Sociology 119 (SOC 119) has been offered at Penn State University since the 1970’s. The course went through two decades of change before Dr. Sam Richards, the current instructor of the class, took it over during his second year teaching at the university.

Sam started teaching in 1984 when he was 24 years-old and was hired to teach a class called “Cybernetics and Human Ecology” at the University of Toledo while working on his M.A. degree. While studying for his Ph.D. in Sociology between 1985-1990 at Rutgers University, Sam taught a variety of classes and spent considerable time in Latin America conducting research. He arrived at Penn State in the fall of 1990 with the intention of staying for two years while writing his dissertation, but fate had other plans and he never left.

SOC 119 has evolved in size and style throughout the past three decades. In its current iteration, Sam places great importance on student interactions and creative thinking over traditional note taking and memorization for exams. Sam has the idea that students are paying an extraordinary amount of money and do not need someone to deliver information to them that is all over the internet.

“If someone wants to know about undocumented immigration or the difference between race and ethnicity, then they can easily find a week’s worth of reading at hundreds of web sites. Why should they pay Penn State to have me copy that same information onto slides, put it up on the screen in class, and then ask them to write it down and recite it back on an exam. That makes no sense at all. And a university doesn’t need someone with a Ph.D. to do that.”

So instead, Sam seeks creative ways to address topics along side of student volunteers as a way of generating their authentic curiosity and stimulating thinking. Sam’s task is to introduce topics and then guide and facilitate conversations between the students in the class. Students from around the world and from a wide range of cultural backgrounds inside the United States enroll in the course each semester so a variety of perspectives is always present in the room. And since Sam has traveled widely (to about fifty countries), lived outside the U.S. for a number of years, and considers himself to be a “generalist with a global orientation,” there are practically an unlimited number of interesting topics that Sam and his students can discuss in class. In fact, as Sam says, “No class is ever repeated.”

By the way, the full name of the course is SOC 119N: Race, Ethnicity and Culture and it is an elective General Education course that fulfills an array of undergraduate requirements for students. Students have many classes to pick from to fulfill these requirements and SOC 119 is just one of the options. The students sitting in these seats are not required to be there; they picked the class.

About the stream

The SOC 119 team first started filming in the classroom in 2006 while planning the online version of the course. Producers from WPSU, Penn State’s Public Television station, watched some of the footage and proposed a six-part series for PBS. They shot the pilot in 2010 and that episode ended up willing an Emmy Award in 2012 for an episode that was called, “You Can’t Say That.”

In an effort to continually update the online version of the class and provide material for students to respond to in their weekly writing assignments, the SOC 119 “Stream Team,” as they came to be called, began recording classes and live switching between cameras in 2015 as a way to reduce post-production editing. The footage was uploaded to YouTube because students in the class found that to be the easiest platform for them to use to complete their assignments. One day, out of curiosity, the team hit the “LIVE” button on the YouTube channel and by the end of class, 30-40 people around the world were watching and thanking us for allowing them to join virtually. At that point in time, the SOC 119 alumni numbered in the tens of thousands and they, too, were thankful for the opportunity to experience the class again. And so, with support from the Liberal Arts dean and the administration, the stream became a permanent part of the class every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon (Eastern Time) during the Fall and Spring semesters.

The SOC 119 Stream Team is composed primarily of student volunteers — camera operators, video editors, and directors. They have produced dozens of globally viewed viral videos that have generated millions of views, several over 5 million and one that has has over 17 million viewers in China. The class YouTube channel currently has about 325,000 subscribers with an estimated 177 million “public views” on the channel. However, the total views across platforms numbers is approaching 300 million in over 200 countries. During the Fall 2023 semester alone, at least one person in 218 different countries (including some territories) watched the class YouTube channel for at least one hour.

Dr. Samuel Richards (known to his students as “Sam”) is an award-winning teaching professor and sociologist at Penn State University who instructs the largest race and cultural relations course in the United States. Nearly 800 students take the course each semester.

Sam’s willingness to take risks and push new ideas is what led him to be named one of the “101 Most Dangerous Professors in America.”

He obtained his Ph.D. from Rutgers University with a focus on socioeconomic development of Africa and Latin America.

His current work focuses on developing ways to think about and discuss complex and controversial topics in a fresh way for the purpose of bridging cultural divides. Arguing that empathy is the core of Sociology, his "Radical Experiment in Empathy" is one of the more widely viewed TEDx talks online, having reached nearly four million people.

As the Co-Founder of the World in Conversation Center, Sam co-directed an innovative research project sponsored by NATO’s Science for Peace and Security Programme to develop a virtual, facilitated cross-cultural dialogue tool for NATO military personnel and civilians in conflict zones. The Global Dialogue programs have expanded to other nations outside the original NATO project - including Iraq, Colombia, Haiti, Russia, and Brazil (to name a few).

His work has been reported on in a wide range of national and international media outlets.

Sam and his collaborator and wife, Dr. Laurie Mulvey (Laurie) have been called the “parents of radical empathy.”

This page has been updated by the SOC 119 staff, August 2024.

About the staff

Click on the images above to learn more about the people who make the class happen!