Students learn about diverse heritages, customs and values that form patterns and analogies, but not general laws. Students also examine the influence of ideas on individual actions and their combined effects on larger social institutions and movements. Students learn about the humanities search for an understanding of the unique value of the particulars within human contexts. Students study patterns of human behavior and institutions and social structures that human beings have created. Students may explore the connections between historical processes and contemporary social issues, examining how institutions and cultural patterns change over time.
Students learn the evaluative criteria for analyses of social phenomena.
Courses in the Social Sciences are typically, but not exclusively, offered in American Studies, anthropology, economics, government, history and sociology. Students actively engage in the process of understanding the natural world through the use of scientific methods. They gain some sense of the power of these methodologies in understanding our universe, as well as the limitations. Students study phenomena that are the product of natural processes and are primarily known through the senses rather than only through thought or intuition. Student learning goals thus include mastery of both content and process.