Global Studies Degree Requirements (for majors starting Summer 2026 or before)

4th Semester of SECOND LANGUAGE 

UNIV 101: Intro to the Gen Ed Experience 

Exploring Perspectives (EP) Gen Eds

Artist 

Humanist 

Natural Scientist 

Social Scientist

Building Connections (BC) Gen Eds

(Take 3 Classes)

UNIV 301: The Gen Ed Portfolio

• 6 units Tier 1 Individuals & Societies
• 6 units Tier 1 Traditions & Cultures
• 6 units Tier 1 Natural Sciences
   
• 3 units Tier 2 Arts
• 3 units Tier 2 Individuals & Societies or Tier 2 Humanities
• 3 units Tier 2 Natural Science
• 3 units Diversity Emphasis Course (can be fulfilled with General Education Courses)

This course explores how processes of globalization have impacted nation-states, government institutions (both government and non-governmental), social roles and values, cultural belief systems, and economic exchange. Focused on modes of inquiry and domains of knowledge in the social sciences, the course promotes critical inquiry of globalization. The course will explore such questions as: How has globalization impacted nationalist sentiment? How has religion responded to globalizing currents? How have gender roles responded to the impact of globalization? How has economic life been affected by globalization? And how have local realities been shaped, and how do they shape, globalizing processes.

This course explores literary, artistic, philosophical, and critical approaches to major topics in Global Studies, examining questions such as: What affects the terms and outcomes of cultural encounters? How are values and beliefs defined and transformed? What do writing, translation, literature, and other areas studied in the humanities teach us about global studies? What doors open when a person can study a language deeply?

This course introduces students to some of the major social theories and debates that inspire and inform anthropological analysis. The approach considers each theoretical perspective or proposition in terms of its explanatory power for understanding human behavior and the social world, in the context of the social and historical circumstances in which the theories were produced, and as contributions to ongoing dialogues and debate.

Course introduces students to the orders of meaning and power that influence human living and working conditions, as well as the capacity of human beings to alter those conditions. A combination of lectures, readings, films, class discussions and exercises will familiarize students with approaches to global problems in applied anthropology and the solutions that the discipline has proposed.

This course examines how systems of difference provide revealing analytical categories for understanding the political and cultural geography of globalization and develops critical thinking skills that can be used effectively beyond this course.

Survey and comparison of major world regions with a focus on how global processes, regional interconnections, and local geographic conditions create distinctive regions and landscapes.

Study of the international system, its actors and their capabilities; ends and means of foreign policy; international tension, conflict, and cooperation.

Survey of the major political systems and analysis of comparative political concepts, with a view to preparation for more advanced study.

This course is designed to help students become more comfortable with speaking in public, and to familiarize them with the theory-based, basic skills of public speaking.  It will also help to increase students' communication, competence, and effectiveness, as well as improve  capabilities in research, and critical thinking.  This course will expose students to a variety of everyday speaking occasions.

Business writing is an Engaged Learning course that provides applied, hands-on experiences with professional business writing. The course explores how to address ethics of communication and how to navigate opportunities and challenges presented when writing business correspondence. Students engage in rhetorical analysis, research, persuasion, reflection, and revision in professional contexts. Students write a variety of workplace genres, including emails, memos, proposals, resumes, cover letters, white papers, and digital web spaces.

Technical Writing is an interdisciplinary professional writing course where students use a rhetorical lens to explore the conventions and practices of STEM fields. Working both individually and in collaborative teams, students analyze scientific and technical information and learn how to compose, format, and design scientific and technical documents for STEM audiences. Students learn to translate technical information for various audiences--subject matter experts, non-specialists, users with special needs--in ways that are engaging, accurate, and understandable.

This course will lay a foundation for understanding how stories shape communities, identities, memories, and perspectives on our lives. In addition, this course will provide opportunities for the theoretical analysis of self representation, composite narratives on behalf of others, cultural heritage, and memories as they are preserved and performed within stories and through narrative. Influences on digital storytelling such as the sociocultural context, the institutional contexts of production, the audience, and the needs or goals of the digital storyteller will be examined. Students will be required to call on their own intellectual, emotional, and imaginative processes, as well as to develop their own skills in digital storytelling, interviewing, oral history collection, and the use of relevant digital storytelling tools.

This course provides students with an in depth discussion of the key concepts and factors that have led to the development of the field of intercultural competence and provides students with extensive background and reading so as to take a critical perspective on intercultural competence and its future for them in a globalized world.

We are all participants in receiving and interpreting healthcare. This course will encourage and support the development of participants' abilities to gain expanded knowledge and to engage actively as critical, discerning, humane participants in the present and future delivery of healthcare and of health and wellness in any context.  The course provides theory and practice in an inclusive and applied approach to humanities-based ways of thinking and knowing. We are all participants in receiving and interpreting healthcare, so all students are welcome.  For students with the goals of advanced study in the health or other related professions: this course will enable you to provide healthcare, shape policy around it, or engage with health and wellness in other capacities in our globally connected world. As participants in the course you will engage with an inclusive, outward-facing, and applied discipline.  You will be offered tools to improve transcultural communication skills by deep reading and reflection on core humanities approaches to the world of health and wellness and their interaction with global cultures.

We will use a mixture of discussions and small and whole group activities.  Course activities may include active engagement in discussions online and in class, and critiquing a range of written texts, from those written by classroom peers to academic papers, literary texts of various kinds,  or film narratives on health, wellness, and global understandings of those issues.

This course introduces the practice of ethnographic field research including the history of research; ethics of ethnographic study; development of research plans; methods of data collection; organization and analysis of collected data; and creation of ethnographic reports.

Data literacy is essential for navigating today's digitally-mediated world.  In this course, students explore and apply quantitative data to investigate real-world geographic problems.  Operating in a two-part sequence, students first learn foundational data skills for accessing human and physical geographic data, as well as analyzing data through basic statistical methods.  Specific emphasis is placed on both the strengths and limitations of quantitative data. The concluding section of the course introduces students to principles of effective data visualization, essential for communicating data-driven analysis to policymakers, community members, and other stakeholders.  These skills, which are foundational for upper-level classes in the social sciences and policy analysis more broadly, also help students prepare for the employment market.

Formulation and solution of geographic problems; models, research design, and methods of gathering, analyzing, and portraying geographic data.

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the nature and practice of writing history and to teach critical reading, writing, research and analytical skills necessary for history majors. Required course in the history major.

An introductory course in the fundamentals of modern statistics with applications and examples in the social and behavioral sciences. Topics include: methods for describing and summarizing data, probability, random sampling, estimating population parameters, significance tests, contingency tables, simple linear regression, and correlation.

Techniques of statistical description and elementary statistical inference as applied to sociological data.

A culminating experience for majors involving a substantive project that demonstrates a synthesis of learning accumulated in the major, including broadly comprehensive knowledge of the discipline and its methodologies. Senior standing required.