S. The foreign assistance programs in the U.S. government have actively enlisted university and college faculty members to direct and participate in their overseas programs. As a natural but delayed outgrowth of this activity, there has been an increasing scholarly concern for understanding the processes of social change and development planning by those who participated in the overseas service enterprises. Though educators have been involved in overseas assistance from the beginning, economists and public administrator took an early lead in substantial development-related research enterprise. The recent heightened interest of educators and social scientists in international development education is both boon and bane. Research in the social sciences provides data relevant to the educator concerned with international development education.

Several efforts have been made in recent years to analyze the sociology curricula of colleges in the United States. In 1942, the ten courses ranking highest made up 64.2 per cent of the course offerings. The 1957 results showed that the same courses, with two exceptions, ranked highest, though with different ranks. The present study sought to learn what sociology courses are being offered by the small liberal arts colleges of the United States listed in the 1963 edition of the "U.S. Higher Education Directory" as being in the second category and having a student population of 1,000 to 2,500. Some colleges did not send catalogs, and some did not send them soon enough to be included, so 122 colleges were actually used in the study. It is unlikely that any significant bias could have been introduced by the omissions, as failures to obtain catalogs were in no way related to the content of the study. Classification of courses was made by title wherever possible, and by catalog description where necessary to obtain more accurate comparability of offerings. Courses were tabulated by geographical location, size of college, sex of student body, and college sponsorship.

The concept of the Ph.D. degree as a research degree has become deeply rooted in the educational ideology of the United States, and graduate department catalogs continuously define the dissertation in terms of its eventual contribution to a scholar's discipline. From a sociology of knowledge perspective, a surprising fact is that there have been virtually no empirical examinations of the actual fate of the Ph.D. dissertation. This study concerns dissertations written only in the field of sociology; it measures the extent to which dissertations are disseminated in the discipline. The measure of dissemination is based on the number of citations of Ph.D. dissertations made in articles in the "American Sociological Review" and the "American Journal of Sociology" over a fifteen-year period, 1955 through 1969. This article tells nothing about the extent to which Ph.D. dissertations become chapters in books or become published books. The extent to which dissertations are cited in other sociology journals is also not known.

The American Sociological Society's Liaison Committee for Sociology and Education met twice during the 1957 Society meetings in Washington D. C. The major topics for discussion were: the purpose and orientation of the committee; the desirability and possibility of sponsoring a periodical publication for journals "Sociology of Education" and/or "Educational Sociology"; the content and organization of the bulletin "Sociology and Education" then being planned by Orville Brim under the sponsorship of the Society and Russell Sage Foundation; the planning of sociology of education sections for the 1958 meetings of the Society. The discussion among committee members present indicated that there are several different functions the committee can carry on. One of these is the continued and expanded liaison with the National Council for Social Studies and other educational agencies. A second is a watch dog and promotional function to increase the teaching of sociology in secondary schools and increase the sociological content in the training program of social studies and other teachers. The third function discussed for the committee was the stimulation of sociological research on educational processes and institutions.