School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Below, click on the academic program and learn about what students will know, be able to do or be able to demonstrate after completing the program.

Communication Department

Communication BA/Minor (heading 4)

After completing our program, students will:

  • apply key communication theories and concepts to personal, professional, and civic contexts by the end of their 200-level coursework.
  • craft messages responsibly tailored to specific audiences and contexts by the end of their senior year.
  • conduct well-supported and well-argued communication research relying on sound primary research methods by the end of their senior year.

English Department

(SLOs)
  • English BA/Minor

    After completing our English program, students will:

    • identify and assess skills, knowledge, and dispositions they have cultivated in the major that are applicable to professional, academic, and personal goals after college.

    Additionally, after completing one of the following concentrations, students will:

    Literature and Film Concentration

    • identify and assess skills, knowledge, and dispositions they have cultivated in the concentration that are applicable to professional, academic, and personal goals after college.

    Creative Writing Concentration

    • demonstrate the ability to take a single work of fiction or a body of poetry through its subsequent drafts.

    Writing, Rhetoric, and Publication Concentration

    • summarize and apply findings from Writing Studies research.
  • Creative Writing Minor

    After completing our program, students will:

    • list and explain three revision exercises/strategies that they can apply to their own drafts in order to improve their work by the time they finish their capstone course.
    • demonstrate a working vocabulary for craft analysis relevant to creative genres (poetry and fiction) by the time they finish their capstone course.
    • demonstrate familiarity with contemporary examples of genres studied by the time they finish their capstone course.
  • Film Studies Minor (interdisciplinary)

    After completing our program, students will:

    • demonstrate visual literacy skills.
    • demonstrate an understanding of important and emerging trends in non-traditional and non-American cinema, and the role of cinema in the representation of world cultures and in social change.

History Department

History BA/Minor (heading 4)

After completing our program, students will:

  • define historical problems and identify appropriate resources with which to explore them, employing suitable research methodologies to locate and examine both primary and secondary sources. 
  • construct organized, clear, and coherent oral and written arguments that deal with historical questions following the conventional writing methods of the historical profession and appropriately employing consistent citation methods.
  • situate, analyze, and critique historical sources.  Students will understand and identify key historiographical trends and theories, and analyze the internal consistency, context, and rhetoric of historical sources, developing and defending their own interpretations.

Philosophy Department

Philosophy BA/Minor (heading 4)

After completing our program, students will:

  • demonstrate knowledge of key figures and/or issues from Ancient & Modern philosophy: they articulate concepts and theories from the time period and assess arguments for and against those theories. 
  • compose clear, cogent, and well-crafted essays.
  • demonstrate critical reasoning skills

Political Science Department

(SLOs)
  • Geography Minor

    After completing our program, students will:

    • identify how global and local processes make places.
    • apply methods to query the relationship between people and place.
    • be able to critique societal assumptions about environmental, political, and/or urban spaces.
  • Political Science BA/Minor

    After completing our program, students will:

    • write clear papers that are well structured, properly cited, and that draw on evidence to support an argument. 
    • develop skills and knowledge enabling them to identify key theories and explain both what the theory means and how the theory matters for the study of politics.
    • develop skills and knowledge enabling them to identify key institutions and explain both what the institution is and how it matters for the study of politics.

Psychology Department

(SLOs)
  • Neuroscience Minor (interdisciplinary)

    After completing our program, students will:

    • demonstrate familiarity with the major concepts, theoretical perspectives, empirical findings, and historical developments in neuroscience.
    • demonstrate a familiarity of laboratory techniques used in neuroscience research.
  • Psychology BS/BA/Minor

    After completing our program, students will:

    •  demonstrate an understanding of major concepts and theoretical perspectives from courses targeted at understanding learning phenomena (Conditioning & Learning) and sensory and perceptual systems (Sensation & Perception).
    • demonstrate an appreciation and knowledge of basic research methods in psychology and show evidence that they can apply this understanding in the areas of research design, data analysis, and interpretation.
    • demonstrate an appreciation and knowledge of basic research methods in psychology and show evidence that they can apply this understanding in the areas of research design, data analysis, and interpretation.
    • be assessed in comparable online and in-person psychology courses to evaluate performance outcomes in each instructional modality. 

Religious Studies Department

Religious Studies BA/Minor

After completing our program, students will:

  • recognize and be able to explain the major theoretical perspectives and key issues of debate in the academic study of religion.
  • demonstrate effective writing skills with the ability to craft a persuasive argument in defense of a coherent thesis statement using and analyzing supporting evidence from primary and secondary sources.

Sociology and Anthropology

(SLOs)
  • Anthropology BS/Minor

    After completing our program, students will:

    • demonstrate an understanding of the key anthropological concepts: Culture and Cultural Relativism.
    • demonstrate an understanding of the key anthropological concepts: Culture and Biological Diversity.
    • demonstrate an understanding of the key anthropological concepts: Social Organization.
    • demonstrate an understanding of the key anthropological concepts: Cultural and Biological Evolution. 
    • demonstrate an understanding of the key anthropological concepts: Language and Communication.
    • recognize the major theoretical perspectives in the discipline.
  • Sociology BS/Minor

    After completing our program, students will:

    • demonstrate the ability to distinguish between the ways different schools of thought make sense of social issues.
    • demonstrate the ability to apply the Big Ideas of sociology to contemporary social issues and policy discussions.
    • identify the Big Ideas and concepts that sociology’s Big Thinkers have contributed to the discipline.
    • clearly define the “sociological perspective.”
    • distinguish the sociological perspective from viewpoints of other social sciences (e.g., political science, psychology and/or economics).
    • communicate in writing about key concepts comprising the sociological perspective.

Interdisciplinary Programs

(SLOs)
  • Bachelor of Integrated Studies

    After completing our program, students will:

    • demonstrate clear organization, basic writing expectations (mechanics, spelling, grammar, punctuation), and use of transitions.
    • demonstrate critical thinking and deep thought in responses to a variety of prompts / topics throughout the course.
    • demonstrate integrative learning in reflection papers and Capstone project.
  • Certificate in Cultural Sustainability

    After completing our program, students will:

    •  examine how social groups influence and shape sustainability efforts, whether in areas of culture, language, economics, environment, and society
    • analyze how culture functions in relation to sustainability. They will consider culture as something to be sustained in and of itself, as a feature of the triple bottom line, and as the foundation of all sustainability efforts.
    • analyze the degree to which institutions and organizations prioritize, develop, and implement sustainability initiatives.
    • have opportunities to identify and address cultural factors associated with social and environmental justice locally, nationally, or internationally.
  • Urban Studies BA/Minor

    After completing our program, students will:

    • be able to identify and describe the major theoretical traditions and approaches to scholarship and practice in Urban Studies.
    • will be able to apply core urban studies concepts in practice through the internship practicum.
  • Women's & Gender Studies BA/Minor

    After completing our program, students will:

    • demonstrate critical thinking about gender in historical and contemporary cultures & societies.
    • evaluate social justice issues with attention to differences across social categories.
    • demonstrate an understanding of interdisciplinarity as relevant to the discipline