Major Mondays: Health and Human Sciences
Happy Major Mondays – Health and Human Services (B.A.) edition! If you haven’t heard, every Monday in the USC admission world is Major Mondays! I am excited to share some great information about the Health & Human Sciences (HHSC) major, which is housed in our Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, & Sciences.
Overview: The field of healthcare, including medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, and allied health providers has changed drastically over the years. The Health & Human Sciences curriculum combines all the necessary science, social science, humanities, and critical thinking concepts, as well as field experience in order to broadly educate students and prepare them for a health-related field.
Curriculum: Students in this major will understand how psychological, cultural, social economic, ethical, and biological factors influence our lives and, most importantly, our health. Here at USC, the HHSC major is designed so that every student will be able to choose a semester abroad program as a component to this major. The HHSC major is open to all students and they do not need to pursue a pre-health track to declare this major.
Experiential Opportunities: Some experiential opportunities available in the Health & Human Sciences major include the opportunity to study abroad and understand how health affects people around the globe by spending a semester in countries like Brazil, Chile, South Africa, or Ireland. Don’t have time to study a whole semester? You can also participate in Problems Without Passports courses in England or Guatemala that occur during the summer session.
You will also have the opportunity to better understand how health issues relate to different fields through a medical internship that many students feel helped prepare them for their respective fields after graduation. Lastly, you could work in the Ethnographics laboratory, which is a part of the Center for Visual Anthropology. This laboratory provides archival and computer facilities for students and faculty who work with nonlinear editing systems and interactive media in anthropology.
Student Experience & Takeaways: We asked Najah Boyd (HHSC Class of 2022) about her experience studying abroad at the University of Bristol. She stated that “my experience studying abroad as an HHSC major was wonderful. In this major, I had a lot of flexibility in the classes that I took, and that definitely transferred over to my time at the University of Bristol. I was able to take a class on the science of creativity and another on interpreting statistics. I feel like both of these courses allowed me to go beyond ‘hard’ science and to consider my major in a new light.”
I hope that you enjoyed learning about the Health & Human Sciences as much as I enjoyed writing about it. Stay tuned for more Major Mondays! Fight On!
Written by: Dominique Young, Assistant Director – USC Office of Admission