Joseph A. Marolla (Ph.D., University of Denver, 1975)

Bird House, room 109
Tel.: (804) 828-1029
E-mail: jmarolla@saturn.vcu.edu
Personal Web: saturn.vcu.edu/~jmarolla

Specialty Areas

Social psychology, methodology (quantitative), deviance/social disorganization

Biographical Sketch

Dr. Marolla received a Ph. D. in Sociology from the University of Denver in 1974 and a M.S. degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1972. After doing a post-doc at the University of Denver he came to Virginia Commonwealth University in 1975. His areas of expertise were originally social psychology, methods/statistics and the sociology of education. Most of his early work was in the area of self esteem as he published a number of journal articles and his dissertation on that topic. In 1978 he and Diana Scully worked together on a grant to study incarcerated rapists. This work took four years to complete and resulted in a number of co-authored articles and chapters during the 1980’s.

Since that time Dr. Marolla first served as Director of Graduate studies from 1982-1992 and then was appointed Chair of the Sociology/Anthropology department in 1992. Under his direction the graduate program has grown from three supported graduate students to its current support of 12 students. The program has also increased its enrollment from approximately 10 full time students to over 24 full time students each academic year. The department has also grown while under the leadership of Dr. Marolla in that it has added a joint appointment with the African American Studies program. Dr. Marolla is most pleased with a new undergraduate curriculum that was instituted in 1994 and the addition of a computer laboratory that was built in 1993. The lab includes 31 work stations which connect to the WWW and provide students with state of the art technology in introductory sociology classes as well as methods and statistics classes.

Dr. Marolla is currently teaching both introductory sociology as well as the sociology of sport. The sociology of sport is a new teaching and research area for the him but he plans to be working and writing in sport sociology in the near and distant future.