After the Great Depression and World War II, a compromise between industry and labor made economic growth a priority, with the assumption that growth would reduce inequality. The ideal of democracy inspired liberation movements across the globe and was invoked to justify most governments. Concerns with biodiversity and with environmental risks to human health were merged in the modern environmental movement. The idea of sustainable development incorporated environmental concerns into the push for economic growth. Uncertainty in scientific analysis was codified in the concept of risk, and risk analysis became an important form of policy analysis. Neoliberal policies promoted unfettered markets to promote growth. But growing concerns with the impacts of population and economic growth led to a call for sustainable development, with the twin goals of improving human well-being and reducing stress on the environment. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals articulate this idea and demonstrate its complexity.

The development of the sociological imagination is central to undergraduate training in sociology. Undergraduate research experiences (UREs) are one powerful pedagogical approach to helping students critically observe and analyze the complexity of social life. This chapter (1) explores the roots of UREs insociology; (2) examines the literature on infusing and scaffolding course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs), attending to successful models implementing CUREs in several types of sociology courses, across the curriculum, and as an integrated departmental approach; (3) details benefits and challenges of implementing CUREs from various stakeholder perspectives, and (4) shares thoughts on the path forward to further infuse undergraduate research in the sociology curriculum.