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By Julie Parrent
Peter Iadicola's 17 years at IPFW have taken him from junior faculty member to associate professor and chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. As chair, he presents teaching and curriculum ideas to the faculty, creates a balance for rewarding faculty productivity in teaching, research and service, and studies faculty strengths for ideas on how students can be better served. "I don't view the chairship as obligatory service," he said. "For the first time in my life, I see it as a desirable role and an admirable career objective for a faculty member."
Iadicola describes the faculty in his department as very strong, active in book and article publishing, and in community service. "I'm pleased and proud to be associated with them," he said.
Iadicola said the undergraduate sociology curriculum was totally changed in 1982 to allow students to specialize in one of three areas: criminal, family and community, or organizational sociology. All students have a field experience as a capstone to their education, an opportunity that has led to long-term employment for many. "We helped make the bachelor's degree more marketable for our graduates," he said.
Now in the approval process at IU is a master's degree in sociological practice for IPFW. Iadicola said such a degree is in high demand on campus.
Q. How has your teaching style evolved over the years?
A. I'm trying to work on my pedagogy‹how to better teach sociology. Last year, I gave myself a mandate not to lecture at the students in my introductory course for more than 161 minutes the entire semester. I tapped into other ways of learning besides cognitive‹the emotional and experiential. I wanted the students to "experience social forces" and we did this through role plays, simulations, outside experiences and exposure to music and poetry. There was no textbook. I provided handouts and relied on biographies and other nonfiction to help students experience the lives of others.
Q. What role is the Internet playing in your teaching?
There are limits to that technology; you're talking to a camera. On the Internet, there is one-on-one interaction with the students. I wanted to try to teach a class without a classroom this semester and offered "Education and Inequality" entirely over the Internet. Unfortunately, we had to cancel due to low enrollment. I'm going to try again, though, and this time advertise the course through a Web page. This spring my violence course will include a Web page set up with readings, notes, graphics and chat room discussions.
Q. What are your current research interests?
A. My research has been very eclectic over the years. Right now I'm interested in social control. As the rate of victimization has decreased, the amount of social control has dramatically increased. There are more controls over us now than at any other time in our history, and ironically, it is all done in the context of freedom. There has been a major expansion in the social control industry, both public and private. There are more prisons, more private security firms, more use of mood-altering drugs for depression in adults and hyperactivity in children. It's a profit-motivated industry.
I'm also interested in studying the drug "problem" as one that is context-centered. Other subjects I've studied are violence, inequality in schools, crime, economic displacement, plant closings, policing. Everything I study is from the perspective of critical sociology. The hierarchical structures at the foundation of our society: class, gender and ethnicity is the starting point for much of my understanding of social institutions.