The Criminal Justice major is interdisciplinary and liberal arts based and is designed for students interested in criminology or criminal justice. The major provides students with a variety of career opportunities, including law, law enforcement, probation/parole, victims services, youth programs workers, and research.
The Environmental Studies (ES) Program combines rigorous empiricism with analysis of ethical, aesthetic, and historical issues in examining the relationship between humans and the nonhuman world. A rich array of faculty expertise, courses, facilities, internships, and study abroad options provides the foundation for an interdisciplinary study of the environment.
The Japanese Studies major and minor offer students the opportunity to become familiar with various aspects of Japanese culture: language, literature, history, politics, art, and religion. Students majoring in Japanese Studies are required to study in Japan for at least one semester.. The major culminates in the production of a scholarly paper on some aspect of Japanese culture, written in the senior year under the guidance of one of the participating faculty members.
Peace Studies is an interdisciplinary field of study which addresses the problems of war, social oppression and violence, and the challenges of implementing nonviolent conflict resolution and social justice. Peace Studies serves to focus knowledge from diverse disciplines to converge on the problems of violence and the challenges of finding peaceful solutions.
Gustavus Adolphus College offers seminars, advising, lectures, and campus visits by law school representatives and legal professionals. All students interested in attending law school in the future are encouraged to participate. The Gustavus Adolphus Pre-Law Guide offers detailed advice for pre-law students.
The department of Education provides programs in teacher education that lead to licensure in teaching kindergarten, elementary school, and secondary school. Graduates of teacher education programs at Gustavus also qualify for graduate study. The College is accredited by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education and by the National Association of State Directors of Education Certification. Teacher education programs at Gustavus are approved by the Minnesota Board of Teaching.
Gustavus Adolphus College offers an inter-departmental major and minor in Women's Studies to demonstrate the usefulness of gender as a category of analysis. Through selected courses, students study interconnections among the fundamental questions raised by scholarship on women. Students also gain historical and cross-cultural perspectives on women's experience through the examination of other issues, such as race, class, and cultural difference that are central to the study of gender. A critical awareness of methodology (in the organizing of knowledge and the framing of analyses) also is important within each course.
