The College will offer three new minor programs this fall, each offering University of Chicago undergraduate students fresh opportunities to learn across disciplines as well as prepare them for careers that require expertise in diverse, yet related areas.
Below, we’ve outlined the three new minors: Business German, out of Department of Germanic Studies/Division of the Humanities; Cognitive Science, an interdisciplinary program that became a major in 2022; and Computational Social Science, from the Social Sciences Division.
Business German
In 2023, Germany became the third-largest economy in the world—a serendipitous event that made the College’s new Business German minor seem to make perfect sense.
The program, inspired partly by students wanting more chances to connect foreign languages with their business and economic studies in addition to extraordinary interest in internships and career exploration experiences in German-speaking countries, will teach students both the linguistic and cultural literacy needed to succeed in a German Business environment.
“There are certain distinct features of German business culture that are very different from North American business culture,” said Colin Benert, an Associate Instructional Professor in the Department of Germanic Studies and the minor program’s Coordinator. “One thing is how direct Germans are in their communication, to the point that can appear rude to someone who is not used to it—it’s those kinds of cultural differences that we also want to include in our curriculum.”
Coursework for the Minor includes classes like “Business German,” where students master the various types, genres and contexts of German business communications, and “Arbeitskulturen: Trends in the German-Speaking Working World,” as well as other coursework of the student’s choosing.
The hallmark course for all majors and minors in Germanic Studies, The Cultural History and Politics of Postwar Germany, will also help students understand the important historical and cultural issues that exist for German society today.
“We agree that it’s not possible to understand those issues without also understanding the debates of the postwar period, from the reconstruction of the German economy, to how to work through and preserve the memory of the Holocaust, and how to atone for it,” added Sophie Salvo, Assistant Professor and the department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies.
The program will also feature an internship component embedded in the curriculum, where students research and collect notes on German business culture during their internships and then present their findings when back on campus. Plus, although the minor requires Second-Year German, even students who come to the College with no German background can complete the department’s Intensive German I-II-III sequence to bring them to high-intermediate levels of reading, writing, speaking and listening in just three quarters.
“Sophomores or juniors with no German background might think it’s too late, but it’s really not, because if they take this course, they can really hit the ground running,” Salvo added.
Cognitive Science
Although the field of cognitive science—the scientific study of the mind and its processes—emerged in the 1980s, it wasn’t until 2022 that it became an official major in the College, led by faculty director and linguistics professor Chris Kennedy.
While there were always scholars in different departments working in the field in related areas, namely its five core fields of linguistics, psychology, computer science, philosophy, and neuroscience, it took the official formation of the major to bring the interdisciplinary work together. Students also wanted the major.
“I was hearing from students that they couldn’t find the right major for their interests—students in computer science or philosophy were choosing these majors because they were closest to their interests, but then would realize, ‘Oh, I really want to do some linguistics and psychology, too’” Kennedy recalled. “They realized what they were actually interested in was cognitive science.”
Without much outreach, the major took off. Within the first year, the program went from zero to nearly 70 majors almost immediately. So, it only made sense to start the cognitive science minor program, which Kennedy hopes will attract students from two factions: those in major programs in the sciences related to the five core fields, or those in more disjointed fields who are interested in getting an understanding of how people approach questions of the mind in a more scientific way.
And while the field of study itself is interdisciplinary, it also opens the door for a wide range of career fields including medicine, clinical psychology, advertising and marketing, instructional design, academia and research and technology—including the advancement of AI.
“Having some background in cognitive science is going to be useful because it gives you a way to approach those technologies beyond thinking of them from a purely engineering perspective, Kennedy said about AI. “Cognitive scientists have to understand how to use computation as a tool, but the reason why they’re using those tools is because they’re using them as tools to study the mind.”
Computational Social Science
Relatedly, the new minor in computational social science is also heavily involved in understanding AI technology. The emergent field leverages computational advances, such as AI and Machine Learning, as well as the widespread availability of ‘big data’ to drive the next generation of social research.
Gone are the days of using strictly traditional social scientific methods—telephone surveys, in-person experiments, or observational studies—without utilizing modern technologies to enhance them.
“The most cutting-edge social research that is happening right now is because of AI and computational methods,” said Jon Clindaniel, associate director of undergraduate studies for the Masters in Computational Social Science (MACSS) program. “What we do with our master’s program, and now the minor, is to get students up to that cutting edge of social and cultural inquiry so they’re able to contribute meaningfully to this exciting space.”
Clindaniel hopes the minor program will help more technically inclined students, such as those studying computer or data science, consolidate their skills toward answering social questions, while also making computational methodologies and mathematical and statistical skills accessible for social science majors.
“There are a lot of opportunities for students to expand what they might be learning in their other coursework and understand how they can do it at a much larger scale, using contemporary technologies,” Clindaniel added.
Students who complete the minor also meet many of the admission requirements for admission into the Advanced Scholars 4+1 Program, which allows students to complete their master’s in Computational Social Science (MACSS) in just one year of study beyond their undergraduate coursework.