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Faculty & Staff

Kelly Dagan

Kelly Dagan

Professor of Sociology, Department Chair
Sturtevant Hall, Room 210
217.245.3442
kdagan@ic.edu
Research Interests
Kelly A. Dagan's dissertation focused on the Sociology of Emotions, specifically looking at anger as the emotion of power. Since then, Dr. Dagan has focused her attention on issues of stratification (race, class, gender, and sexuality) and the importance of civic engagement for student learning.
Primary Study Area
Service Learning/Civic Engagement
Education
Kent State University | Ph.D. | Sociology
Kent State University | M.A. | Sociology
Hiram College | B.A. | Sociology
Bio

Professor Kelly Dagan earned my Ph.D. in Sociology from Kent State University in 2000.  She has taught at Illinois College for twenty-six years, focusing on issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality.  Approximately 20 years ago, she began to include civic engagement as a core component of one of her courses, SO 206 (Social Stratification in the US). She is particularly proud of the work students produce in this course.  In addition to classroom instruction, discussion and traditional assignments, students in this course are required to be civically engaged in one of a number of local non-profit agencies for a minimum of fifteen hours over the course of the semester. Every assignment that the students complete must connect the information from class materials to their civic engagement experiences. It truly represents the importance of bringing together theory and practice.

What do you enjoy most about working with students?

I enjoy when students begin to ask questions that they never asked before, when they begin to see the world from a new perspective, and when they begin to want to make a different in the communities in which they live.