Global Health Minor
Professors: Robert Cluss, Director (Dean of Curriculum, chemistry and biochemistry); Associate Professors: Jessica Holmes (economics), Jacob Tropp (history), Peter Nelson (geography); Assistant Professors: Svea Closser (sociology and anthropology), John Maluccio (economics)
The study of Global Health originates with an understanding of the reasons for the steep inequalities that characterize health worldwide (why, for example, life-expectancy in Switzerland is twice that of Swaziland). Many people are drawn to this field because they hope to assist in improving health, an endeavor that requires not only an understanding of disease epidemiology but also a grasp of the social and political complexity of population-level interventions as well as international aid. The study of Global Health, then, is inherently interdisciplinary, drawing on theory and method from fields including political science, biology, economics, geography, mathematics, and anthropology.
The Global Health minor at Middlebury is not intended to be a pre-professional program covering all the skills necessary for a career in public health. Rather, the goal is to draw on the strength of a liberal arts curriculum to give students a breadth of understanding and a depth of critical thought very different from the nuts-and-bolts education provided by most masters in public health programs. Minors in Global Health at Middlebury will draw on a number of disciplines to appreciate the deep complexity of global health problems, and use that knowledge to think about these problems in innovative ways.
The minor in Global Health is available to students who complete the courses listed below. The purpose of this minor is to encourage students to take an interdisciplinary perspective when thinking about global health problems.No course for the minor may also count towards a student’s major.
All students must take the core course:
SOAN 0267 Global Health
One of the following methods courses:
ECON 0210 Economic Statistics
MATH 0116 Introduction to Statistical Science
MATH 0311 Statistics
SOAN 1018 Epidemiology (offered during the winter term)
SOAN 0302 The Research Process: Ethnography and Qualitative Methods
Three additional courses chosen from any of the following (no more than two courses taken from the same department may count towards the minor):
BIOL 0140 Ecology and Evolution
BIOL 0145 Cell Biology and Genetics
BIOL 0280 Immunology
BIOL 0330 Mechanisms of Microbial Pathogenesis
ECON 0150 Introductory Macroeconomics
ECON 0155 Introductory Microeconomics
ECON 0200 Health Economics and Policy
ECON 0325 Economic Development: Theory and Practice
ECON 0327 Economic Development in Africa
ENVS 0112 Natural Science and the Environment
GEOG 0100 Place and Society: Local to Global
GEOG 0120 Fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems
GEOG 0210 Geographic Perspectives on International Development
GEOG 0211 The Global Economy
GEOG 0213 Population Geography
INTL 0101 Introduction to International Studies
PSCI 0109 International Politics
PSCI 0202 African Politics
PSCI 0258 The Politics of International Humanitarian Action
PSCI 0304 International Political Economy
PSCI 0310 American Public Policy
PSCI 0457 Nonstate Actors in World Politics
SOAN 0468 Success and Failure in Global Health and Development Projects
SOAN 0387 Medical Anthropology
SOAN 0360 Development and Globalization
SOAN 0368 Global Health & the Environment
Other appropriate courses may be substituted for courses in categories (2) or (3) with the approval of the program director. In addition, students minoring in Global Health are strongly encouraged to take advantage of Middlebury’s resources by studying abroad, preferably in a resource-poor setting, and by becoming proficient in a foreign language.