Explore Applied Anthropology at Colorado Mesa University! Gain GIS skills and hands-on experience. Scholarships available for international students. Apply now!
The digital humanities and social sciences, an interdisciplinary field that combines technology skills with social science knowledge, is a growing, innovative collaboration of disciplines making its impact nation-wide. Upon graduation, all students will have knowledge of cartography and GIS, as well as physical anthropology and archaeology. GIS is an applied skill that will give the students in the anthropological sub disciplines a niche to set them apart from other anthropology undergraduates. The anthropological disciplines provide students, who focus on GIS, a subject matter with which to hone their GIS skills. BA-seeking students in this program will learn to think critically and ask theoretically-grounded questions about human lives in the immediate area, the surrounding region, and ultimately, across the western USA, in a program that seamlessly blends the acquisition of academic and professional skills. Furthermore, practical training in archaeological, geographical and forensic anthropological field research allows students to take full advantage of the applied employment opportunities available across the western slope and Colorado Plateau as part of energy extraction, law enforcement and/or civil engineering (for example). All CMU baccalaureate graduates are expected to demonstrate proficiency in specialized knowledge/applied learning, quantitative fluency, communication fluency, critical thinking, personal and social responsibility, and information literacy. In addition to these campus-wide student learning outcomes, graduates of this major will be able to: Demonstrate effective communication both orally and in writing by being precise, including factual, well-cited details, organizing facts appropriately, and using non-judgmental language through professional documentation and/or oral presentations.(Communication Fluency) Apply basic research methodology sufficient to evaluate research in the discipline to include the ability to articulate the difference between qualitative and quantitative research methods, and describe and use descriptive statistics and basic analytical statistics.(Quantitative Fluency) Demonstrate tools to be life-long learners to include evaluation of information from other students’ research, material found on the internet, and scholarly journal articles. (Critical Thinking) Demonstrate a set of tools appropriate to the sub-discipline (specialized knowledge): Archaeology students: demonstrate a basic set of field archaeological skills and Forensic Anthropology students: macerate remains and conduct a basic osteological analysis. (Specialized Knowledge) Demonstrate the ability to create maps in a geographical information system program and do basic spatial analysis. (Specialized Knowledge)
