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Undergraduate

Bachelor's Degree Programs
Religious Studies

Religious studies offers students opportunities to explore the patterns and dimensions of the many different religious traditions of the world from the perspectives of the academic study of religion. The courses are designed to help students develop basic understandings of the many ways in which religions shape personal views of the world, create and sustain the communities in which we live, and interact with politics, economics, literature and the arts, and other structures of society. Through this curriculum, students are provided the skills that will allow them to understand religions as a part of the study of human history and traditional and nontraditional values. The department offers both a major and a minor, allowing students to investigate religious phenomena in depth and encouraging connections with other areas of the humanities and social sciences.

Program Planning

In the degree programs, the Department of Religious Studies pays special attention to the student’s expressed hopes and plans, and the faculty counsels its majors carefully toward that end. Thus, students can construct undergraduate programs of study that meet both personal goals and the faculty’s sense of what constitutes a coherent and focused concentration in religious studies. With these possibilities in mind, students are encouraged to declare their intentions to major in religious studies as early as possible in their college careers.

Those students who choose to major in the department are invited first to explore courses, to introduce the history and diversity of the worlds religions.  On the basis of these studies, students are then able to pursue more specialized courses of inquiry, depending on their personal interests and concerns. The curriculum for majors is devided into two tracks:

  1. Religious Traditions
  2. Comparative and Thematic Studies

Religious studies majors have gone into careers in a variety of fields that require critical thinking, and problem solving, excellent writing and communication skills, and an ability to work with people from different cultural backgrounds.

Our graduates have found employment in counseling, social work,health care, social services, teaching, higher education, ministry, nonprofits, fundraising,government, comunnity organizing, publishing, and business.Religious Stuides attracks curious inquirers and global thinkers,who are passionate about big ideas, different cultures, and complex problems.  Many of our majors pursue graduate study, including law, social work, counseling, philanthropy, medicine, religious studies, ministry, philosphy, bioethics, linguistics, educational psychology, biology and more.

Requirements

Beyond the general distribution and credit hour requirements for the Bachelor of Arts degree, students who choose to major in religious studies will be asked to complete 30 credit hours of course work designated by the faculty as follows:

  • 15 credit hours will be selected from the category of Religious Traditions
  • 12 credit hours from Comparative and Thematic Studies
  • 3 credit hours in the departmental senior seminar (R433)
  • at least 18 credit hours to be taken at the 300 level or above.

For details concerning the course designations, students should consult the department website or contact the faculty mentor. Any religious studies course in which a student receives a grade below C (2.0) may not be used to fulfill major or minor requirements. (A C– does not qualify.)

Double Majors
  1. Religious Studies complements many other fields from medicine and public health to public affairs and law to philanthropic studies and social work. Students are encouraged to seek a double major.
  2. Students wishing to acquire double majors in religious studies and a second subject area will need to fulfill all of the above requirements, as well as those of the second subject area; will need an faculty mentor for each major; and will need to file their plans for a double major with the academic advisors in each major.