The Bachelor of Arts degree is designed to broaden your knowledge in a variety of subjects, while deepening understanding in your specific area of interest. With more than 30 academic disciplines, our curriculum will inspire and challenge you. Through independent reasoning and fair-minded inquiry, you will come to recognize unstated assumptions, thoughtfully reconsider received ideas, and challenge simplistic generalizations. You will learn to explore controversial and competing ideas with informed, careful judgement.
Deepen Your Understanding
As a St. Thomas student, you will choose courses in humanities (ie., English, History, and Religious Studies) and social sciences (ie., Criminology, Psychology, and Sociology). In upper years, you may choose from either fine arts (ie., Music and Visual Arts) or sciences (ie., Science and Technology Studies, Biology, Physics, and Environment and Society). This exploration will make you a well rounded scholar, and prepare you to specialize by helping you discover your interests and abilities.
This liberal arts foundation is complemented by innovative disciplines such as Communications, Native Studies, and Human Rights. With the interdisciplinary option, you may draw upon courses offered by different academic departments to customize your programme, focusing attention on emerging issues or common themes, such as Environmental Studies, International Relations, or Latin American studies.
In any discipline, you will learn to ask the important questions, then work on answering them:
• In Criminology, examine criminal law, the history of crime, why crime happens, and how it can be explained, treated and prevented.
• In English, learn about human strengths and weaknesses, tragedy, comedy, and diverse ways of telling stories.
• In Psychology, gain an insight into the mysteries of the human brain, human behaviour, sensation and perception, learning and memory.
• In Religious Studies, examine religions from an academic point of view. Learn to challenge religious prejudice and search for the meaning of life.
• In Sociology, explore social structure and human behaviour. Ask questions like, “How do we decide what behaviours are deviant?” and “What brings about social change?”
Signature Programmes
Aquinas, an optional innovative approach to learning for first-year students, combines three academic disciplines in a small-class setting where team teaching and interdisciplinary approaches create a challenging and exciting learning community. Choose from three types of sections to find the combination of courses and ideas that best suits your interests:
• Great Books integrates courses from English, Philosophy, and Political Science. By reading classic works of the western world, you'll explore life’s great themes of love, friendship, freedom, and ethics.
• Justice & Globalization draws upon the perspectives of Economics, Religious Studies, and Sociology as you read widely, interview people from diverse backgrounds, and visit community organizations engaged in struggles for social change.
• Truth in Society explores how ideas are formulated, defended, and changed from the perspectives of English, Sociology, and Religious Studies. Topics could include death, evil, suffering, prejudice, sexuality, science, and the supernatural.
Criminology examines the causes and consequences of criminal behaviour and society’s response. With its liberal arts focus, St. Thomas is an excellent choice for an undergraduate education in Criminology as students engage in critical problem solving and attempt to devise effective means of dealing with complex legal issues. An education in Criminology can lead to a career in the public service, policing, social services, corrections, law, or social work.
The Journalism major combines a liberal arts focus with instruction in the latest technology used by media organizations. Our professors inspire students to explore public issues and tell meaningful stories in a fair and balanced way, as they acquire a range of skills in all media. Take advantage of STU Dispatches, an online journal of student work. Benefit from student internships and a classroom and student newsroom located in a CBC broadcast centre.
St. Thomas is one of two universities in Canada that offers an interdisciplinary study of Human Rights, offering an integrated approach through the lens of social justice. You will examine human rights from a multi-faceted liberal arts approach, incorporating Philosophy, Political Science, Economics, Sociology, Psychology, Criminology, Native Studies, Anthropology, and Religious Studies. A human rights education will make you a global citizen: capable of identifying human rights violations locally, nationally and internationally, and working toward their resolution.
The History Department's Global History initiative challenges common assumptions about the importance of national histories and the role of the “West” in world history. You will have opportunities to study with experts on the Atlantic world, Africa, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Unique thematic and transnational courses on social movements, revolutions, citizenship, cities, and water may cause you to ask fundamental questions about yourself, your society and your world.
The Communications major teaches specific practical skills essential for work in communications and public relations. You will learn about communications tools and strategies, and at the same time critically examine the political and social impact of information management. Communications draws on the resources of the nationally recognized Journalism programme, acclaimed for its emphasis on effective writing and critical thinking.
The Environment and Society major encourages you to question the social processes that promote human degradation of the Earth. The core courses familiarize students with the nature of economic problems, the immediacy of the issues facing us today, their historical origins, and perspectives on political actions that contribute to social change.
Majors
By the end of their second year, students declare an intended major – six full-year courses or the equivalent in one subject – from the following:
Honours
Most academic departments also offer more intensive honours programme for students who are looking for challenging and specialized programmes of study or who are thinking about continuing their studies at professional or graduate schools.
For information on admission to the Bachelor of Arts programme, please visit Admission Requirements.
For more information on the academic disciplines, courses and faculty, please visit Academic Departments.