Bachelor of Arts in History and Political Thought /Bachelor of Creative Industries (Dual Degree)

at Western Sydney University - Parramatta South Campus Australia

This double degree is designed for students whose interests span the Arts and Business.

Study in the Bachelor of Arts component is designed to develop communication and personal skills, creativity and a capacity for independent thought, adaptability to new situations and problem-solving skills, attributes increasingly demanded by employers.

Musicology

The Musicology major provides students from outside the Music program with an introduction to the history of Western classical music, and popular and classical musics in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

It offers perspectives on modernism, postmodernism and post-postmodernism, and incorporates social, political and philosophical critiques of music.

The Bachelor of Arts (Dean’s Scholars) degree is designed to develop your communication and personal skills, creativity, capacity for independent thought, adaptability to new situations, and problem-solving abilities.

English

The English major invites students to explore contemporary approaches to language, literary studies and writing, including literary criticism and theory, linguistic analysis, genre and textual study, and creative writing. The English major focuses on the imaginative workings of language, and students can study a wide selection of modern and classic literature, as well as the relationships between written texts and other media such as film and information technology.

Students also have the opportunity to produce their own creative writing and to edit and learn how to publish their work. Career prospects include publishing, editing, teaching, writing and advertising.

Students must maintain a grade point average of 5 or above to remain in the program. Those who do not maintain this average will be transferred to the Bachelor of Arts.

Our fully accredited Bachelor of Creative Industries is unique in NSW. It gives you the opportunity to combine your studies in Arts, Communication, Design and Music with programs in Business and Law.

Music

The Music major provides students from outside the Music program with a comprehensive introduction to current practice in the fields of music, performance and sound production for sound design, composition and performance.

Foundation level units examine the fundamentals of music performance, acoustics, stereo recording and mixing, MIDI systems and sequencing, sound synthesis, and composition utilising environmental sound.

Technical concepts are contextualised within a survey of electroacoustic music and sonic arts practice. Students will also examine studio techniques, new performance technologies, and composition and design for screen media.

Today, to implement technology, practising professionals need to not only have knowledge and skills in information and communications technology, but they also need to understand the context in which computer technology can best be selected, applied and implemented. You will work with organisations to design, develop, deploy and manage information systems through the application of computing technology.

This program will help you carry out a real-life project where you will need to demonstrate you can design and develop an information system that solves a community-based problem.

This degree is exclusively for high-achieving students, and will continually challenge you to do even better and build on your academic success. Students in the Advanced degree program are automatically enrolled in The Academy Opens in new window, which offers interdisciplinary leadership programs, professional development and local and international internship and engagement opportunities for students.

Entertainmnent Computing

This major covers theories and technologies of big data with applications to information systems. Students completing this major will possess and apply the technical skills for managing large volumes and varieties of data in the information systems context.

This major will deal with a comprehensive focus on the technical and theoretical knowledge of design, development and deployment of software applications in the field of Entertainment Computing, including Games Technology and Database Design and Development.

This degree opens doors to entrepreneurship, start-up companies and new innovations that require business knowledge and cutting-edge information systems and technology skills.

Today, to implement technology, practising professionals need to not only have knowledge and skills in information and communications technology, but they also need to understand the context in which computer technology can best be selected, applied and implemented.

The business component of the double degree will allow students to gain knowledge in one of three core Business areas: Money, Markets or Management. 

Sport Management

The Sport Management major is designed for people who seek careers in Australian and international Sport management. Specialist units provide students with a capacity to understand and function within the increasingly dedicated context in which sport is played, organised and managed.

Students who complete this major will be equipped with the skills and knowledge to manage sport experiences pertaining to globalisation and emerging contemporary issues in sport.

This double degree program is designed for students whose interests span the Arts and Social Sciences.

It will give you the skills and versatility to work across a range of academic and professional disciplines, including the opportunity to develop global perspectives and communication skills.

You need to include a Social Science Major, so you can design your own academic program within the Bachelor of Social Science program structure.

Chinese

Language majors will enable you to develop an appropriate level of proficiency in a second language, which may be used for professional purposes such as teaching, interpreting and translation, business or international relations.

If you are undertaking a language major in Arabic, Chinese, Indonesian or Japanese you will be able to use the language in question according to its grammatical and pragmatic principles, communicate with native speakers appropriately in the spoken as well as the written mode, and demonstrate an understanding of the cultures and societies associated with the language.

Become a skilled social worker with the ability to nurture people’s self-reliance and problem-solving abilities. If you have always cared about others, this degree gives you an opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of individuals, families, groups and communities.

Through a mix of world-class research and theory, Western's Bachelor of Social Work gives you the valuable skills and knowledge you need to help people deal with personal and social problems, either directly or by planning and carrying out programs that will benefit groups or communities. It prepares you to enter the workforce in a range of sectors, including private or government agencies, welfare support organisations, community groups or in health.

In addition to social research and theory, this program emphasises practical skills to make you job-ready by undertaking more than 1,000 hours of supervised field work. As a result, you will graduate with confidence in your abilities, and highly sought-after workplace skills as a professional social worker.

Our Computer Science (Advanced) program is an elite degree aimed at transforming today’s brightest minds into tomorrow’s computing leaders.

Systems Programming

This major is only available to students enrolled in the Bachelor of Computer Science and Bachelor of Computer Science Advanced.

This major aims to develop graduates with sound skills in the discipline of programming. The focus is on programming at the level of system calls to the underlying operating system and many of the units use the industry standard language for systems programming, namely C/C++, as the vehicle of instruction.

There is a strong emphasis on the development of highly efficient and reliable code that can provide support services for higher level application oriented programs, as well as the development of programs suitable for systems administration and management.

Practical work utilises the Unix environment. This major is appropriate where a career in systems programming or systems administration is planned, or where the student wishes to develop advanced systems programming skills.
Students must maintain a grade point average of 5 or above to remain in the program. Those who do not maintain this average will be transferred to the Bachelor of Computer Science.

This is a broadly based, inter-disciplinary four-year double degree offering flexibility and choice within a wide range of offerings in the social sciences, as well as studies of International Relations and Asian Studies and an Asian language.

This degree seeks to equip you with all the interdisciplinary and specialist skills and knowledge that you will need on entering the workforce or on proceeding to advanced study.

Peace and Development Studies

The Peace and Development Studies major is concerned with methods for promoting peace, human rights and sustainability. It involves a critical analysis of inequalities of power and opportunity that lead to international and local conflict, social dislocation and environmental degradation.

Students will examine the structural causes of racist and gendered violence, environmental crises, forced migration, poverty, resource conflict, and inter-generational inequity.

The inter-related network of solutions includes empowerment and self-determination, sustainable living, constructive development, peacemaking and peace building. These require understanding of the theories and method for identifying, measuring and resolving conflict and environmental degradation.

The assumptions and failings of traditional development practice are critically assessed. Students will engage social theory within an interdisciplinary and applied framework, at local, national and international levels.

The degree will develop the mindset, risk tolerance, creativity, passion, big thinking, team formation and leadership capabilities – the key distinct characteristics of high-impact entrepreneurs.

In an entrepreneurial ecosystem, you will learn the knowledge and techniques for opportunity discovery, impact analysis, customer analysis, strategic team-building and leadership, the psychology and ethics of the start-up, funding modelling and financial analysis, growth and exit strategies.

The Games Design and Simulation specialisation will convert your passion for playing games into deep knowledge of the science and art of problem solving through development and application of games and simulations.

This area of study includes gamification, games design, game-based learning, and psychology of gaming, serious games, games entrepreneurship, as well as broader modelling and simulation. It features two majors that are not available in any other Western University degree - Game Programming and Game Design.

Upon completion you will have developed an entrepreneurial mindset and will know how to apply this mindset to address a diverse range of problems through game and simulation-based solutions.

The program incorporates practical experience in every semester of study, placing students in entrepreneurial environments (incubators, technology parks, innovation centres) and enabling them through all the stages from creative ideation through the sustainable development of the idea into a lean start-up.