Humanities and Social Science Requirements

To provide a breadth of education, each program in the College identifies a certain number of credit hours of elective courses (a minimum of 16) concerned with cultures and relationships - generally identified as humanities and social sciences. Students are encouraged to select a cluster theme for their humanities/social science electives. This is a unifying theme (such as psychology, economics, or history) that focuses the student's HU/SS electives.

Course descriptions for courses that meet the requirements are at http://www.lsa.umich.edu/cg/

Requirements

All students are required to take:

  1. Humanities (6 credit hours): At least two courses totaling at least 6 credit hours.
  2. Sequence of humanities or social science courses (at least 6 credit hours): A sequence of at least two courses in either the humanities or social science (or a combination of both) totaling six or more credit hours, must be taken from the same department or division (e.g., History), at least one of which must be an upper level (numbered 300 or above). This requirement may, of course, overlap requirement 1.
  3. At least one course in micro or macro economics (eg. Econ 101 or 102).
  4. The remaining credit hours may be satisfied with elective courses in either humanities or social sciences.

Definitions and Exceptions:

These requirements can often be satisfied by a number of courses from the College of Literature Science and the Arts (LSA), or in part by advanced placement credit or by courses taken at another university. For purposes of this College of Engineering requirement a course is defined as being a humanities or social science as follows:

  1. Any course that is designated as "HU" or "SS" by the College of Literature Science and Arts meets this requirement as humanities or a social science, respectively.
  2. Language courses, except those designated in (3), are counted as humanities. However, advanced placement credit, A levels, IB or University of Michigan placement credit for language courses at the 100 level and below are not to be used to satisfy this requirement. These may be counted instead as General Electives.
  3. Courses that are designated as "BS," "CE," "MSA," "NS," "QR," "experiential," "directed reading or independent study," or course titles that include the terms or partial phrases intro to "composition," "conversation," "math," "outreach," "performance," "physics," "practice," "practicum," "statistics," "studio," "tutor" may not be used to satisfy this requirement. Check the website: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/cg
  4. For the purposes of this requirement, courses not covered by items 1, 2, & 3 above will be defined as humanities courses if they are offered by the following departments or divisions: Architecture (non-studio); Art (non-studio); Classical Archaeology; Classical Studies; Comparative Literature; Dance (non-performance); Film and Video Studies; Great Books; History of Art; Asian, English, Germanic, Romance (French, Italian, Portuguese; Spanish) and Slavic Language and Literatures; Music (non-performance); Music History and Musicology; Philosophy; Religion; Theatre and Drama (non-performance)
  5. Courses not covered by items 1, 2 and 3 above will be defined as social sciences if they are offered by the following departments: Afro-American and African Studies;American Culture; Cultural Anthropology; Communication Studies; Armenian, Judaic, Latin American and Caribbean; Latina/Latino, Middle Eastern and North African, Native American; Near Eastern, Russian and East European Studies; Economics; History; Linguistics, Political Science; Psychology; Sociology; Women's Studies

Approved: April 14, 2003