With over 50 undergraduate majors at UCCS, determining what you want to do for the rest of your life is a difficult choice all college students face. This series will provide a crash course on different majors and their potential career fields.
For those interested in studying society and the human experience, anthropology and sociology are two fitting options.
Anthropology
According to Assistant Professor of Anthropology George Bayuga, Anthropology is considered a four-field discipline (although there are several subfields), so students at UCCS receive a four-field training. Students are required to take foundational classes in three of the four subfields before selecting an emphasis.
The four main subfields are archaeology, biological anthropology, cultural anthropology and linguistics anthropology. “Each of these four subfields has a slightly different take on what it means to understand the human condition,” Bayuga said.
Archaeology focuses on the study of human material culture, primarily in the past. Anthropology majors who chose an emphasis in archaeology at UCCS are trained on theories of past cultures, from ancient civilizations to our most recent history. Students receive practical training and attend field school, offered once a year, in which they go to an archaeological excavation to dig up, collect and categorize artifacts.
Archaeological skills can often lead to a career in cultural resource management or cultural heritage management. Knowing how to categorize and curate cultural artifacts translates well into working in museums.
Biological anthropology includes the study of humans, parasites, human reproduction and evolutionary medicine. This subfield largely focuses on the impact that social, cultural and economic factors have on human health. Classes in biological anthropology focus on analyzing human samples. Biological anthropology often feeds into careers in forensic anthropology.
“Cultural anthropology is the study of human social life and the processes that underpin social, political and economic action,” Bayuga said. Cultural anthropologists separate themselves from similar fields by engaging in fieldwork. Most engage in participant observation, which involves long-term working, living and interacting with a community to better understand particular phenomena. These phenomena may be artistic, industrial, religious or agricultural in nature but are not limited to those fields.
Linguistic anthropology is centered on how human language mediates social, political and economic life. “When we talk about human language, it’s not just textual language, but forms of communication and how those are mediated by everything from the written word to our bodies to politics and the culture at large,” Bayuga said.
Linguistic anthropology lends itself well to language revitalization and the study of endangered languages, as well as careers in AI development. “There are so many people out there who need people who understand language really well to help AI be more accurate, specific and generally good,” Bayuga said.
Other available careers for anthropology majors include civil service workers, foreign service officers, laboratory technicians, market research analysts, public health workers and university professors.
Sociology
Jeffery Montez de Oca, department chair and professor of sociology, said the core of the sociology department involves “[focusing] on institutions and how institutions impact social life, and the way that people create their own identities through their participation in different institutions.”
While psychology focuses on the individual and looks outward, sociology focuses on outside factors and looks inward. Societies make institutions through engaging with school, family, work and politics. Our participation can make it feel like we exist to serve them, rather than the other way around.
“We create institutions, and then we constantly recreate institutions, but we feel powerless to change the institutions, and we feel like the institutions try to control us,” Montez de Oca said.
Engaging in research and research-informed practice is very important to sociology, as it is a research-based field. “Sociology is a great discipline for people who are curious about the world that they live in … so they can try to make it better,” Montez de Oca said.
Students are required to complete a research project for their senior capstone. Research lovers can complete a senior thesis, which spans two semesters and involves working on a longer, more in-depth research project. Research is incredibly useful for graduate school and PhD applications.
Montez de Oca emphasized that sociology majors learn a diverse set of skills that can steer them into many career fields. “What employers want more than anything else from students right now is communication skills,” he said. “In sociology, you learn how to read very complicated texts, understand them and explain them both verbally and in writing. Those communication skills are incredibly powerful and marketable.”
Montez de Oca encouraged students to take classes in sociology even if they don’t pursue a degree. “Students really enjoy our classes and find our classes interesting. Our classes are fun … yet still thought-provoking,” he said.
Sociology majors typically find work in the nonprofit or governmental sector, as researchers or as university professors.
Anthropology artifacts on display in Centennial Hall. Photo by Josiah Dolan.