In addition to examining specific problems such as child abuse and divorce, students learn how human service agencies and professionals deal with these problems. They study the moral, ethical, and legal issues they will face as professionals, and they learn to evaluate alternative approaches to promoting sound development. The HDFS major emphasizes the scientific base for understanding development, change, growth, and decline in individuals and families. Its interdisciplinary approach makes use of an outstanding faculty of psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, demographers, and biobehavioral scientists who help students develop knowledge either for practical applications or as a base for graduate study. The courses emphasize basic issues in theories, research methodologies, and patterns of change in growth and development, as well as intervention and evaluation skills.
Students also have opportunities for supervised field or research experience.
This option focuses on the biological, psychological, and social development of infants, children, and adolescents, with special emphasis on the structure and functioning of the family. Courses emphasize an under-standing of basic theoretical and methodological issues, and the development of applied skills in intervention and evaluation, and in the formulation of policy. Typical employment settings include preschools, daycare centers, hospitals, institutional and community programs for emotionally disturbed, abused or neglected children and adolescents, as well as a variety of private and public welfare and family service agencies. This option may also be used by students as preparation for graduate work in applied human development and human services areas. This option focuses on the biological, psychological, and social development of adults and elderly individuals, with special emphasis on the various contexts of adult development, including work and the family.