Anthropology & Sociology

West Chester University





Jacqueline M. Zalewski, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Sociology

Professor Jackie Zalewski

My ongoing research has focused on workplace and employment restructuring. I am a working class kid who saw first-hand the significant job-loss for the working class from deindustrialization in the 1970s and 80s. My master's thesis is an ethnographic account of factory life through the experience of a low-paid, low-status temporary worker. For my Ph.D., I interviewed information technologists and human resource professionals with intimate knowledge or experience with outsourcing. I have published one article on this research, which discusses the effect outsourcing has on professional discretion and control at work (Sociological Viewpoints). I am working on the following manuscripts on this data and additional interview data collected since 2007:

  • Working, the Job, and Postindustrial Careers With Outsourcing:  Theorizing About Job Quality and Loss
  • Professional Values and Identity in a VUCA Environment:  The Case of Outsourced Information Technologists
  • The Interactional Basis of Transaction Costs:  Social Factors With Outsourcing

New research, in collaboration with Dr. Leigh Shaffer, develops a framework to think beyond the traditional emphases in educational curriculum and pedagogy. We call our framework a "just-in-time" system of knowledge transfer. This work has been exciting, with one publication from it to date (International Knowledge, Technology, and Society Journal).

I also collaborated with Dr. Leigh Shaffer on the following four academic and career advising articles, which recently appeared in NACADA Journal (2011):

  • Advising Students to Value and Develop Emotional Labor Skills for the Workplace
  • It’s What I Have Always Wanted to Do:  Advising the Foreclosure Student
  • Career Advising in a VUCA Environment
  • A Human Capital Approach to Career Advising

Curriculum Vita

Courses Offered

  • Introduction to Sociology
  • Urban Sociology
  • Sociology of Work 
  • Sociology of Organizations 
  • Sociology of Education
  • Career Internship
  • Senior Seminar (Spring 2013)

Areas of Interest

  • Work, Occupations, Professions, and Organizations
  • Technology and Internet Studies
  • Education, Academic, and Career Advising