Helpful, personable and approachable are just a few words used by students to describe Stephen Scanlan, a sociology professor at Ohio University.
Scanlan is a professor of sociology and the Director of Graduate Studies for the M.A. program in sociology, and he is the Director of Studies for the environmental studies majors in the Honors Tutorial College. Scanlan began working at OU in 2006 and has worked at the university ever since.
Before working at OU, he worked at the University of Memphis in Tennessee. Though he enjoyed his time at the university, he knew it was not where he wanted to be permanently.
“I started looking for positions, and this opened up,” Scanlan said. “I fit really well, and the timing was right in terms of my move from Memphis. (I have) a lot of respect for OU, but also the Athens region.”
Scanlan participates in multiple different types of research with students and faculty. He has researched hunger inequality, both globally and locally, and he prefers looking at the local perspective. His research has greatly expanded as Scanlan has branched his research to include justice and sovereignty issues.
“I tie a lot of that work to the region,” Scanlan said. “I try to make connections to hunger in Appalachia or food justice or injustice in the United States and how that might connect to movements such as food access and issues of hunger inequality.”
Through his research, he has begun to focus on the environment and how that affects food injustice in different areas. He has looked at factors such as population and poverty.
Aside from this topic, Scanlan also does work on greenwashing. Greenwashing is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as, “the act or practice of making a product, policy, activity, etc. appear to be more environmentally friendly or less environmentally damaging than it really is.” He works with a group of scholars from all over the world to get papers published on this topic.
Aside from his work in sociology, Scanlan also works with HTC students in the environmental studies program. Each year, he tries to choose eight students to partake in this program, and each year, he finds himself excited to not only teach these students but also learn from them.
“They're coming from all backgrounds,” Scanlan said. “To me, studying the environment or things like climate change can be depressing and difficult and just hard to feel positive about, but when I see kind of the enthusiasm of the new wave of people who want to embrace the students and who want to embrace these issues, that's exciting to me.”
Phoebe Giordano, a sophomore studying environmental studies through the Honors Tutorial College, first met Scanlan during Bobcat Student Orientation. From there on, she knew she would learn a lot from having Scanlan as a professor and Director of Studies.
“Knowing that someone like him is open to pursuing a tutorial and wants to talk to students after class has made me just feel a little better about the fact that maybe other professors are more chill about that,” Giordano said. “They are there to help their students.”
Gulia Sheppard, a sophomore studying environmental studies through the Honors Tutorial College, also has worked closely with Scanlan and had many opportunities to take classes with him.
“I had a tutorial with him one-on-one last semester, and I've taken two classes with him,” Sheppard said. “They were some of my favorite classes. He's just really passionate about it, and he does a very good job of teaching this material that is really depressing.”
Scanlan teaches classes such as Sociology of Poverty and Environmental Sociology and said he loves teaching these classes.
“I feel lucky that I'm able to teach and do research on things that are outside your door or window,” Scanlan said. “I mean, these are issues that people are experiencing. People are living in poverty. People have to struggle with hunger, and people see conflict and violence. We have to worry about climate change. I think as a social scientist, I'm glad that we're even able to have these conversations."
