Social Science Department


Social science is an interdisciplinary department, combining aspects of anthropology, political science, sociology and urban studies. We created the program to help students learn how to evaluate different approaches to social systems that might be applied in our society to improve our quality of life. Whatever your personal goals, you need to understand the social world around you. This is true of both the smallest units in the social system, such as your household or workplace, and the larger ones, such as your city, region, country or even the world ecosystem.

An important idea in social science is that patterns in our personal life, our communities and the larger social worlds are all connected. If we can understand those connections, we can create a better life for ourselves and our neighbors. Whatever role you envision for yourself in the future, your effectiveness will flow from your use of some key abilities:

  1. The ability to analyze. You will learn to identify and describe socio-political problems and to use social scientific theories to begin tracing how they emerge.
  2. The ability to solve problems. You will learn to evaluate how well institutions and groups understand and resolve particular social problems. You will also learn to apply technical tools such as statistics and behavioral research methods.
  3. The ability to think and act in a multicultural context. You will learn to read both the interaction patterns and the shared values in a given institution or group, as well as to anticipate and deal with the conflicts that can arise on public issues.