Kyle Longest

Kyle C. Longest is Associate Academic Dean and Associate Professor of Sociology. Since joining the Sociology Department in 2009, Kyle has taught courses on the Sociology of Religion, Deviance, Research Methods, including Quantitative Analysis, Youth and Adolescence, Sociology Sports, Sports Analytics, Discovering Greatness and the Sociology of Harry Potter. He also served as the Department’s Chair for 4 years.

While pursuing a variety of research interests, he has spent his career seeking to understand adolescents and how they make the transition into young adulthood. Specifically, he focuses on how factors teens experience impact their religious and academic trajectories into early adulthood. Most recently has examined what shapes young peoples’ perspective on the relationship between religion and science and in turn how that understanding affects the academic path they pursue. He is the author or co-author of several publications, including two books: Using Stata for Qualitative Analyses (now in its 3rd edition) and Young Catholic America: Emerging Adults In, Out of, and Gone from the Church (Oxford University Press), co-author with Christian Smith, Jonathan Hill, and Kari Christofferson.

As Associate Academic Dean, Kyle ensures that academic regulations are followed, manages students on academic probation, oversees cases involving violations of academic integrity and appeals of academic regulations, and assists faculty, students, and parents with concerns about academic issues. He supervises staff in Furman’s Center for Academic Success and in the Office of Peer Assisted Learning and works closely with a variety of offices in Furman's Division of Student Life.

Longest received his M.A. (2004) and Ph.D. (2009) in Sociology from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and his B.A. in sociology and history from Indiana University – Bloomington (2002).