Rate My Professor Diane Sicotte

Diane Sicotte is a Professor of Sociology at Drexel University in the Social Science faculty within the College of Arts and Sciences. She earned her PhD in Sociology from Arizona State University in 2003, an MA in Sociology from the same institution in 1998, and a BS in Sociology from Portland State University in 1994, graduating cum laude. Sicotte joined Drexel University in 2003 as an Assistant Professor of Sociology, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2009, and to full Professor in 2021. An environmental sociologist, her research interests include environmental injustice and inequality, the political economy of energy and environment, labor and environment, and plastics in society. Her scholarship focuses on racial and social class inequalities in proximity to environmental hazards, particularly in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. She teaches courses on environmental justice, environmental movements, disasters, and social class inequality, and has contributed to Drexel’s interdisciplinary environmental programs, including organizing the new undergraduate major and minor in Urban Environmental Studies from 2003 to 2005.

Sicotte is the author of the book From Workshop to Waste Magnet: Environmental Inequality in the Philadelphia Region (Rutgers University Press, 2016). Notable publications include “Energy Transition: Necessary, Welcome or Dreaded? Unionized U.S. Energy Workers Speak” in Energy Research & Social Science (2022, with Kelly Joyce and Arielle Hesse); “From Cheap Ethane to a Plastic Planet: Regulating an Industrial Global Production Network” in Energy Research & Social Science (2020); “Solving the Plastics Problem: Moving the U.S. from Recycling to Reduction” in Society and Natural Resources (2021, with Jessica Seamon); and “Diversity and Intersectionality among Environmentally Burdened Communities in Philadelphia MSA, USA” in Urban Studies (2014). In 2018, she and co-principal investigator Kelly Joyce received a National Science Foundation grant (Award #1827464) to examine energy preferences among U.S. labor unions and their members in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. Sicotte has held numerous committee roles at Drexel, including chair of the Sociology Undergraduate Committee (2016–2019), member of the CoAS Tenure and Promotion Committee (2021–present), and various hiring committees. She has served as a reviewer for over 30 journals, organized academic sessions on environmental injustice, and provided external tenure reviews.