The new Human Biology Programs will be available to students entering their second year in September 2001. They present a choice of three Specialist programs leading to an Honours B.Sc. degree. The goal of each program is to provide a multi-disciplinary education focused on an area of biological science relevant to humans. Each program emphasizes courses from the life sciences, but includes social sciences and humanities. Each program will allow students to study an area in depth while maintaining a flexibility of course selection.
Humans are first and foremost animals, living organisms.
As such, they share fundamental characteristics with all life - structure, chemistry, control mechanisms, behaviour, an ecological context, and an evolutionary history. Thus the study of human biology must entail a sound knowledge of basic life science. But humans have also developed unique characteristics, emergent properties, arising from their highly complex brains - their intricate behaviour, communication and conceptual abilities, and social structures. So a fuller appreciation of their biology also needs an understanding drawn from disciplines such as psychology, anthropology, and sociology. The new Human Biology Programs are designed to do this.