Department of Sociology Faculty

Jacob Felson

Jacob Felson (Instructor) will receive his doctorate in sociology from Penn State University in December, 2009. He received a master's in sociology from Penn State in 2004, and a bachelor's degree, also in sociology, from the University of Chicago in 2002.

Prof. Felson successfully defended his dissertation, entitled "What Can We Learn from Twin Studies? A Comprehensive Evaluation of the Equal Environments Assumption," in July 2009. He is presently revising parts of his dissertation for journal submission. Felson is also involved in a project with a colleague, Amy Adamczyk, at John Jay College, examining the impact of religion on the development of homosexual identity in adolescence. He will present a paper from this project at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in October.

Prof. Felson is excited to be teaching methods and statistics at William Paterson. He hopes to make quantitative topics fun and interesting to students who aren't usually comfortable with math. Students who dread statistics at first may change their minds when they see how statistics can be applied to areas that interest them.

Prof. Felson recently moved to downtown Jersey City with his two dogs. In his spare time, he likes to explore NYC.