University of Pittsburgh |
The undergraduate program requires students to take a total of at least six (6) Humanities / Social Sciences Electives. In general, these courses may be chosen freely based upon the student's personal interests or as a means to satisfying other requirements (such as for a dual degree, a minor or an area studies certificate), as long as they come from the list of electives approved by the School of Engineering, and conform to the recommended ABET guidelines for:
Balance and Breadth: Four of the six courses should cover two different subject areas within the humanities (e.g., English literature, fine arts, Spanish etc.) and two different subject areas within the social sciences (e.g., economics, sociology, psychology, etc.).
Depth:The fifth elective must be a follow up course to one of the first four electives and cannot be an introductory course. The last elective may be freely chosen from any of the courses on the list of approved electives.
Writing: At least one of the six electives must be a course that has a significant writing component to it - these are identified by a W designation in the elective list.
These electives present students with an opportunity to learn something new and different, and to broaden and round out their education. Thus students are strongly encouraged to give serious thought to their choice of electives and to take full advantage of the large number of different course offerings that are available at Pitt through the College of Arts and Sciences. If an elective is of particular interest to a student but does not appear on the approved list the student may petition the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for approval of the course as a humanities / social science elective.
List of Approved Electives: The following is a list of Humanities and Social Science Courses which satisfy the School of Engineering's requirements - click on the appropriate department/subject to get a list of approved courses in that area. Note that for the depth requirement (where a student must complete at least two courses in one of these departments or programs), only one of the two may be an introductory class - such courses are marked *). The W indicates courses that have a substantial writing component and which may be used to satisfy the writing requirement. Courses that are cross-listed with other departments are indicated i.e. Anthropology 1524 is also listed under Fine Arts 1650.
ABET recognizes language courses as appropriate for the Humanities/Social Science
requirement. The School of Engineering has operationalized this policy
as follows: Three out of five, or six out of ten first year language course
credits are acceptable towards fulfilling the Humanities/Social Sciences
requirements. This change will enable engineering students to utilize any
two CAS language courses regardless of level as partial fulfillment of
the humanities/social science requirements. This also applies to AP courses
transferred from High School. The following restrictions apply:
a. The language(s) must be other than English
b. The language(s) must be other than the students mother tongue
c. The course(s) must be a bona fide language course
No External Studies courses are acceptable.
The acceptable Humanities/Social Science courses for the School of Engineering are kept on the computer engineering web site. This site is maintained by the School with the most recent updates.