Stephen Philion

Professor Stephen Philion is the Chair of the Sociology Department at St. Cloud State University.

​

On January 28th, Professor Philion was among 4 professors nominated by St. Cloud State University President Ashish Vaidya as an Outstanding Educator as part of the 2018 MN State Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Teaching Program.

​

On October 12, 2016, Stephen Philion was awarded the Sociologist of Minnesota Distinguished Sociologist Award. Watch his award Acceptance Speech!

​

In January, 2013,  Stephen Philion was invited to give a lecture at the prestigious Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC & U) annual meeting in Atlanta.

Philion earned that honor as one of four finalists for the Thomas Ehrlich Civically Engaged Faculty Award.
 

Professor Philion founded the SCSU Faculty Research Group on Immigrant Workers in 2009 and coordintated its annual Global Goes Local Conference on Immigrant workers in Minnesota until spring, 2016.  

 

He co-founded and co-chairs the Greater Minnesota Worker Center, which organizes and trains low wage workers how to defend basic labor rights in the workplace.

​

Professor Philion's most recent (December 2016) publication is a chapter contribution titled "Engaging Neoliberal Community Engagement: Research and Organizing with Immigrant Workers"  in The Cambridge Handbook of Service Learning and Community Engagement (Dolgon et al eds.).

​

Professor Philion is also the author of “Workers’ Democracy in China’s Transition from State Socialism.” Published  by Routledge/Talyor and Francis in 2009, the book analyzes how China's state enterprise workers responded to and resisted privatization in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

​

Dr. Philion  won a Taiwan Research Fellowship, from the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, funding his research for 4 months in spring, 2013, on Labor Movement Activism Linkages in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mainland China. Dr. Philion was a Guest Foreign Researcher at Shihhsin University Graduate Program on Social Transformation.

​

In 2007 and 2012, Professor Philion's Social Responsibility  Advisees, Carmelle Case-Adams and Angie Brown, won the SCSU Distinguished Thesis Award. He also was a thesis committee member of a 3rd student, John Byczynski, who won the SCSU Distinguished Thesis award for his thesis in the Department of History. 

​

Additionally, 2 of Professor Philion's undergraduate students have won 1st Place  and  2 students have won Honorable Mention in the Undergraduate Sociologists of Minnesota Caroline Rose Student Essay Competition. In October, 2015, a graduate student won Honorable Mention in the Caroline Rose Graduate Student Essay Competition, for a paper written for Professor Philion's graduate seminar Sociology of Religion (SOC 567).

​

In 2011, Professor Philion edited a Special volume on the Chinese Worker's Movement and the Global Financial Crisis  for the journal  China Left Review.

He also  published articles on topics including

• How Conspiracy "Theories" Damage Anti-war Organizing

• Taiwanese Social Movements and Democratization,

• The  Social Construction of Race as a "Controversial" Issue in US University Classrooms,

• Chinese Workers' Protests against Privatization, Fieldwork Encounters with Chinese Workers,

• Theorizing Class and Social Movements, and Criticisms of Smorgasbord Approaches to Teaching Race. 

​