Terry Lunsford (1963)

I got the doctorate in Sociology at Berkeley in 1970. From 1968-72 I taught in the Social Sciences Integrated Course and Field Major at UCB, and directed that program for its last year. Later I was Academic Director of UCB's Field Studies Program, worked as an Evaluation Research professional in the campus's Health and Medical Sciences Program, and was a research staff member at the Institute for the Study of Social Change, studying the social and legal impacts of genetic research. I also helped to create an Oakland campus of New York's College for Human Services, and for 28 years I have been a Board of Directors member and adjunct faculty member of the Western Institute for Social Research, a State-approved Berkeley institution that provides degree study for community-involved adults. Since 1984 I have been a professional Trial Consultant, using social research to advise litigating attorneys about the discovery of bias in potential jurors, and the clear presentation of complex case materials. From 1984-1996, I worked at the National Jury Project/West, in Oakland, and am now a semi-retired, independent practitioner.
     
My time in Sociology at Berkeley was one of great turmoil on campus, and I learned as much from that as from my course work. But study with Philip Selznick, Reinhard Bendix, and others opened new windows for my mind, and I value it greatly. Through various projects of UCB's then Center for the Study of Law and Society and Center for Research and Development in Higher Education, I wrote a monograph on the Free Speech Movement and the issues that it raised for social and legal research, as well as other papers on campus protests and the structures of U.S. higher education.
 
The social theory and methods training that I received in the Department helped me a great deal, of course, in the research and teaching work that I have done. And, less directly, it helped me to understand the structures and processes of American universities, while I worked in several different experimental programs designed to change them. Also, for someone who grew up in this intensely psychologistic culture, studying sociology very usefully, if belatedly, broadened my liberal education. So I've always been glad for it, and for some of the friends whom I met there. I continue to live in Berkeley, ten blocks from the campus.