"The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks." - Albert Einstein
Welcome to the College of Humanities and Social Sciences
A CHSS education takes you where you want to go.
They want lifelong learners who examine questions from more than one perspective — innovators who propose creative solutions to problems.
They want people equipped with the crucial intellectual skills of analysis and communication — and the social understanding needed to adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing world.
In other words, they want CHSS graduates.
In the true spirit of liberal-arts education, CHSS students follow a focused yet broad-based course of study that gives them a solid grounding of general knowledge.
An internationally renowned faculty guides them through a highly developed curriculum that incorporates the latest technologies.
These professors — not teaching assistants — conduct classes. Some invite students to work with them in their research.
CHSS confers more degrees than any other MSU college, in fields of study as traditional as Classics and as current as Child Advocacy.
Our departments include Anthropology; Classics and General Humanities; Communication Sciences and Disorders; English; History; Justice Studies; Linguistics; Modern Languages and Literatures; Philosophy and Religion; Political Science and Law; Psychology; Sociology, and Spanish and Italian.
We offer 18 undergraduate majors, 32 minors and 20 professional certificate programs — as well as double-majors with other MSU colleges. Graduates choose one of 11 study areas.
CHSS majors and minors can stretch across disciplines, allowing students to explore areas of interest from multiple perspectives. Women’s Studies, for example, examines how gender can shape people’s lives via coursework in English, Sociology and Justice Studies.
A CHSS education reaches beyond both classroom and campus.
Psychology students can intern at Mount Sinai Hospital, Political Science students with the Clinton Foundation. English and History students tutor schoolchildren and work with community organizations. Communications and Pre-Law students staff clinics on and off campus. Foreign-language students study abroad in places like London, Nice, Madrid and Siena.
The CHSS curriculum also offers students professional certification as child advocates, speech and language therapists, paralegals, and teachers of psychology, social studies and linguistics. Foreign languages students can be certified to teach — or to interpret.
When they leave us, CHSS graduates embark upon countless different paths in careers or further education.
Former English majors teach, work in law firms and college admissions offices — even at MTV. Psychology majors are now nurses, social workers, speech therapists; some work in marketing and at the New York State Supreme Court. Women’s Studies graduates have gone into public health and business.
CHSS provides the foreign-language and writing courses that all MSU students must take to graduate. So, at one time or another during your years on campus, we’ll be seeing you in Dickson Hall.
However much time you spend with us, we know that you will benefit throughout your life from what CHSS has to give.