Jill Bouma, Professor of Sociology, received her BA in Mathematics from Emory University in 1985, her MA in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1993, and her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1999. She has done additional study in Beijing, the People’s Republic of China, and St. Andrews University, Scotland. She has also taught Math in Gabon, West Africa, as a Peace Corps Volunteer (1986-88), and English in the Wuhan Foreign Language School, in the People’s Republic of China (1995-97).

Dr. Bouma’s fields of study include demography, gender, and international development. Courses taught at Berea include Methods, Statistics, Gender, Problems of American Institutions, and Sociology of Health.  Her current research has an applied focus, as she and her methods students collaborate each year with colleagues in the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment to study dimensions of campus health.  The opportunity to engage in applied research while teaching and modeling the process to students offers the joys (and terrors) of applying Sociological methods to topics of local concern.  She says the opportunity to belong to an academic community that honors teaching and at the same time promotes social justice is what brought her to and keeps her at Berea College.