Global Problems, Global Solutions

JoAnn Chirico, emerita, received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Pittsburgh. While originally a doctoral candidate in education, she found that sociology provided the theoretical tools to analyze the problems she investigated—the coincidence of the global rise of both progressive and fundamentalist movements in education, religion, and other dimensions of social life. Intrigued by Emile Durkheim’s pronouncement that individual differentiation would proceed to such an extent that all we ultimately would have in common was our humanity, she began her study of globalization—the integration of humanity into a social order. Most of her career was at the Beaver campus of Pennsylvania State University, where she emphasized the importance of research and evidence, the global perspective, and civic engagement in her classes. She has presented workshops on internationalizing the curriculum and engaging students in service learning at conferences over the years. Her previous publications for SAGE include Sociological Research Exercises for the Global Age, a lab manual of mini research exercises for introductory sociology courses, and Globalization: Prospects and Problems.