Schedule Planning

How does the Anthropology Department decide which courses to offer and when?

Why can’t you get the course you want when you want it?  Why are some courses taught every quarter and others very rarely?  Why do some faculty members teach more than others?  Well, here are the answers to these and similar questions.

In deciding which courses to offer in any quarter, the Department is constrained by three principles: 1) We must offer a range of courses to meet the needs of both Anthropology majors and students from other programs in which anthropology courses are required; 2) We must offer courses that are part of the General Education (GE) package because this is a major way in which we recruit students to anthropology and because the department’s funding and support from the University is based on how many students we teach; and 3) faculty are expected to engage in research; therefore, they are encouraged to apply for grants and sabbatical leaves that will allow them to take time off from teaching to pursue their research. By doing research, faculty also improve the quality of their instruction.

How do these principles work in practice? Each quarter, we offer at least one section each of the two introductory courses (100 and 102); these are GE courses with quite high enrollments that are also required courses in the major.We also offer 140 a lower-division GE course that is now a required course (or Hist 140) for Liberal Studies majors.  140 is not part of the Anthro major.  We teach two of the upper-division courses, Cross-Cultural Child Rearing Practices (330)and Anthropology of Human Development (331), virtually every quarter because they are popular courses in the Human Development major which has vast numbers of students. Once we have covered these basic courses, we have a little more flexibility.

Each quarter, we try to offer at least one course from each area of the major, i.e. a course in archaeology, a course in physical anthropology, a lab course, a culture area course (“Peoples of …”), and a course in theory (in addition to 330 and 331).Usually we manage to offer a couple of courses from each area.  However, we have many different courses in the Catalog, many of which have only one faculty member who is capable of teaching them.This means that many courses can be offered on average only once every two years.Therefore, if you see an upper-division course offered that you would like to take, register!

However, there are a few courses, besides those listed above, that we offer on a more regular basis. One of these is Great Ideas in Anthropology (500) since this course is required of all our majors, it is offered every winter quarter, alternating each year between Tuesday/Thursday from noon to 2 p.m and Monday/Wednesday from 4 to 6 pm. Please take this course during your senior year. It is meant to be a capstone for our major, so you will not get the full benefit of it nor probably earn a very good grade if you take it prior to your senior year.

All majors must take two lab courses, one of which is Biological Anthropology Lab (200).  We offer this once or twice per year depending upon demand.  Students also must take one upper-division lab course in anthropology (Anth 319, 321, 322) or the archaeological field school (Anth 320) to fulfill the requirements of the major.  At present we offer Anth 322 mostWinters and either Anth 319 or 321 each Spring quarter.  Anth 320 is offered each summer -- see below.

Also offered every year is Museum Methods (375), since this is required for the Museum Studies certificate. This course is normally taught from 6 to 8 p.m. but it is occasionally offered during the day. The late hour for most sections of the course is so that museum professionals may take the course outside business hours.

We also normally teach Archaeology (300) each year because we see this course as an important foundation for other courses in archaeology and prehistory, including the archaeology laboratory courses (319 - 321). We  offer Field Methods in Archaeology (320) most summers as a four-week residential (camping) course in the San Bernardino National Forest.

You can enroll in Independent Study (595) and the various internship courses (575-578) in any quarter, provided that you meet the prerequisites (see the Catalog for details).Internships require 30 hours of supervised work for each unit of credit, with a minimum of 2 units of credit to be earned in any quarter.

We try to offer classes on both Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Tuesday, Thursday schedules at various times of day. We try to avoid putting upper-division classes in competition with each other. We offer few classes at night (after 6 p.m.) because they attract very few students. However, we experiment with a couple of night classes each year to see if demand has grown.

We hope that these notes are useful to you.  If you have any questions or comments, please contact Pete Robertshaw.