Rate My Professor Randall Collins

Randall Collins is the Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor Emeritus of Sociology in the Social Science faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. He received an A.B. from Harvard College in 1963, studying under Talcott Parsons; an M.A. in Psychology from Stanford University in 1964; an M.A. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1965; and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Berkeley in 1969, where he worked with Herbert Blumer, Erving Goffman, and Reinhard Bendix. Collins held faculty appointments at the University of Wisconsin, University of California-San Diego—where he earned his first promotion—the University of Virginia, and University of California-Riverside as a senior professor before joining the University of Pennsylvania. He has occupied numerous visiting positions at elite universities and institutes worldwide and taught at institutions in North America, Europe, and East Asia. As a leader in the discipline, he founded and edited Theory and Society and Sociological Theory, served on editorial boards of major journals, chaired several American Sociological Association (ASA) sections, was president of the Pacific Sociological Association, sat on the ASA Council, and served as ASA President from 2010 to 2011. Collins has been awarded honorary doctorates and elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.