The Educational Studies Minor allows students to systematically study educational phenomena drawing knowledge and methods from various disciplines including, but not limited to, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, psychology, and history. Students in our minor are often grounded in civic literacy and social justice, many of who go on to pursue a teaching certificate through an alternative teacher certification program, or explore other education related careers including school counseling, educational psychology, occupational therapy, speech and language pathology, curriculum development, community organizations, and social work.
The Educational Studies Program offers a strong minor that captures the qualities of a liberal education—such as in-depth examination of social issues and intellectual questions complemented by a wide breadth of options for pursuing those issues and exposure to unusual and often conflicting ways of thinking about them—our programs are also aimed at helping students prepare for professional work in the field of education, if such work is of interest to them.
Foundational coursework sets the stage for selecting an appropriate track and/or for deciding if the study of education is right for you:
1. Education 115, Surveys how education affects citizens and communities and the accessibility of various educational systems. Using case studies to explore how education functions systematically and how various educational systems reflect and shape who we are, this course will investigate five models: urban, rural, private, cyber, and magnet. Focuses on research from various fields that details how the achievement gap continues to grow in urban schools, private institutions, and rural schools; specifically, how social class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and different identities both organize and are organized by educational environments and how these affect children, families, schools, and communities; and
2. Education 201: Educational Psychology, a course focused on the science of learning (and its implications for teachers), as well as the unique responsibilities of teachers in a diverse, multicultural society. Education 201 also provides an introduction to the “best practices” employed by effective teachers and offers students a first opportunity to explore teaching in a field-based setting.