Department of Sociology Faculty

Jacob Felson

Jacob Felson (Instructor) received his B.A. in sociology from the University of Chicago, and his M.A. in sociology from Penn State University, where he is presently working on his Ph.D. in sociology.  His areas of interest include quantitative methodology and the sociology of religion. 

Prof. Felson has coauthored a number of journal articles in the sociology of religion.  Most recently, he coauthored an article (Social Science Quarterly, 2008) about the effects of religion on pregnancy resolution. He and his coauthor found that religiosity plays a much less important role in women’s decisions about whether to have an abortion than people might expect, given that religion has such a powerful influence on attitudes about the morality of abortion.

Also in 2008, Felson coauthored about the influence of religion on childrearing published in an edited volume. In previous years, Felson coauthored a paper about the influence of religion on sexual behavior ( Social Science Research, 2006), and coauthored a paper about the effect of conservative Protestantism on attitudes about the proper role of government in society (forthcoming in Social Science Research).  Prof. Felson was also a coauthor on a paper about the measurement of religious denominations ( Public Opinion Quarterly, 2006). 

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 generally think of math as difficult and/or dull.  Students who dread statistics at first may become less wary of class when they see how statistics can be applied to their own areas of interest (e.g. sports). In order to make statistics interesting, Felson tries to take advantage of the broad applicability of the field by bringing in examples from topics that pique student interest.

Prof. Felson lives in the Washington Heights neighborhood in New York City with his two dogs, a lab/chow mix and a Jack Russell terrier.  In his spare time, he likes to explore the city and its architecture.