Home WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH A DEGREE IN ANTHROPOLOGY?

“The sky’s the limit!” The College of Charleston’s Anthropology program trains its students in a full range of approaches to the field. It also encourages students to improve their oral and written communication skills and develop a rich understanding of the discipline’s major fields: archaeological, biological, linguistic and cultural. Applied or “activist” anthropology is gaining increasing recognition, and our coursework enables students in this arena as well.

A degree in Anthropology makes a number of contributions to a student’s portfolio. These include: an ability to see the world holistically, a sensitivity to the mosaic of ethnic differences, an understanding of the diverse motivations in today’s global economy, and perhaps most important, an appreciation of global awareness. Since the Anthropology program at the College of Charleston also nurtures a sense of creativity and a life-long love of learning, students enter the workforce with a host of marketable skills for today’s economy.

A sample of positions currently held by recent graduates includes:

• Archaeological Technician
• Social Worker
• Cultural Mediator
• Peace Corps Volunteer
• Epidemiology Study Coordinator
• Museum Director

The interdisciplinary nature of anthropology prepares our students for a wide variety of graduate programs, such as:

• Four Fields of Anthropology
• Environmental Studies
• Computer Science
• Forensic Anthropology
• Historic Preservation
• Museum Studies

Our anthropology majors have also been well prepared for acceptance by professional programs, such as:

• Medical School
• Veterinary School
• Law School
• Divinity School
• Dental School
• School of Social Work

Active Learning Opportunities

Internships give you extended opportunities to prepare for a career by linking theories, concepts, and ideas to concrete situations, and applying the anthropological perspective in a workplace setting. Local internship sites include:

• American Red Cross
• Historic Beaufort Foundation
• Charleston Museum
• City of Charleston Mayor’s Office
• Medical Examiner’s Office
• Colonial Dorchester State Historic Site
• The Gibbes Museum of Art
• South Carolina Historical Society
• Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture

Tutorials are individual courses that allow you to explore areas of special interest through an intensive reading program and frequent meetings with a faculty supervisor. Recent tutorial titles include:

• Readings in Irish Ethnography
• Paternal Certainty and Patrilateral Kin Investment in Marriage Transactions
• Anthropological Theory

Independent Studies and the Bachelor’s Essay involve field or library research that results in the production of a major paper. Students have recently completed Independent Studies on:

• Archaeology Through Modern Fiction
• Seasonality in Caribbean Culture
• Evidence of Old World/New World Contact Prior to Columbus
• Ice Age Humans in South Carolina
• Celtic Migrations

Recent Bachelor’s Essay topics include:

• The Haitian Crisis: A Unified Perspective
• Medicinal Use of Baobabs
• Tibetan Buddhist Meditation
• An Ethnography of Surfing
• Did Neanderthals Contribute to the Human Gene Pool?

As the result of your independent research, you’ll also have the opportunity to make professional presentations at College of Charleston Poster Days as well as at professional conferences.

Other Special Opportunities

On-site field study in the U.S. and abroad. Some representative examples include archaeological fieldwork in France, Italy and Turkey; Central American Ethnographic Field School; archaeological fieldwork in Italy and France; historical and anthropological fieldwork in Cuba; paleontological and geological fieldwork in Mexico, and Utah; and folklife in an Irish village (Gleann Chomcille, County Donegal).

Archaeological Field School. The College of Charleston and the Charleston Museum collaborate to offer this credit-bearing, seven-week program every other summer. Students work full time on research sites in the Lowcountry and receive in-depth training in all phases of basic archaeological field research.

Lambda Alpha. The College of Charleston sponsors the only South Carolina chapter of the National Collegiate Honors Society for Anthropology.

Sociology and Anthropology Club. This active student group sponsors many events, such as an annual graduate school night and a career night. It also hosts guest lecturers and arranges field trips.

Learning Resources

Our resources provide you with many opportunities for broad, professional experiences.

• The Jon Morter Laboratory of Anthropology is a teaching/research lab with state-of-the art capabilities in audio/visual work.
• A fossil cast collection includes specimens of Eocene, Oligocene, and Miocene primates and other fossil mammals, and an excellent cast collection covering the entire span of human evolution.
• An osteology collection encompasses representative casts and actual specimens of recent primates and humans.
• Lab equipment includes microscopes for general and specialized usage and equipment for casting and processing fossils.
• Additional resources are available in the biology and geology departments. For example, our students make extensive use of the comparative anatomy collection in the biology department, and take part in the Geology department’s GIS courses.
• College faculty and archaeologists at the Charleston Museum collaborate on a number of courses, student projects and internships. The facility provides opportunities for students to study archaeology through fieldwork, laboratory analysis and academic and museum experiences.

“The College of Charleston anthropology program has been wonderful. I’ve had the opportunity to travel to West Africa and learn firsthand about human ecology, settlement landscapes and ethnobotany. The variety of the classes I’ve been able to take – like Studies of Pacific Peoples, Human Evolutionary Behavior, and the Origins of Agriculture – has been amazing. Every member of the faculty that I’ve met is engaging and willing to help students work through any problems or questions they have about their studies. I don’t think I’d ever have narrowed down an area of interest for graduate school without their help!”

Lauren Humphreys ’07