Undergraduate Academic Accelerator Pathway (2-Term) - Bachelor of Arts in Spanish

at Shorelight Group - The University of Utah USA

Urban Ecology is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the interrelationships among social, environmental, and economic systems, with the goal of enhancing the vitality and sustainability of places and communities. The University of Utah’s Urban Ecology program is designed to respond to problems and opportunities that exist in cities, suburbs, small towns, and rural places for example, environmental management, fragile landscape protection, recreation and tourism, public lands planning, rapid population growth, regional transportation, energy production, and sprawl. As a student of the Urban Ecology program, you will take classes in urban ecology, planning, field studies, economics, law and social justice; you can also choose from a variety of electives topics, such as green infrastructure, sustainable development, community leadership and cities in literature. In your senior year, you will do an internship and take on a real world problem in the Ecological Planning Workshop.

Anthropology is the study of human beings; their cultures, biology, behaviors, and their changes through time (evolution). Because we study all aspects of humans, anthropology is said to be holistic and inter-disciplinary, that is anthropologists work hand-in-hand with other sciences such as biology, physiology, sociology and psychology—just to name a few.

At the University of Utah, the Anthropology Department is divided into four main divisions: Cultural, Biological, Evolutionary Ecology, and Archaeology. Cultural anthropology focuses on human cultures and how they vary through time and space—around the world and back through pre-history. Biological anthropology focuses on ancient and modern human anatomical, physiological, and biological variability. Biological anthropology also concerns itself with non-human primates like chimpanzees and gorillas—by studying them, we hope to learn more about ourselves. Archaeology is the excavation and interpretation of what humans leave behind in order to infer how and why humans have evolved. Evolutionary ecology (sometimes known as behavioral ecology) examines human (and non-human primate) behavior and life-history—why did human beings evolve the way they did?

Ultimately, anthropologists use all four sub-disciplines to describe and explain past and present human diversity. The Department takes a theoretically-driven, empirically-informed perspective focusing on the following specific areas of expertise: archaeology, genetics, behavioral ecology, paleoanthropology, hunter-gatherer behavior, and human and non-human primate behavior.

Conflict exists both within ourselves and in our interpersonal relations: with friends, families, or our community, locally and globally. If you want to be able to recognize and peacefully resolve conflict, consider the Peace & Conflict Studies program at the University of Utah. Offered collaboratively by the College of Humanities, Department of Communication, and College of Social and Behavioral Science, Peace & Conflict Studies will give you the knowledge, skills, and values you need to be a peacemaker in the world. Students in this program choose one of three themes for their studies: Conflict Resolution, Social Justice, or Global Perspectives. Regardless of emphasis area, students take courses in topics like negotiation, poverty and inequality, international affairs and human rights, world religions and politics, and the economics of race and gender. The culminating experiences of the program include a capstone course, seminar, and required internship. Through your studies, you will develop your communication, social awareness, and critical thinking skills, enabling you to pursue careers in a number of fields.

If you want to explore the world around you and help make the world a better place, consider becoming a chemical engineer. Chemical engineers take chemistry out of the laboratory and into the real world by applying scientific knowledge, technical expertise, innovation, and creativity to make useful materials; without chemical engineering, things like fertilizers, vaccines, and antibiotics wouldn't exist in the quantities that we need them. With their skills and abilities, chemical engineers can be involved in research, development (taking a process from bench scale to full scale), design and evaluation (deciding how a process should work), plant design (deciding how a chemical plant should be built), plant operation, sales, management, and academics. The University of Utah’s Department of Chemical Engineering is nationally recognized for its research and teaching. In this program, you will complete courses in math, physics, chemistry, and engineering. You can also complete an optional emphasis in Energy Engineering. By the time of graduation, about 50 percent of our graduates have found employment or been admitted to post-graduate programs that include law, medicine, and graduate school in a variety of fields. 

Students of English enter a world rich with intellectual possibilities. As an English major at the University of Utah, you will study literature, creative writing, and literary discourse and theories. The U’s English curriculum covers the vast range of literature written in English, from the 8th century AD until the present day. Students will explore theory, film, graphic novels, video games, digital humanities, popular culture, and have the chance to develop their skills as critical and creative writers. However, the skills you gain from an English degree are not limited to just studying literature—written and verbal communication skills are central to any career or subsequent degree that demands the ability to think, argue, write, and speak about complicated issues. In addition to expanding your intellect, your English degree ultimately provides an essential foundation for careers in law, business, government, education, finance, and media.

Environmental and Sustainability Studies (ENVST) is a STEM interdisciplinary program that offers a major with several emphases to focus your study, as well as a minor. The curriculum explores ecological systems and the impact of human-environment interactions from the perspectives of the natural sciences, the social and health sciences, and the humanities. The U’s program strives to foster an understanding the multi-faceted issues of the environment and sustainability and finding solutions through systemic analysis, peer learning, and community engagement, social responsibility, leadership, and having a science-based focus on solutions and integrated problem solving.

A degree in accounting offers students the chance to move beyond merely tracking a company’s income and assets. With this program, you can learn how to budget and manage money for a business, ensure that a firm is spending money wisely by making sound investments, file taxes for a corporation, and ultimately understand how a business operates and sustains itself financially. In addition to core business courses, accounting majors take classes in financial and managerial accounting, tax accounting, and accounting information systems.

Finance deals with the concepts of time, money, risk, how they are interrelated, and how money is budgeted and spent. Finance students learn how to assign value to projects, companies and securities. They also study how individuals and businesses can efficiently allocate financial resources, invest, and raise capital. With these skills, Finance majors can determine wise investment strategies, value stock options, and help companies and individuals manage their money. A critical component of a finance students’ education is meaningful, real-world opportunities, balanced by worthwhile classroom experiences. The U’s Finance curriculum covers topics such as business statistics, business calculus, corporate finance, insurance, investments, and real estate. A global perspectives course allows students to apply an international context to the business skills and perspectives they are learning.

In addition to the traditional major, students may pursue an emphasis in Advanced Financial Analysis, an honors-level program that provides students with a deeper foundation in finance and accounting, supplemented by additional technical competence in financial modeling and coding as applied to finance problems. Courses will focus on developing technical skills and applying those skills to solve problems in realistic settings.

That catchy jingle, that distinctive symbol or image, and all the other cues we associate with a specific product become embedded in our brains thanks to marketing. Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers. Through strategic thinking, business acumen, and carefully-designed communications, marketing specialists ultimately help organizations identify and satisfy customer needs. As a marketing major at the University of Utah, you will study diverse topics such as market research, consumer behavior, advertising, sales and business development, and international marketing, with one goal in mind: learning how to build brands that people want.

Do you have a passion for numbers, analysis, and theory? Consider majoring in mathematics. This degree provides students with excellent quantitative and analytical skills, and a math degree is the perfect stepping stone for a countless number of careers. Mathematics, with its origins in algebra and geometry, has continued to grow in numerous directions including probability, statistics, numerical analysis, decision making, cryptography, finance, and more. It is the foundation for much of science, engineering, and computing.