ANTHRO BA

Faybienne Geenhuizen (fgeenhzn@IU.NET)
Wed, 22 Feb 1995 10:10:45 -0500

I just took a look in the university catalog (University of Central
Florida at Orlando, Florida, USA) to see how the engineering program
differs from the anthropology program, and there are some big
differences.

For the engineering students, their whole 4-year program is mapped
out for them, semester by semester, each semester building on what
was learned the previous semester. They can do their first year at
a junior college, taking the general education courses, but after
that they have to decide what kind of engineer they want to be and
travel down that particular path. At the end of their 4 years,
they are already highly specialized.

We, on the other hand, can do our first TWO years at a junior college.
Then there is a list of 7 classes we must take and 2 lists of
restricted electives (take 3 from column A and 5 from column B).
We can take these courses in any order because none of them has
any prerequisites! We spend our junior and senior years taking
introductory-level courses in ethnology, archaeology, physical
anthropology, and linguistics, and when we graduate we are still
generalists. No fieldwork is required, although archaeological
fieldwork is offered.

I think the engineering program is designed to produce 4-year
graduates with very specific skills and competencies, while
the anthropology undergraduate program is intended only as the
first 4 years on our way to our doctoral degree.

It would be very interesting to hear how the program is structured
differently in other universities around the world (the US counts
as part of the world too).

Faybienne Geenhuizen :)
fgeenhzn@iu.net