Bachelor of Arts in Indigenous Studies

at Wilfrid Laurier University - Brantford Campus Canada

Our Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Community Health program explores and recognizes the wide range of social, biological and institutional factors that influence the health and well-being of communities defined by geography, socioeconomic status, gender, cultural makeup, ability and vulnerability.

In this program you'll learn to:

• Identify the most significant health challenges in communities.
• Evaluate the factors that create health risks for members of those communities.
• Study and make recommendations for program and policy interventions that will improve the health status within your communities of concern.

Consideration is also given to the Canadian and Ontario health-care systems, and the policy framework that underpins the provision of health and social services to specific communities and the broader population.

In our Bachelor of Arts and Science (BASc) in Community Health program, award-winning educators and researchers integrate the latest advancements and knowledge into courses about the social and physical factors that influence the health status of communities. Communities are often defined by location but can also be defined by groups of people connected through identity or purpose.

In this program you’ll have the flexibility to conduct research and/or have experiential learning opportunities in a practicum placement allowing you to pursue your specific interests in community or Community Health.

The media environment is rapidly changing and evolving. The skills associated with journalism continue to be highly valuable, but not just for traditional media outlets anymore. Increasingly all industries, corporations and organizations rely on digital media for their communications and marketing needs. Content creators push their content to where their digital audiences are, such as Instagram, Snapchat and other social media platforms. But with an overload of content, how we do we strategically use these new technologies to share news and content of all kinds with audiences?

More than ever, we need to be connected to the past to understand our present and future. The history program at our Brantford campus will introduce you to the people, events and ideas that have shaped our reality. More than we realize, the current challenges facing humanity – and how we approach these challenges – are grounded in historical events.

History students develop exceptional writing, research, and critical thinking skills, as well as the ability to understand events and issues in their proper historical and cultural contexts.

HISTORY AT LAURIER BRANTFORD
Laurier’s History program is designed with multiple opportunities for students to enhance their acquirement of historic knowledge and skills through a rigorous curriculum which includes traditional classroom learning through lectures and seminar discussions and hands-on training to be a historian.

• Go behind the scenes of museums and historic sites in Brantford, Brant County, Six Nations of the Grand River, Hamilton, and Toronto to learn how historic artefacts and documents are collected, preserved, and displayed.
• Get certified to collect oral history interviews and tell the stories of your ancestors and local community members.
• Discover and analyze historic records and objects in archives, libraries, and private collections.
• Communicate the results of your research and learning in essays, podcasts, local and digital exhibits, theatre and film, blogs, conference presentations, and reports.

You’ll have the opportunity to work directly with youth and children through a required Community Service-Learning course, in which you’ll be placed in various child-care and educational settings. In addition, a number of courses include opportunities for active participation as a researcher, leader or caregiver in a variety of fields related to youth and children.

The Indigenous studies field is growing rapidly and we have designed a program that will prepare you to engage with important issues facing Canada and the world through course work in two programs and community service-learning opportunities. Our classrooms teach the perspectives and experiences of Indigenous people (who make up about 20% of the world’s population) to deepen your understanding of these issues.

Your courses will cover topics in Indigenous rights, history, ecological knowledge, and teaching practices. Your education will be complemented by courses in Indigenous languages, literature and media.

Diverse teaching methods, such as planting medicines in our Medicine Garden course, bring class material to life and allow you to understand Indigenous worldviews by applying them to the world around you. 

In this program, you'll earn an Honours Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree from Laurier and a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree from the University of Sussex, United Kingdom (UK) in six years. You are guaranteed an offer of admission to Sussex’s Law School if you maintain a minimum B average (73-76%) when at Laurier. 

In this innovative, competitive-entry program, you’ll have the opportunity to study alongside other high-achieving students. You’ll also have access to supports dedicated to your academic and professional success. Because the LSAT is not a requirement to study law in the UK, your focus during your first two years at Laurier can be on your studies.

Human Rights and Human Diversity
Human Rights and Human Diversity prepares graduates to understand and advance issues of human rights and social justice in Canada and around the world in such roles as administrators, human resources professionals, lawyers, social workers, international development workers, fundraisers, project managers, and program coordinators.

The Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) program at Laurier is a direct-entry program, which means you will begin your study of social work in your first year.

Social work is a practice-based profession that harnesses principles of human rights and social justice to empower members of society disadvantaged by social dynamics of class, race, gender, age, and ability.

Human Rights and Human Diversity (HRHD) prepares you for a career where you can make a difference by advancing human rights and social justice in Canada and around the world.

You will examine current issues that matter in people's lives such as:

• children's rights
• disabilities
• multiculturalism
• women's rights
• crimes against humanity
• racism
• human trafficking
• gender issues

You will study organizations that can be used to address injustice like the UN, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and nongovernmental organizations. You will develop skills that are highly sought-after by human rights organizations, such as:

• grant writing
• policy analysis
• intercultural competence
• professional fundraising
• advocacy
• designing social media strategies

At Laurier in Brantford, you'll get the Laurier English degree, well known for its quality and comprehensiveness, but you'll take it in a more rigorous, more tightly guided, smaller-campus environment.

English at Laurier in Brantford is the only English program in Ontario that is built to offer the educational experience that many Canadian students travel to the Maritimes to get at prestigious small universities such as Mount Allison or Acadia, and that many American students pay more than CDN$70,000 a year to get at elite undergraduate liberal arts universities such as Williams or Swarthmore. English at Laurier in Brantford offers an intensive, small-class, limited-cohort educational experience without forcing you to leave the province, at a fraction of the price that you'd pay in the United States.

ABOUT LAURIER BRANTFORD'S ENGLISH PROGRAM
English offers an overview of the history and forms of literature written in the English-speaking world. An education in English will sharpen both your communication skills and analytical abilities while providing you with a better understanding of how your culture made sense of the world historically and how we do now in the contemporary world.

You will learn how to critically engage with content to explore hidden meanings and discover how humanity uses language for artistry, information-sharing, providing comfort, for inciting inspiration and much more. By taking the same approach to your own communities, how you find meaning will be transformed and how you communicate these meanings will be strengthened.

Our program provides the flexibility to seize opportunities in a wide range of professional fields such as editing, professional writing, public relations and social and digital media. English is an ideal program to help you thrive in changing times and only at Laurier's Brantford campus can you enhance your degree with a minor in Professional Writing.