Degree Programs and Concentrations

A wide range of degree programs offer training in studying science and technology. These cover a broad spectrum of perspectives and methods. Below is a list of programs in UC with a science and technology studies component.

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Contact the UC STS Network Coordinator.

University of California, Berkeley

• Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. The mission of the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management is to bring a diverse research, teaching, and extension capacity to bear on environmental problems from local to global scales.
• Energy and Resources Group - ERG. The Energy and Resources Group (ERG) is an interdisciplinary academic unit of the University of California at Berkeley, conducting programs of graduate teaching and research that treat issues of energy, resources, development, human and biological diversity, environmental justice, governance, global climate change and new approaches to thinking about economics and consumption. Established in 1973, ERG offers two-year MA and MS degrees in Energy and Resources, as well as a PhD.
• Environmental Law Program. Boalt Hall offers students an unparalleled program in environmental law, one that reflects the broad interdisciplinary nature of this field. Students may choose from numerous environmental law courses and seminars. In addition regular course offerings are augmented by international and comparative environmental law courses. A certificate indicating successful completion of the program is awarded to those who fulfill the specialization requirements.
• Graduate Program in Health Management. The goal of the Graduate Program in Health Management is to build the top health management leaders in the country. The program combines rigorous academic training with practical applications in real-world settings.
• Health Policy and Management. Health Policy & Management (HPM) trains graduates for positions of senior-level leadership in health services policy and management and to conduct research and diseminate knowledge that will advance the organization, financing, and delivery of health and medical services.
• History of Science, Department of History. Students of the history of science examine the intellectual, cultural, political, and social development of science from ancient times to the present. The graduate program is part of Berkeley's Department of History, and its students emerge prepared to teach and do research at the interface of history and the history of science. Along with the history of science, students pursue a second field of history and an outside field in another department (a science, public policy, or anthropology, for instance). Students interested in the history of medicine can take advantage of the offerings of UCSF's doctoral program in the history of health sciences.
• Law and Technology. Boalt Hall developed the nation’s leading program in law and technology for students interested in concentrating their studies in this area. To receive the certificate upon graduation, students need to fulfill both curricular and extracurricular requirements. The curricular requirements emphasize depth and breadth of coverage and afford students substantial flexibility in adapting their course of study toward a range of career paths at the growing intersection of law and technology.
• Management of Technology Program. The MOT Program seeks to address a number of technology management challenges. We define Management of Technology as the set of activities associated with bringing high technology products to the marketplace.
• Medical Anthropology, Joint UCB/UCSF Program. Medical Anthropology increases our understanding of health-related beliefs and behaviors of all kinds, from the precise products of science to the silent rituals of culturally scripted healing. The Joint UCB/UCSF Ph.D. Program in Medical Anthropology provides disciplinary leadership and outstanding and comprehensive training leading to the Ph.D. degree. No other program offers the Joint Program's combination of excellence in critical medical anthropology, studies of science, technology and modernity, intersections of medicine and social theory, and cutting edge scholarship in the analysis of many fields.
• New Media (Designated Emphasis). The Designated Emphasis (DE) in New Media is an interdisciplinary doctoral program available to graduate students who are currently enrolled in departments and programs in the Arts, Humanities, Engineering, Architecture, and Social Sciences in UC Berkeley. It provides an interdisciplinary forum intended to systematize graduate education, catalyze research collaboration, and enhance the sense of intellectual community in New Media. The DE in New Media comprises a set of courses with content in the history, theory and practice of computationally-based representation and communication of information. Students enrolled in the Designated Emphasis program must complete academic work in the Designated Emphasis in addition to the full requirements of the PhD programs in which they are enrolled.
• Rhetoric of Science, Department of Rhetoric. Under Development
• School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS). Information is the DNA of modern economic and social life. The School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS) prepares leaders to understand, organize, and manage information. Social scientists and technologists work together at SIMS to address the challenges posed for organizations and society by information ubiquity and abundance.
• Society and Environment Emphasis, ESPM. Society and Environment is one of three disciplinary emphases within ESPM for the Ph.D. Our mission is to bring social science perspectives and tools to the teaching and analysis of natural resource and environmental problems, and to develop management strategies to address these problems. The research, teaching, and extension of Society and Environment faculty and students explore how social and cultural processes and institutions influence and are influenced by natural resources and environmental phenomena.

University of California, Davis

• Program in Science & Technology Studies. The undergraduate major in Science & Technology Studies was created to address the complex issues of how science, technology, medicine, and engineering have developed and continue to develop within societies and cultures. STS is a fully interdisciplinary program and can be designed to follow students' substantive interests in conjunction with other majors. The program teaches students to understand, interpret, and intervene in our changing world by thinking critically, exploring controversies, and finding a common ground between social and technical concerns.
• Program in the History and Philosophy of Science. The interdisciplinary minor in the history of philosophy of science invites students to examine historical and contemporary problems in a variety of scientific disciplines, and to explore concepts and prcedures basic to science and how they have evolved.
• Research Cluster in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine. The History Department's Graduate Programs has a Research Cluster in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine. As historians of science, technology and medicine, we are interested in how science and scientific knowledge cam to achieve authority in human affairs. Science plays a central role in our cultural, political and economic life. Not only is the authority of modern medicine based on science, the sciences permeate all aspects of industrial society, from the designs and processes used in the manufacture of goods, through to the information we draw on to make choices as consumers.
• Technocultural Studies. The major in Technocultural Studies concentrates on transdisciplinary approaches to artistic, cultural and scholarly production in contemporary media and digital arts, community media, and mutual concerns of the arts with the scientific and technological disciplines. In contrast to programs which see technology as the primary driving force, we place questions of poetics, aesthetics, history, politics and the environment at the core of our mission. In other words, we emphasize the "culture" in Technoculture.

University of California, Irvine

• Anthropology.
• Logic and Philosophy of Science. The Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science brings together faculty and students interested in a wide range of topics including: General Philosophy of Science; Philosophy of Physics, Biology, Linguistics, and Social Science; Logic; Foundations and Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic; and Philosophy of Mathematics in Application. The department offers programs of study for undergraduate and graduate student.
• Women's Studies.

University of California, Los Angeles

• History of Science. The History of Science Program at UCLA offers graduate students the opportunity to work with some of the leading scholars in the history of science, medicine, and technology. Here at UCLA we pursue cultural, gender, historical, literary, political, and social approaches to these studies.

University of California, Merced

• Center on Global Peace and Security. The Center on Global Peace and Security will house a new graduate program comprised of a two-year terminal Masters degree. Graduate students will be trained for careers in new dimensions of national and international security.

University of California, San Diego

• Science Studies Program. The Science Studies Program at UCSD was established in 1989. At present, the Program involves eighteen core faculty members and thirty graduate students from the Program's "home" departments of Communication, History, Philosophy, and Sociology. Students and faculty in the Program are committed to working toward a deeper cultural and historical understanding of scientific knowledge. The Program offers students a thorough training at the professional level in one of the participating disciplines while affording unique opportunities to transcend the necessarily limited perspectives of the home discipline.

University of California, San Francisco

• Doctoral Sociology Program. The Doctoral Sociology Program in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences emphasises the sociology and social psychology of health and illness and health care policy and institutions. Additional areas of emphasis include aging, chronic illness, and disability; health policy, economics, and institutions; women, health, and healing; science and technology studies; violence as a health issue, and; race/ethnicity. The program has a track in science, technology, and medicine studies.
• Medical Anthropology Program. The Medical Anthropology Program at UCSF has three primary missions: To conduct original critical research that builds the knowledge base of medical anthropology; to train new generations of medical anthropologists for careers in research and education; and to prepare medical and other health professional students for the complexities of clinical practice and for effective scientific engagement in an increasingly diverse and internationally linked world.
• Program in the History of Health Sciences. This graduate program trains students to examine the history of health sciences (medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health, alternative healing, and biomedical research) from a variety of critical approaches.

University of California, Santa Barbara

• Bren MBA Certificate in Environmental Management Program. The Bren School at UC Santa Barbara offers a unique, multi-disciplinary emphasis in corporate environmental management (CEM) to MBA students at the five UC business schools. The CEM emphasis draws on the University of California's combined strengths in environmental science, business, and law.
• History of Science, Technology and Medicine Program. The Program is located in the UCSB History Department. Research strenghts of program faculty include the history of the life sciences and medicine in American and international perspective from the Scientific Revlution to the present; early modern science and Enlightenment science in Europe and Meso America; astronomy; Cold War era science; ecological restoration and environmental history; science and imperialism; tropical medicine and race; science and photography.
• Ph.D. Emphasis in Technology and Society. The Ph.D. Emphasis in Technology and Society brings together doctoral students in engineering, the social science, and the humanities for multidisciplinary coursework and research on the cultural and societal changes resulting from new information technologies. A Ph.D. Emphasis is like an undergraduate minor, but available only to students pursuing a doctorate. Current multidisciplinary Ph.D. emphases include specializations in cognitive science, human development and global studies

University of California, Santa Cruz

• Digital Arts/New Media MFA program. New Technologies have profoundly changed contemporary culture and inevitably altered the role of the arts in society. The Digital Arts and New Media MFA Program serves as a center for the development and study of digital media and the cultures they have helped create. Faculty and students are drawn from a variety of backgrounds such as the arts, computer engineering, humanities, the sciences, and social sciences to pursue interdisciplinary artistic and scholarly research and production, in the context of a broad examination of digital arts and cultures.
• History of Consciousness. History of Consciousness is an interdisciplinary graduate program. It is concerned with forms of human expression and social action as they are manifested in specific historical, political and cultural contexts. Interest is focused in problems rather than disciplines. Although history of consciousness does not have formal tracks, it does emphasize a variety of topics and approaches including science and technology studies along with related areas of interest such as the intersection of race, sexuality, and gender, global capitalism and cultural process, psychoanalytic and semiotic theories of the image, theories and histories of religion, and social movements.