The second Professor of Sociology hired at Tulane was Edward Brown Reuter, who replaced Wyckoff as head of the department in 1920-21. Reuter went on to serve as the long-time chair of the Department of Sociology at Iowa State University. He was also the first of five Tulane sociologists who were later elected Presidents of the American Sociological Association; the others being Luther Bernard who taug ht at Tulane in the 1920s), Ellsworth Faris (a Professor of Sociology at Tulane in 1930- 31), Louis Wirth (who began his career as an assistant professor of sociology at Tulane in 1928), and Robert K. Merton (appointed as Associate Professor of Sociology at Tulane in 1940). Other sociologists at Tulane during its formative years (through 1945) included Logan Wilson (later to serve as Chancellor and then President of the University of Texas), John Fletcher, John Mason, Clarence Glick, Jesse Steiner, and Ni cholas J. Demerath II .

From 1927 through 1945, both Newcomb College and the College of Arts and Sciences maintained undergraduate departments of instruction in sociology. In 1946, as a result of the post-war reorganization of the University, the department became the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and remained so until 1969, when Anthropology split off to form its own academic department. Professors who served th e Department in this period (1946-69) included Warren Breed, Munro Edmonson, Harlan Gilmore, Forrest LaViolette, Leonard Reissman, Thomas Ktsanes, and Fredrick Koenig, who first arrived as an Associate Professor from Cornell in 1965 and is now Professor Emeritus, having retired at the end of academic year 2000.

Tulane has also maintained a graduate program in sociology throughout the department's existence. In 1904, John Ker Towles was awarded a master of arts degree for his thesis, "Housing Conditions in the Vicinity of St. Mary's Market, New Orleans." This app ears to be the first graduate degree awarded at Tulane for work in sociology. In 1924, Nathaniel Batson Bond was conferred the PhD degree for his thesis, "The Treatment of the Dependent, Defective, and Delinquent Classes in Mississippi." Bond's PhD was th e tenth doctoral degree ever awarded by Tulane in any field of study and the first awarded in sociology.

In 1953, a prominent New Orleans family endowed the Charles A. and Leo M. Favrot Professorship of Human Relations, among the first endowed chairs in social and behavioral science anywhere in the country. The first occupant of the Chair was Oswald Hall, followed by Reissman (who held the post for fourteen years), Joan Aldous, Father Joseph Fichter, Paul Roman, and James D. Wright, who occupied the Favrot Professorship from 1988 to 2001.

In 1964-65, Tulane admitted its first black students. Two African-American women began their studies at Tulane that year, one in the School of Social Work and the other, Barbara Guillory, in the Department of Sociology. The Department also had women facul ty as early as 1924 teaching courses in both Newcomb and Arts and Sciences. Wirth, as it happens, was the second Jewish professor ever hired at Tulane. And in the same vein, Anna Popova was the first Soviet citizen ever to be admitted to the University (i n 1990), followed a few years later by Joshua Zhang, our first student from the People's Republic of China.

The Arts & Sciences faculty re-joined the Newcomb sociologists under one roof on the second floor of Newcomb Hall in a newly renovated portion of the building that had previously housed laboratories in 1981, but it wasn't until 1988 that the two faculties were merged in the across-the-board consolidation of the Newcomb and A&S faculties into a single Liberal Arts and Sciences faculty. During the 1990s, Tulane Sociology has experienced a renaissance of sorts, clarifying our core mission around an urban social problems focus, adding undergraduate majors and minors, redesigned and expanded our graduate program, and added faculty. At present, sociology faculty, graduate students, adjuncts, and department facilities are scattered throughout the second, third, and fourth floors of Newcomb Hall.