The Anthropology bachelor’s degree program at Marshall University incorporates resources characteristic of departments at much larger universities, and no other anthropology degree program in West Virginia has a similar scope of tools available for faculty and student research.
Our affordable Anthropology degree program offers students from diverse backgrounds the opportunity to thoroughly and creatively explore the world and peoples around them. Anthropology classes stress the exchange of ideas and build strength in critical thinking, communication and intellectual exploration.
As a leading public research university, we ensure each of our Anthropology degree majors develops a solid foundation in the basic principles, theories and techniques of analysis within the discipline. The curriculum ensures you are introduced to all four disciplinary subfields, including:
- sociocultural anthropology
- archaeology
- biological anthropology
- linguistic anthropology
Since students majoring in Anthropology vary in their interests and career goals, our curriculum allows flexibility to develop individual courses of study, including defining a plan to use up to nine credit hours of coursework from classes outside the major as complementary study toward fulfillment of our degree requirements.
Our top faculty of teachers and mentors includes experts in bio-cultural approaches to health, culture and environment; place-making and community development; ethnographic methods; migration; disaster studies; legal, linguistic and cultural anthropology; gender and language; violence and empathy in democratic institutions; and archaeology.
As an Anthropology student at Marshall University, you will have the best opportunities available for hands-on training in the context of faculty research, student-defined research—including fieldwork in West Virginia and elsewhere—in the capstone experience, participation in academic and professional conferences, internship programs and independent study.
For more information on the Anthropology program.
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Students receive foundational training that reflects the scope of the discipline across different emphases: Sociocultural Anthropology; Archaeological Anthropology; Anthropology of Health.
As an Anthropology major, you can get hands-on experience practicing archaeology at our Archaeological Field School, which most years is located just 20 miles from Marshall’s campus in Huntington. At the annual training program held during a summer school session, college students get a taste of the thrill of discovery as they learn the basic techniques of surveying, excavating and recording.
Outstanding Anthropology degree students who meet grade point average requirements can pursue an undergraduate thesis option to work with a dedicated committee of faculty, with the goal of graduating with Honors in Anthropology. This option is an ideal experience to help prepare you for graduate school.
- Community development worker
- International and humanitarian aid worker
- Social and market researcher
- Media planner
- Museum/Gallery Curator
- Park heritage interpreter
- Social and cultural impact assessor
- Cultural resource management worker