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Brand-New Major: Get a BA in Medical Humanities

Get a competitive edge in the healthcare industries — the fastest growing sector in the economy today

Posted in: CHSS News

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Med Hum majors are holistic thinkers with a compassionate edge.

The College of Humanities and Social sciences is proud to announce a versatile new major in Medical Humanities.

This new program investigates the human experience of health and illness. The Medical Humanities is a profoundly interdisciplinary field, one that lies at the intersection of the social sciences, the humanities, the arts, the biomedical sciences, and the caregiving disciplines.

Med Hum majors learn to approach fundamental questions of health and illness from multiple perspectives, with an awareness of how different social contexts, cultural practices, and belief systems affect our understanding of what disease is and how the healing arts should be practiced. Through interactions with affiliated faculty members from colleges and schools across the university, Med Hum majors explore such diverse subjects as the ethics of care, the nature of death and dying, patient advocacy, disabilities rights, reproductive autonomy, genetic counseling, public health, health policy, arts-based therapies, the history of madness, and the representation of the body in mass media.

Flexible curriculum

The Medical Humanities major offers a broad and flexible curriculum. Majors take core courses in Bioethics, Medical Anthropology, and Literature and Illness and fulfill further requirements through a choice of offerings in psychology, history, sociology, religious studies, child advocacy, and biology. Majors also pursue individual academic and career goals through coursework in four tracks of electives.

Capstone and internship possibility

In their final year, all Med Hum majors work one-on-one with a faculty supervisor to create a capstone project, one that may involve placement in healthcare institutions or health­-related organizations in New Jersey and New York City.

A competitive edge for the job market

The Medical Humanities major gives students a competitive edge in the healthcare industries, the fastest growing sector in the economy today. Med Hum majors acquire a knowledge base in diverse healthcare fields as well as the transferable job skills that are the hallmark of a humanities degree: writing skills, oral communication, critical thinking, and ethical decision-making.

Med Hum graduates find employment opportunities in hospitals, insurance carriers, universities, pharmaceutical companies, nursing facilities, physicians’ offices, retirement communities, and outpatient centers. They also continue their studies at the postgraduate level, from medical and law school to a range of interdisciplinary PhD programs in the humanities and social sciences.