Bachelor of Arts in Music - Wellness

at Northwest Missouri State University USA

Geography is a holistic discipline that studies the relationship between humans, the unique cultures of construct and the environments in which they live. This major prepares students for a wide range of careers in varied areas of geography and culture. This major offers three different areas of focus:

• Culture and Society
• Environmental Geography
• Geographic Information Science

Each emphasis allows students to specialize in one of these fields and tailor classes within that emphasis to fit their interest beyond the core courses within the program.

As a student majoring in geography at Northwest, you learn the importance and impacts of space, the uniqueness of places and regions, and how humans and environment interact.

The major focuses on culture and regional geography with a wide range of tropical and regional courses available. Students will develop physical geography expertise in areas like geomorphology, atmospheric processes and sustainability. The major also teaches skills in analyzing, planning and critical thinking to prepare you for success in your career.

Biology/Psychology: Biology majors emphasizing in Biomedical Sciences at Northwest study topics such as human anatomy, the positioning, structure and function of bones, muscles and organs within the human body; human physiology, the study of the interrelationship between organs and organ systems; and other fundamentals of the physical and life sciences.

Programs in the Department of Language, Literature and Writing prepare students for meaningful lives as professionals in a global economy that demands innovative thinking, clear and effective writing, and cultural literacy. Our students and faculty form a close community of scholars who support each others' work, and who grow together in a rich and rigorous liberal arts curriculum. Students emerge from LLW programs able to express themselves creatively and professionally, and to engage with ideas critically and practically.

Comprehensive communication majors emphasizing in rhetoric at Northwest learn to research, create and deliver persuasive messages and listen critically to these messages. In this major, students study the core areas of communication theory, public speaking, writing, group behavior, persuasion and interpersonal communication. Additional areas of study include intercultural communication, argumentation and classical, modern and postmodern rhetorical theory and method as applied to an American issue.

Professionals in the field are civically engaged, critically analyze how people develop persuasive messages as well as how those messages affect public perception of the subject. They identify logical and ethical problems within persuasive messages, or with their effects on particular groups or communities and intervene to increase awareness and understanding.

Art majors with an emphasis in drawing focus on observational skills. Students are trained to find their own voice and visual language and focus on shifts from observational skills to the conceptual aspect of making art. Faculty ensure students have skills in manipulating various drawing media with graphite, charcoal, ink, water color and mixed media (dry and wet products); acquiring a sense of proportion, rhythm, balance and weight to learn the methods of analyzing shapes and proportions of perspective drawing; and creating the three-dimensional illusions on a two-dimensional surface.

Special Education majors at Northwest are eligible to teach special education in kindergarten through twelfth grade, elementary education (first through sixth grade) and all student with disabilities. Faculty focus on teaching students the characteristics of children with disabilities in order to determine appropriate evidence-based teaching strategies to benefit their learning; methods to collaborate with teachers to meet the needs of student to include co-teaching; and an in-depth knowledge of content areas.

Agronomy majors at Northwest gain fundamental training in the study of crop and soil management. Faculty focus on three core areas to ensure student success: fundamental principles of producing healthy, bountiful and sustainable crops; science of soil as a natural resource and component of agro ecosystems; and methods of determining and implementing solutions to crop and soil management systems.

This major offers three different areas of focus:

• Crop Science
• Horticulture
• Soil Science

Northwest’s technical theatre and design major provides multiple hands-on opportunities to students, beginning with the first semester of their freshman year. Students perform four mainstage productions as well as four to six student-directed productions each year. Additionally, students have access to professional-level control councils, intelligent lighting fixtures and cutting-edge LED and color-changing equipment.

Northwest professors focus on producing employable graduates and preparing students for advanced education. In addition to hands-on opportunities available to technical theatre and design majors, faculty help prepare resumes, cover letters and portfolio monologues for each performance.

Mathematics with an emphasis in data sciences is the study of mathematical tools to analyze data for the purposes of modeling and prediction. Students learn to

• Extract and clean data
• Manipulate data
• Visualize data
• Identify patterns in data
• Use the model for prediction and forecasting
• Use models to summarize and describe values

Agricultural Business majors at Northwest gain the knowledge and experiences of agriculture as well as business foundations. Faculty focus on four core areas: agriculture finance, agricultural marketing, agricultural policy and economics of agricultural production.

Agricultural finance teaches students tools to plan expenditures on assets that extend beyond one year; agricultural marketing provides a method of determining the value for land in order to ensure a profitable investment; agricultural policy, students are exposed to tools the government uses to modify free market outcomes associated with the production and marketing of specific crops and livestock; and economics of agricultural production describes the importance of farmers and agribusinesses reliance on factors and events that occur internationally and determine price.