Stacy L. Smith, PhD

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I am an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Michigan State University and a first-generation college student. As a first-gen student and PhD, I’m particularly interested in helping first-generation and other underserved student populations achieve academic success. I recently started a blog to help undergraduates improve their academic writing: check out undergraduateswrite.com.

My approach to teaching is an active one – sociology is an incredibly broad discipline that is relevant to student’s everyday lives, and they learn best when the classroom and the everyday can be brought together. Sociology is in the doing.

My research interests focus on identity and belonging, particularly within groups that somehow “go against the grain” of the dominant society. My current research project involves a qualitative inquiry into the cosplay subculture–a culture that values diversity, equity, and inclusion in both principle and in practice. A key component of cosplay centers around a paradox: the sublimation of identity through communal practice in an activity that the dominant culture denigrates as strange. It is this tension between personal and social identity, boundary-work, and belonging/social cohesion that motivates my interest in this subculture.

Undergraduates Write!

How to Survive College – and Thrive – in Quarantine

Students choose face-to-face classes for a reason. How do you succeed in college, during a quarantine, when everything you counted on - from a set schedule, a network of friends, and a degree of independence, to graduation - has been ripped away?

Tales of a Blue Collar Academic – or – What I Did This Summer (instead of write)

This summer was supposed to be incredibly productive. I was going to write for several hours each day, and then spend another several hours on home improvement. I was going to have a well-balanced summer that would create good habits leading into the school year. But Murphy and his “law” had other plans for me … Continue reading Tales of a Blue Collar Academ […]

Formatting Your Paper

I often get a lot of student questions about formatting when I assign a writing project. From the tone of the emails (often slightly desperate), I get the feeling that a lot of students have been given bad grades for formatting issues alone. In my experience, college teachers are far more interested in content than form, but in this post I'll run throug […]

Citing Sources: Building your Reference List

Students often feel overwhelmed by the thought of creating the list of references that commonly appears at the end of the paper. Often that's because the student has waited until the end to build it, has just finished their paper, and hasn't taken the steps needed to make building the reference list - if not easy - at least less frustrating. Read o […]

Citing Sources: In-Text Citation How-To

Do you want to impress your teacher with the quality of your writing? One (relatively) easy way to do so is to change the way you handle in-text citations. Read on to learn more!