Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy

at Shorelight Group - Towson University USA

The Allied Health program is designed to give practicing health care professionals the opportunity to advance their careers by expanding their skills in the health care marketplace. Students enter the program with a completed associate degree from a regionally accredited institution in an allied health field. The program builds on students’ existing associate degrees and clinical backgrounds and prepares them to assume additional responsibilities through advanced learning in health care administration and management, organization and funding, ethical and professional issues, and research findings that affect best practice. Graduates are better positioned for promotions, movement into related positions or job expansion.

• Use a working critical vocabulary to do textual and ethnographic analyses of cultural phenomena, showing an understanding of both verbal and visual texts, students own everyday experience, and the inter-relatedness of social, political, historical, and economic components of their worlds.
• Through writing, convey an understanding of a variety of critical strategies (e.g. semiotics, content analysis, structuralism) applicable to cultural studies cross-disciplinary core.
• Acquire the habits and attitudes of an inquiring mind, for looking into questions of culture in ways that resonate with students’ lives and finally even beyond these lives, into an awareness of ethical, cognitive, and emotional issues that may at first seem foreign to their own systems of cultural values.
• Evaluate critically the sources and content of information. This goal is listed among the Middle States Commission on Higher Education Expectations Regarding Information Literacy and Technological Competency.
• Understanding and applying relevant discipline-specific methodologies and strategies of inquiry.
• Engaging intellectually and seeking to understand the experiences and views of people with different cultural backgrounds and beliefs, whether in their own country or abroad.

The interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary graduate program in Women’s and Gender Studies provides students with a solid academic foundation to pursue their unique goals. As the only applied master’s program in Women’s and Gender Studies in Maryland and the only Women’s and Gender Studies master’s program in Baltimore, the program emphasizes applied research methods and skills, preparing students for careers in a variety of public and private organizations both national and international, for-profit and nonprofit. It also prepares students to enter doctoral programs in a variety of fields.

The constantly changing nature of public policy provides an opportunity to study the role that interest groups, government leaders, the media and others play in framing policy debates that affect women. In this concentration, focus on a particular policy area and/or look at that area from a comparative perspective.

Students may elect to become certified in both Elementary and Special Education by selecting the major. This program, specially designed to integrate both elementary and special education, prepares students as elementary classroom teachers and as elementary/middle special education teachers.

The Elementary Education & Special Education major is provided at Towson University, Towson University in Northeastern Maryland (TUNE) and The Universities at Shady Grove. The program is a screened major. The total program equals 127 units.

In addition to the Core Curriculum requirements, Foreign Languages majors in the French Concentration must complete 30 units with a grade equivalent of 2.00 or higher in French beyond the intermediate level. Of the 30 units, at least 15 units must be taken at Towson University.

Communication Studies courses give students a foundation in communication theories and their interrelated contexts, the application of theories to contemporary issues and the scholarly methods of studying communication. The Communication Studies major has a three-fold function:

1. It allows students a greater understanding of the role that communication plays in shaping culture and identity.
2. It looks at the ways in which the process of meaning-making (whether through the use of words, images, symbols or technology) is used strategically to influence human judgment and actions.
3. It sharpens students’ critical thinking abilities, thus enabling them to become ethical producers and consumers of messages.

This three-fold function is accomplished through a theoretical and practical focus on argument development and through a close examination of the ways ideas are discussed, advocated for, and circulated in public and private life. These emphases give students the opportunity to develop speaking, writing, and analytical thinking skills that will allow them to become better ethical participants in the process of creating, critiquing, and disseminating meaning.

The Mass Communication major consists of three tracks: Advertising, Journalism, and Strategic Public Relations. Students must complete one of the three tracks. Many students complete two of the three tracks and some complete all three.

Students who complete the Mass Communication major will have many career options, especially in the broadly defined fields of print, broadcast and online journalism, advertising, and strategic public relations. Majors are expected to learn how the various fields in mass communication are structured and function.

The Master of Education degree in Special Education is an applied professional program designed to meet the critical need for special educators. Two concentrations support this offering: Special Education and Special Education Teacher as Leader in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Please note: That only one degree in Special Education can be awarded; students who complete more than one concentration in Special Education will not receive two different degrees.

The Physical Education program (Teacher Education concentration) prepares students to become competent physical educators consistent with developmentally and instructionally appropriate guidelines provided by the Society of Health and Physical Educators-SHAPE America. Graduates of the program are eligible for certification by the Maryland State Department of Education as a PreK-12 Physical Education teacher.

The Geology major contains a basis of the fundamental earth sciences supplemented by essential mathematics and physical sciences. The upper-level Geology classes are generally small, with both lecture and laboratory taught by faculty. Depending on their course selections, Geology majors are prepared to enter successful careers in a range of geoscience industries (e.g., environmental consulting, state or federal scientific or regulatory agencies, petroleum), to teach at the secondary level, or to attend graduate school. Students interested in the teaching certification in Earth and Space Sciences should investigate TU’s Earth-Space Sciences major.