BA/BS in Science, Technology, and Society (co-major)

Science, Technology, and Society offers a 10-course co-major; at Tufts, co-majors must be chosen in conjunction with another major. This works particularly well for STS, which pairs very well with science, humanities, or social science concentrations. The STS core faculty come from over a dozen departments and are available to serve as advisors if STS is paired with their respective fields

Course Listings

Each semester, courses from around the university are listed by the program as "STS degree courses," indicating that they count towards an STS degree, whether or not they are listed with STS numbering (See current semester listings.). Courses will be designated under one or more of the three STS tracks of study listed below (Bodies/State/Models) or as General STS classes. Additionally, some are designated as Core STS classes, which are foundational for the major and minor. Students can petition to have other courses counted, including courses taken before enrolling in the degree programs.

STS 10 STS Reading Lab (2 credits), when paired with a technical/science course (x credits), counts as 1 course and x+2 credits.

STS 50-01/02 STS Lunch Seminar Series (1 credit) may count toward the co-major and minor total credits requirement but does not count toward the total course requirement. Students may take Lunch Seminar more than once.

Tracks of Study

Majors and minors in STS can choose one of the three tracks of study, each of which is an important area of specialization in STS.

Bodies, Health, and Medicine
Medical anthropology, history of the body, sexuality, madness and psychiatry, public health and development, sociology of disease and epidemics, gesture, movement, and performance in science, animality and human-animal relations, ...
Science and the State
Scientific policy and planning, ethics in science (incl. bioethics), technological aspects of economic development and underdevelopment, scientific histories of institutional racism, media and physical infrastructure, democracy and science, ...
Math, Maps, and Modeling
Ancient and modern history of mathematics, social ramifications of quantification and measurement, computing, game theory and rational choice, ontology and epistemology of the exact sciences, human-algorithm interfaces, models-based reasoning, ...

The tracks are designed to illustrate coherent streams of study and to make it easy to find courses that synergize productively, but they do not exhaust the topics within STS and students are welcome to design a personalized program of classes instead of choosing a track.

Co-Major Requirements

STS coursework for the co-major must include at least 10 STS degree courses and must add to at least 30 credits. Cumulatively, STS coursework must include:

at least three with a Core designation;
at least four in a student's chosen Track of Study;
at least two other types from (Bodies/State/Models/General)

Note that a single course may have several types associated to it and can count in more than one way.