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To understand the social experiences of rural teachers recruited by cohort-based alternative pathway programs in the United States, I interviewed 17 rural teachers recruited by Teach For America (TFA). While many new rural teachers experience social isolation early in their careers when teaching in communities in which they did not grow up, these rural TFA teachers experienced very little social isolation. Instead, they were embedded in insulated but dense social networks comprised primarily of other TFA teachers. The richness of these teachers' social lives reflects shared life stage, similar worldviews, and proximity, as well as TFA's institutional practices. The type and composition of their relationships appears to have influenced these teachers' short- and long-term retention in rural schools and communities. Personal relationships with short-time residents and utilitarian friendships with long-time rural residents appear to have promoted their short-term retention and undermined their long-term retention, while personal relationships with long-time rural residents appear to have promoted their short- as well as long-term retention, especially when they were romantic. To improve the long-term retention of participants, I conclude that cohort-based alternative pathway programs operating in rural schools and communities should de-emphasize friendships with short-time residents, actively encourage personal friendships with long-time residents, and recruit long-time residents of the rural communities where they operate.

This analysis of California union membership draws on data from the 2001–02 California Union Census (CUC), a new survey of local unions conducted by the Institute for Labor and Employment, as well as selected data from the Current Population Survey. The focus is the recent divergence of California from the United States as a whole: while union density has continued its long decline nationwide, in California it has increased over the past few years. This divergence reflects not only the ways in which labor’s political strength in the state has facilitated recruiting new union members but also California’s distinctive labor history. The relatively large share of union membership held by the Service Employees (SEIU) in California yielded disproportionate growth for the state’s labor movement in the 1990s, as this union became the nation’s single most rapidly growing labor organization. The authors also examine variation in union membership by industry, region, and across key demographic groups. In both California and the nation, for example, union density is much higher in the public sector than in the private sector. Women and African Americans have higher unionization rates in California than nationally; the rates are similar in the state and nation for immigrant workers, who are less unionized than their native-born counterparts in both cases. Finally, the authors look at data on union staffing levels. The key finding here is that organizing staff are employed by relatively few local unions, but that those that do employ them are the fastest growing.

The authors explore the challenges inherent in traversing the multiple boundaries between sociology and social work, and the academy and the community, by examining a service learning course on hunger and homelessness taught by two sociology professors and two social workers on the staff of a community service organization. The authors draw on instructional team meetings and correspondence, observation of class sessions, and formal and informal course evaluations to analyze three "moments": the planning process, a pivotal class session, and students' final presentations. They found that both their teaching and students' learning were enriched by disciplinary differences in knowledge claims, the design and utility of qualitative research, and the process of drawing conclusions from, and making arguments using, qualitative data. The authors conclude that experiential learning has value beyond providing students hands-on experiences. It can also provide a laboratory in which students and instructors can explore the similarities and differences between sociology, social work, and other disciplines.

An introduction is presented in which the editors discuss various reports within the issue on topics including prison labor in the U.S. by Genevieve LeBaron, prison fire camps in California by Phil Goodman, and influence of organized labor on American penal policy during the 1990s by Joshua Page.