What You Will Learn

Our Mission

The Department of Anthropology offers you a holistic understanding of human beings through classes in each of anthropology’s four sub-disciplines: archaeology, linguistic anthropology, biological anthropology, and cultural anthropology.  By examining cultures through the distinct lenses of each of these fields, you will acquire a multifaceted perspective on the human experience that spans time, places, and space.  

Global Citizenship

Anthropology courses prepare you for global citizenship by educating you to practice cultural relativism, avoid ethnocentrism, and appreciate diversity on a global scale.  Anthropology courses will raise your awareness of and sensitivity to ethnic, racial, gender, political, and economic diversity worldwide.  In an increasingly globalized workforce, such awareness is also critical for leading a meaningful life and productive career.

Responsible Leadership

As an anthropology student, you will learn to apply cultural knowledge and in-depth understanding of global issues to real-world settings. Reflecting a departmental commitment to experiential learning, you will study abroad, take part in field study courses, or participate in a community engagement experience.  Through hands-on learning and fieldwork experiences, you will engage our local and global communities to respond to pressing social problems.  These transformative immersive experiences will give you a global perspective on key social issues and prepare you to take local and global action.  In this respect, our program will prepare you to be a responsible leader, both in the classroom and in your community.    

Productive Careers

Our courses will expose you to human similarity and difference on a global scale and develop your problem-solving skills, preparing you for a culturally diverse global labor market in which you will lead a meaningful life and have a productive career.  Through assignments, discussions, fieldwork, and readings in all of our courses, you will learn to think about the world critically, conduct and write about research, approach real-world problems in creative and innovative ways, and work productively with people from different and diverse backgrounds.  You will deliver well-organized oral presentations and converse with people who have different backgrounds and worldviews than your own. 

 

Meaningful Lives

Through your work in our department, you will become culturally-relative, aware of global problems, culturally and globally competent, ready to work with people of diverse backgrounds, engaged in your communities, always self-reflective, and capable of thinking critically about the world and your place in it.