If you’re a Bachelor of Arts student wondering about the new Ways of Knowing requirement, you’re in the right place! Learn more about each breadth area and how your custom course plan can help you progress toward your academic, career, and personal goals.
Jump ahead:
- ‘Ways of Knowing’ breadth areas
- Place and Power
- Humanities and Creative Arts
- Language as Meaning
- Natural and Physical Sciences
- Social and Behavioural Systems
- Combining courses to personalize your degree
‘Ways of Knowing’ breadth areas
The Ways of Knowing breadth requirement will empower you to engage with diverse subject areas and disciplines so that you can design a personalized program of study aligned with your passions and interests. We encourage you to explore the value of learning within each breadth area and begin thinking about how you might combine subject areas to meet the requirement and further your goals.
Ways of Knowing contains two components (up to 21 credits):
- Place and Power (3 credits)
- Areas of Breadth (18 credits)
- Humanities and Creative Arts (3, 6 or 9 Credits)
- Language as Meaning (3, 6 or 9 Credits)
- Natural and Physical Sciences (3, 6 or 9 Credits)
- Social and Behavioural Systems (3, 6 or 9 Credits)
Your major will encompass deep engagement in one of these areas, so to complement this, you may choose how many credit hours – nine, six, or three – to spend in each of the three remaining Areas of Breadth, for a total of 18 credits.
Wondering how to design your degree while ensuring you meet your core requirements? Here’s some inspiration!
Place and Power
Place and Power courses will encourage you to understand your role “inside the story” of this place as well as to understand the systems of power, social relations, structures of inequality, and the diversity of cultural identities and communities that have made up and continue to make up that story.
In alignment with UBC’s Indigenous Strategic Plan, the three credits completed in a Place and Power course will introduce you to the history and present-day realities of the Musqueam peoples and their lands on which UBC is situated, along with the history and contemporary conditions of Vancouver and British Columbia more generally. This will likely be an upper-level course taken later in your degree, and may be a course within your major, minor or electives.
Humanities and Creative Arts
Interested in movies, music, art and culture? Humanities and Creative Arts courses will help you understand the impact of institutions, ideologies and media on society. Courses in this area will introduce you to the critical thinking skills and modes of analysis that are essential tools for actively engaged citizenship. With topics ranging from Art History to History, Philosophy and Visual Arts, this breadth area covers many engaging disciplines.
If your intended major isn’t within the Humanities and Creative Arts, there are undoubtedly courses in this area that have strong connections to your specialization and will broaden your understanding. For example, if you’re a Psychology major interested in writing about mental health, courses in English, Journalism or Creative Writing will help set you up for success.
Language as Meaning
Language as Meaning courses will empower you to build a foundation for long-term language proficiency in order to strengthen intercultural awareness in personal and professional contexts. All Bachelor of Arts students must fulfill the requirement through completion of university level courses listed on the Academic Calendar.
If you are already fluent in another language other than English, you can delve deeper and enroll in higher level courses of that language, or venture out and pick up an unfamiliar one!
If you’d like to study abroad through Go Global or work and travel internationally, gaining additional language skills will be invaluable. Do you have family from non-English speaking parts of the world or enjoy movies, music or literature from other regions? Learning those languages will help you connect with and engage in the culture more deeply.
Natural and Physical Sciences
Many programs in the Faculty of Arts are closely integrated with the sciences, but for others, you may be thinking that topics like Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics or Physics seem far removed.
Knowledge of the principles underlying the physical and natural world is key to deep and meaningful engagement in each and every discipline in the Arts. This breadth area will introduce you to the scientific method and help you gain familiarity with fields of scientific inquiry.
Many Arts programs have science courses within their requirements, but even for those that don’t, science courses will complement your learning and strengthen your knowledge within your chosen specialization. There are a wide variety of courses that can fulfill this requirement, many of which require no science background.
Social and Behavioural Systems courses will enable you to assess how individuals interact with each other through social, economic, and political systems. The social science disciplines, from Anthropology, to Geography, Political Science and Sociology, offer deep insights into the forces and structures shaping society.
Taking courses in this breadth area will help you better understand and navigate the complex dynamics of an ever-changing world. Wherever your academic or career path takes you, you’ll benefit from having studied social and behavioural systems.
Combining courses to personalize your degree
So how do all of these breadth areas fit together, along with your program requirements? It is up to you! The Ways of Knowing Breadth Requirement allows you to customize your own degree requirements based on what you think will be most helpful for your academic and career goals. Overall, combining courses from each of the breadth areas will allow you to explore a wide variety of topics, tools, and academic approaches.
Remember that your breadth area courses don’t need to be tied to a chosen career path. Exploring a wide variety of topics is valuable in itself and will set you up to be adaptable and more understanding of different topics/fields. After trying a course in a new area, you’ll likely realize that subject areas are more connected than you thought.
If you haven’t decided on a major yet, but still want to work towards this requirement, it’s possible to get started now! We’d recommend picking one or two courses in the same course code from a few different breadth areas in order to explore your interests and begin to make progress towards the Ways of Knowing breadth area requirement.
As always, if you have further questions or need support with planning out your degree, your Arts Academic Advisors are prepared to help.
