Prospective Students

Pivot!

“The modern workplace is an environment of constant change. Job roles continually shift and expand….”

Knowing how to make “numerous career pivots” is “an essential strategy for staying ahead of the curve.”1

The Humanities BA provides unique skills that prepare students for success in the contemporary job market. The interdisciplinarity of our program emphasizes intellectual and professional adaptability. It teaches students how to pivot—

  1. How to confront problems within a professional or civic context from diverse disciplinary perspectives;
  2. How to collaborate with thinkers and doers from other areas and industries; and, most provocatively,
  3. How to pivot from position to position, and even from career to career, which data shows is an increasingly dynamic trend in Millennial and Gen Z employment.

1Forbes Magazine

The Art of the Career Pivot

Prepare to Job Hop

Millennials Job Hop

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  • 91% of surveyed millennials expect to stay in their jobs less than 3 years.
  • The average American has 7+ jobs before turning 29.
  • 1/3 of those jobs last less than six months.1

1WBUR/NPR

Know How to Pivot

Know How to Pivot

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The Humanities studies examples of human creativity throughout time – objects, ideas, artworks, machines, human systems – as a way to understand:

  • History and culture – particular eras, places, and peoples;
  • Philosophy – the enduring questions of human life;
  • Aesthetics – the motivation to make and create in the first place, to pursue beauty and innovation.
Study of these objects is designed to teach students how to pivot intellectually. Intensively interdisciplinary, the Humanities BA requires students to adapt to diverse intellectual frameworks – history, philosophy, language, art, religion, sociology, psychology, and others – as they investigate a given object or topic.

Excel in the Skills Employers Seek

Excel in the Skills Employers Seek

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  • The Analytical:

    UT employers are looking for people with strong “critical thinking and analytical reasoning” skills, which they find to be “grossly deficient” in the workforce today.

  • The Communicative:

    UT employers are looking for people with strong writing and verbal talent, i.e., “email, public speaking and debate.”

  • The Interpersonal and Collaborative:

    UT employers are looking for people trained in “sensitivities and cultures,” with “leadership” skills and with “personality.”1

1U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Degree Paths

The broad nature of the Humanities degree, paired with its focus on critical thinking, communication, and collaborative learning, sets students up well for any number of career paths—from business and marketing, to academics, to art and tech, to medicine and science.

In 2023, the UVU Board of Trustees approved a new Bachelor of Science degree in Humanities. This now allows our majors to substitute the substantial second-language requirements of a traditional Bachelor of Arts degree to pursue emphases like medical humanities, business humanities, environmental humanities, etc.  We also offer a Humanities BA, which requires students to take 12 Humanities courses: 1010, 2010, 2020, 2100 or 2200, 3500, three more 3000-level HUM courses, 400R, 4910, and two more 4000-level HUM courses.

This curriculum deliberately creates space for students to explore other intellectual areas and pursue minors, emphases, or even additional majors in other fields, according to interest. This approach marks a concerted effort in Humanities to craft a robustly interdisciplinary curriculum, giving students the opportunity to study diverse forms of human expression and diverse objects of human creation, from the lyric poem to the laptop computer.

In particular, the Humanities Program envisions three undergraduate paths for students to take at UVU (though myriad others are available—just meet with us to discuss options):

  • Classical Humanities—focuses on the arts as a primary mode of human creativity and expression. This path could incorporate minors in areas specifically focused on human thought (Philosophy), religion and culture (Religious Studies), languages (French, e.g.), or aesthetics (Art History or Theatre, e.g.), and would prepare students for graduate programs in the related fields, and careers in education, the arts, and certain business and tech industries.
  • Environmental Humanities—incorporates an Environmental Studies minor (also housed in our department). This path would prepare students for careers that engage the environment and the human body, and would set students up for graduate programs like the Environmental Humanities MA at the University of Utah.
  • Digital Humanities—incorporates a minor from either the College of Engineering and Technology (Digital Media, e.g.) or the Woodbury School of Business (Marketing, e.g.). This path would set students up for graduate programs across the liberal arts, which are hiring more and more frequently in the area of Digital Humanities. It would also prepare students for careers that engage both the critical aspects of a liberal arts degree and the creative and technical aspects of a digital degree (i.e., marketing, business, and digital and design fields).