Hey there! I'm professor EJ Sobo. I'm
chair of the anthropology department
here at San Diego State University. It's
great that you're interested in coming
to SDSU and it's even greater that
you've been thinking about anthropology
which as I'm sure you know by now, is the
study of human kind,
past and present. Anthropologists study
our biology, our artifacts or our
material remains, the ways we communicate, and our religious, medical, and other
traditions. Culture is anthropology's
unifying theme. All right, so what is
culture? Put simply it's a shared, learned
design for living. It's our entire
non-biological inheritance. Now why study anthropology here at SDSU? Well, for one
thing, our department offers a variety of
laboratories and other options, including
with our community partners for hands-on learning, applied research, and
internships. Another good reason would be because our department houses a
world-renowned group of specialists,
tenured and tenure-track faculty, as well
as, the best lecturers around. Your
professors will be experts. Students who
joined the Department of Anthropology
here at SDSU come away with an excellent
understanding of human biological and
cultural diversity, across space and time,
past present and future.  Here, let me come back to the holistic focus of our
program. Now if you're anything like I
was when I was a student, part of the
challenge of choosing a major is whether
or how it will prepare you for the job
market and that could be anthropology's
best-kept secret. Anthropology graduates
have a wide variety of job options for
example, in nonprofit associations,
federal, state, local governments, and in
international agencies. We work in health
care, business, and manufacturing organizations. We work at research
institutes and in marketing or human
factors and design firms. We work at zoos
or wildlife preserves, on environmental
projects doing human impact assessment
or resource management. We work in
museums too. One of my own favorite jobs
was at Children's Hospital here in San
Diego in the research
division. That's where I was before I
joined the department here at SDSU. Now
most of the jobs anthropology graduates
end up and don't have anthropology in
the job title but recruiters know what
anthropology is and there are plenty of
jobs out there that our majors have the
skillsets to compete for and do compete
for and win. Recruiters see our degree as
confirmation that an applicant is a
systems thinker who can see the big
picture. Plus, recruiters know that
anthropology majors understand people. So having a degree in anthropology can
serve to open doors for you in ways you
might not be able to imagine. Our major
will provide you with the critical
skills that will make you highly
competitive for careers in either the
public or the private sector, including
corporations, consulting firms, and
community-based organizations. According
to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics,
employment of anthropologists is
projected to grow 10% from 2018 to 2028. 
That is faster than the average for all
occupations. You know, you can't say no to that. Don't take my word for it, ask our
students. Visit the adviser for the major.
Do your homework. Check it out and feel
free to contact any of the professors in
this department, myself included. You know
what? Don't be too worried about the
major decision. You'll know you're in the
right one, when you arrive.
Hello incoming students! My name is Katie Isola and I am the president of the
Association of Anthropology Students and also I'm a senior in the major of
anthropology here at SDSU. I just wanted
to talk a little bit about the major and
some really awesome opportunities we
have to offer in this four-year program.
This major is for anyone who's curious
about humans, past, present, and future
and our impact on the world. Here at SDSU, we believe in the four subfield approach
to anthropology. What this means is that
being a part of this major, you can see
the opportunity to dive into not only
cultural anthropology, which deals with
present cultures and our current impact
on the world, but also we get to explore
archaeology, past civilizations and
people, biological anthropology which
focuses on evolution, forensics,
primatology, and also linguistic
anthropology, which deals with language
and its impact on culture. I know
personally I came in to SDSU as a
freshman believing that cultural
anthropology was my thing, but after one
archaeology class, uh that, that was forever
changed. Um which is awesome because we leave here with a well-rounded
approach to anthropology, where in the
future we're prepared to take on any
subfield we choose. I mentioned earlier
about opportunities and we have amazing
experiences to offer here at SDSU. Some
that I've personally experienced
includes archaeology, an archaeology field school, where I got to live on a mountain
with other students and dig for two
weeks, learning techniques on how to
excavate a site and what to do when you
find an artifact. And after the dig, we
got to take the artifacts back to the
lab, research them, and with that research
become co-authors on a published
technical report. A really cool
experience to have under your belt,
especially as an undergraduate student.
Also here at SDSU, we have amazing
courses. One of my favorites being a
primatology course I took my junior year
here. Where as a project, we got to
conduct research on the primates at the
San Diego Zoo, through observing the
behavior of a given species of primate.
Mine was the red buff lemur. Very, very
vocal species. Very exciting to observe.
And finally the Association of
Anthropology Students is a great way to
stay in the loop on events in the
department, get involved, and meet other undergraduate students with a
fascination for anthropology. And if
you're interested, please shoot us an
email to sdsuanthroclub@gmail.com.
This is a major full of fascinating
topics like the supernatural,
sustainability, music, and how it relates
back to the human. And I truly believe a
part of each and every one of us
relates to this major, because I mean, we
are what we're studying. So I look
forward to seeing some of you in the
fall. I look forward to seeing what you
do with your four years here at SDSU and
go Aztecs!
Hello everybody! I'm Dr. Isaac Ullah, a
faculty member in the department of
anthropology and the adviser for the
anthropology major. I'm um here briefly to
tell you what our program is like and uh
tell you a little bit about the courses
that you'll take uh if you become an
anthropology major here at SDSU. If
you're joining us at the uh freshman level,
you'll be declared a pre-major for
anthropology and you'll be working on
three pre-major courses in uh biological
anthropology, cultural anthropology, and
archaeology, that's anthropology 101, 102, and 103. In the first
two years here you can work on those
three classes as well as uh finishing out
your lower division general education
requirements. And that will get you to 60
total units and at the junior level so
basically at the start of your third
year, you will then transition from being
an anthropology pre-major to being an
anthropology major. And if you're joining
us as a transfer student from one of our
wonderful community colleges or from
another institution of higher ed, you'll
be coming in at this level as well, so at
the very beginning of your junior year
you'll become an anthropology major
officially and you'll start to work on
your upper division anthropology course
core requirements. Those are three sets
of courses that you need to complete
within the major. Our core coursework, our
electives, and our methods requirements.
So our core coursework consists of four
classes. We are a four field anthropology department and so you'll have to
take a core requirement course in each
of those four subfields. That is
biological anthropology, cultural
anthropology, archaeology, and linguistic
anthropology and these are anthropology
or anth
301, 302, 303, and 304. And so we recommend that you start working on those as soon
as possible in your junior year because
they are prerequisites to some of the
other upper division elective coursework
and they form the core the basis of
education program here in the
anthropology department SDSU and we want
you to get that base as quickly as
possible so that you can engage in the
other really awesome classes that we
have to offer. So as you start to
complete those you can also start to
begin work on some of your electives and
the methods requirements. Now you need
eighteen units of electives and you need
six units of methods classes. So, to do
that you can work with me to schedule
your classes for semester by semester to
find classes that meet your interests in
the very wide field of anthropology and
they can be in any one of those four
subfields, cultural anthropology,
biological anthropology, archaeology, or
linguistics. Uh, you want to make sure that you're meeting a couple of them or
meeting the methods requirement, which is really great for you because that means
that you get an opportunity to do some
hands-on learning. And that can include
field or lab courses and also
internships. We have a variety of
internships that we uh place students in
frequently, every semester. And we also
have successful some of our students
going abroad. Now, study abroad is not a
requirement of the anthropology major,
but it definitely is an experience that
lines up very well with the goals of an
anthropological education. So, between all
these different opportunities you can
very easily fill out the remaining two
years of your coursework and graduate
with the Anthropology degree. We've had a
lot of success with our students going
on to a variety of different industries
from cultural resource management here
in California and around the U.S. to uh, uh,
non-governmental organizations, to
governmental employees, even some
students who have taken their
anthropological education and parlayed
that into careers and business or
marketing or even technology development.
So anthropology really is the field of
study that can prepare you for a lot of
different things and that's our goal
here at SDSU in the anthropology
department. To give you a broad methods
based training to get you ready
for a variety of potential careers.
