Resources for Subject Instruction: MU's Learning Objectives - By Unit

Students completing an anthropology degree are awarded a BA degree or a BA degree with honors in Anthropology. The undergraduate program is designed to help students develop an appreciation of other cultures and other world views and to gain an understanding of how and why the diversity in human culture and biology came about. Several goals help us teach undergraduates about the nature of our discipline and how to think critically about what anthropology is, what it means, and how it is useful in today's society. These goals include:

• To recognize the broad, cross-cultural generalizations that characterize anthropology
• To recognize the value of a cross-cultural, comparative perspective
• To acquire an understanding of the basic concepts in each of the four subfields of anthropology
• To acquire advanced knowledge in one or more of the four subfields
• To acquire an awareness of the interrelationship of the four subfields
• To think critically about the nature and content of anthropological questions
• To assess the structure of an argument and evaluate it and its supporting information
• To communicate effectively in writing or through oral presentation
• To strive for innovative and creative thinking
• To think independently both within and outside anthropology

Last update June 2016, by Rachel Brekhus

The purpose of the undergraduate curriculum (bachelor of arts) in history is to provide the student with four elements of educational attainment: 1) a general frame of historical reference for understanding both past and current developments in life and society; 2) some advanced and specialized knowledge in a number of historical areas selected with reference to personal interests; 3) highly developed skill in expository writing, including the ability to conduct independent study, to define and research problems, to locate and critically evaluate evidence, and to organize material for effective communication to others; and 4) the ability to draw on a broad range of human experience, both recent and remote in time and place, in order to understand and solve current problems. The major curriculum will prepare the student for successful postgraduate study in history, the social sciences, and a number of professional and vocational fields. More important, however, it should help the graduate to continue his or her own intellectual, personal and vocational growth and to cope intelligently, effectively, and flexibly with the diverse and often unpredictable problems that each individual and society and a whole must face. It should help the student develop into an effective worker, an informed and useful citizen, and an individual capable of personal and social growth.

Last update: June 2016 by Rachel Brekhus

The practical value of studying philosophy lies not in any vocation-specific information that it imparts but rather in the intellectual training that it provides. Successful study of philosophy requires, and helps develop, several intellectual abilities:

• the ability to grasp the big picture as well as fine details
• the ability to think, speak, and write about highly abstract and conceptually demanding questions
• the ability to identify key assumptions made in arguments
• the ability to make relevant conceptual distinctions

Last update: June 2016 by Rachel Brekhus

The focus of curriculum is the exploration of religion in human life rather than the study of one or two specific traditions, and the belief that such exploration can only be carried out in a comparative framework. One consequence of this structure is that the department has been able to contribute significantly to multicultural, international and interdisciplinary programs on this campus.

Our curriculum fills a number of general education requirements in the University, and our classes appeal to a wide range of students with diverse majors. Students from disciplines as varied as English and Biology, History and Chemistry, Sociology and Engineering all find something interesting in the academic study of religion that relates to their chosen field. A number of our core faculty and adjuncts are affiliates in other departments. Many of our courses are cross-listed with other departments, and Religious Studies majors often major in another subject as well.

Courses in Religious Studies train students in critical thinking, reading, writing; communicating and articulating an argument or point of view; researching and evaluating sources; and planning and undertaking projects. Students learn methods for thinking about and engaging with religious and cultural phenomena. Humanities and liberal arts majors gain excellent skills and training that are transferable to other areas and professions. Our majors have pursued successful careers in such fields as law, journalism, business, social work, politics, education, ministry, medicine, and counseling.

Last update: June 2016 by Rachel Brekhus

MU has no Rural Sociology major. However, there is a minor and there are several programs/certificates for which students may take courses from the department.  Some relevant statements from the two pages linked below:

The Department of Rural Sociology at the University of Missouri employs the theoretical and methodological tools of rural sociology to address challenges of the 21st century – preserving our natural resources, providing safe and nutritious food for an expanding population, adapting to climate changes, and maintaining sustainable rural livelihoods.

As part of the Division of Applied Social Sciences in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, we collaborate in teaching, research and outreach with agricultural economists, natural resource specialists, biochemists, plant and animal scientists, nutritionists, food scientists, psychologists and physicians from MU and other major universities, various governmental agencies and domestic and international non-governmental organizations. In addition to working in rural communities in the United States, Rural Sociology faculty conduct research and outreach programs in numerous countries, especially in the developing world.

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The minor in rural sociology offers three emphasis areas:

• The agriculture, food and environment emphasis prepares students for work in nongovernmental, private and governmental organizations at the local, state, national and international levels where knowledge of environmental, agricultural and food systems is desired.

• The rural studies emphasis prepares pre-medical and pre-veterinary students, and others who are planning to work in rural communities with an understanding of the culture, economies, and issues found in rural America, and prepares them to live, work and make a contribution to community life in a rural community.

• The community and social change studies emphasis equips students with knowledge of community-change processes and program-evaluation skills for work in policy organizations.

Sociology is a discipline founded about 100 years ago to bring the scientific method to the study of human societies. It has pioneered in the development of methods and techniques designed to provide accurate and verifiable information about contemporary societies. It is the inventor of survey research and a host of statistical measures. The techniques created by sociologists are now used in all disciplines concerned with human behavior.

Sociologists today conduct research and reason from research findings to generate deeper understandings of how societies work. The generation of theoretical statements and the testing of those statements in a wide variety of social settings is the core of sociological work. We are knowledge builders, rather than change agents, although there is an emergent group of "clinical sociologists" who see themselves as people who apply sociological knowledge to create changes in organizations, individuals, and communities. We contribute to human improvement by seeing that change can be based on good information and reasoned understanding of how humans work together in groups or larger aggregates.

By majoring in Sociology, you will gain the following skills, proficiencies, and expertise.

• the significance of social structures & hierarchies
• the importance of culture (as in organizational cultures)
• social inequalities, and how they affect interaction, motivation, accomplishments
• the patterns of groups and organizational behavior: socialization, peer pressure, morale
• the impact of changes in the character, size, distribution and composition of the population
• social phenomena having to do with human health and disease
• the processes involved in deviant behavior and social mechanisms for enforcing compliance with widely accepted norms for controlling deviance
• fundamentals of doing social research, including questionnaire design, basic sampling, data analysis, interviewing, field research, etc.
• the dynamics of social interaction: how social identities are formed; how they are expressed in family, work and leisure settings

• Critical thinking ("careful and exact evaluation and judgment")
• Writing -- clearly and concisely -- at a high level of proficiency: ability to read, understand and summarize different perspectives on a complicated issue
• Oral communication skills: ability to reason on one’s feet, to summarize or advocate a position
• Computer proficiency at a moderate level
• A "survival" knowledge of a language other than one's native language

• Developing research projects, collecting data, analyzing data (quantitative and qualitative), writing up the results
• Managing or coordinating units, offices, work teams, etc.
• Conducting training, orientation for others
• Conducting workshops for organizations sensitizing supervisors to issues of gender, minorities, people with disabilities, and age discrimination
• Leading focus groups to raise awareness of employees of their common ground with each other
• Advising organizations on interorganizational relationships
• Diagnosing and prescribing solutions to organizational problems
• Working with community groups to give them a greater sense of efficacy and control over events in their worlds
• Working with state and federal agencies to develop or evaluate public policies that are equitable, effective and efficient

Last Update: June 2016 by Rachel Brekhus