{"id":3658,"date":"2026-11-11T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/smith-center\/?p=3658"},"modified":"2026-11-11T13:47:43","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T18:47:43","slug":"paul-dean-on-class-and-connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/smith-center\/faculty-spotlights\/paul-dean-on-class-and-connection\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Dean on Class and Connection"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Paul Dean<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Professor in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology; Department Chair<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

View Faculty Bio<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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By Sasha Fahd<\/em> ‘28<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After being asked about the everyday moments behind his recent faculty award, Dr. Paul Dean describes helping a student find the confidence to raise their hand in class. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those conversations help him learn to understand his students\u2019 struggles and help them find a way forward. Having entered college as a working-class first-generation student himself, Dean remembers how much it mattered to have someone in his corner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor of Sociology at Ohio Wesleyan University, Paul Dean, received the 2026 Bishop Herbert Welch Award for Scholarly or Artistic Achievement. His research focuses on inequality and the lives of working-class first-generation students. This includes his book, Class Cultures and Social Mobility: The Hidden Strengths of Working-Class First-Generation Graduates<\/em>. His work brings up a question for faculty: How does social class affect the way we expect things to be? How does it shape our connections with students? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I think about how I can work with students and help them feel a greater sense of belonging and [feeling] more at home here at OWU, which I struggled with as a student, that\u2019s really what it\u2019s about,\u201d Dean said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That link between his life and his scholarship became especially clear during a research trip to Denmark with working-class first-generation students. Traveling together opened up talks about growing up with little money and figuring out where they fit at OWU. They shared their hardships, but also the parts of their backgrounds they were proud of. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dean wants that pride to remain part of discussions about first-generation success. He appreciates the community that has formed around working-class first-generation identity, while also recognizing that an emphasis on individual upward mobility can leave less room to discuss people\u2019s connections to their working-class communities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019d love for us to kind of think more about what it means to maintain the roots to where we\u2019re from and to have pride in where we\u2019re from,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His own college decisions were shaped by the economic insecurity he hoped an education would help him escape. He began at community college as a business major, seeing a practical route to a good job. Sociology soon caught his attention, giving him a way to understand his experiences through the social systems he was studying. Still, changing direction took time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt took me probably a couple years to get past this hump of, well, what would I do with a degree in sociology?\u201d Dean says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During his college years, a sociology professor encouraged him to travel abroad. He backpacked through Europe with his friends on a tight budget, which gave him space to reconsider what he wanted from his education. \u201cIt taught me to take more risks, and to go after what I love,\u201d he says. He began to feel more comfortable pursuing sociology without knowing exactly where it would lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That uncertainty is familiar when students ask him about their own career possibilities. \u201cAnd so now I, of course, have those conversations with students,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remembering his own hesitation, Dean encourages students to explore what interests them while taking their concerns about finding a secure job seriously. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those experiences continue to generate questions for his research. Dean is now interested in how people develop class awareness, especially in a culture that often explains success through individual effort. He wants to understand what leads people to recognize how class shapes their lives and connects them to others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For faculty colleagues, he stresses the importance of carrying those conversations into everyday professional life. Class background can influence how an instructor speaks with students and what they expect students to understand about college. Discussing those influences can make it easier to recognize assumptions that might otherwise go unexamined. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor faculty, class shapes how we interact with students, the language that we use,\u201d Dean says. \u201cAnd so, just to start to be mindful of that and to talk that through with people around us.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back at OWU, Dean hopes colleagues will bring their own stories into the conversations that his research starts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf we talk about [our stories] with people around us,\u201d he says, \u201cthere\u2019s something really cool that happens, that\u2019s another point of connection.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Dean Professor in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology; Department Chair View Faculty Bio By Sasha Fahd ‘28 After being asked about the everyday moments behind his recent faculty award, Dr. Paul Dean describes helping a student find the confidence to raise their hand in class.  Those conversations help him learn to understand his students\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2403,"featured_media":3663,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-spotlights"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/smith-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/smith-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/smith-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/smith-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/smith-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3658"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/smith-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3662,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/smith-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3658\/revisions\/3662"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/smith-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/smith-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/smith-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/smith-center\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}