About the Minor
Director: Richard Greenwald, Associate Professor of History
The Business, Society and Culture (BSC) minor offers Drew students the opportunity to pursue an innovative study of business organization, commercial culture and market systems. Rooted in the College's academic and liberal arts traditions, its distinctive multidisciplinary curriculum focuses on the origins, organization, conceptualization, and the social, cultural, and natural impact of business. To extend the boundaries of the University beyond its campus, the minor includes a unique complement of colloquia and field trip experiences. The knowledge BSC minors acquire, the critical learning skills they develop, and their off-campus experiences will equip them to understand and successfully engage the business world, not only as employers and employees, but also as citizens and as members of social, civic, cultural, religious, scientific and other communities and organizations.
The Business, Society and Culture minor is comprised of core/required courses, elective courses, and a capstone course. The core courses provide students with an introduction to a rich, varied and interrelated body of scholarship on business enterprise drawn from the disciplines of economics, sociology, history, ethics and computer science. Students will study the history, structure and governance of business enterprise-large and small, corporate and entrepreneurial, for profit and not-for-profit, and private, state regulated, and publicly owned. They will explore the relationships and interactions between employers, employees, customers, investors, patrons, clients and other stakeholders (including citizens' groups, civic and religious organizations, government regulatory authorities, trade and employer associations and consumer, labor and environmental organizations). Students will investigate the interrelationships among the marketing, management and competitive strategies of business firms, their technological and organizational capabilities, and the social, ethical, scientific, humanistic, ecological, and legal traditions, contexts and norms within which they operate. All core courses will be offered annually, and will be taught by full-time faculty members.
BSC minors will choose elective courses from one of two tracks. The Communication, Culture, Commerce and Ideology track introduces students to scholarship from the fields of literature, rhetoric, theater, art, sociology and anthropology on commercial forms of communication and on the cultural representations (self-representations and public perceptions) of business enterprise. Students will investigate what the very language and image of business reveals about the role and reach of market and exchange relations in social thought and human affairs. The Business, Society and Polity track lets students explore scholarship in the fields of political science, psychology, sociology and history on the nature, influence and limits of business power and authority in liberal democracies. Students will study the effects of market imperatives and power on corporate and state governance and on the institutions of civil society. All elective courses will be offered at least biennially.
The capstone course is required of all minors, and is taken only after all core courses have been successfully completed and only in the junior or senior year. It combines a colloquium (featuring guest speakers) and field trips, and serves to synthesize the knowledge acquired in the core and elective courses and to provide a rigorous practicum experience ("the liberal arts in action"). The capstone course is taught by the BSC Director and draws on the resources of the career center, development office and other appropriate staff for guest speakers and logistical support for field trips. The capstone course will embody the principles and vision articulated in the BSC mission statement. The course will be offered every term.
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Requirements for the minor (28 Credits)
I. Core Courses (4 courses; 16 credits)
Choose four of the courses below:
BSC 10/Corporations in Context (4)
CSCI 70/ Computing Technology, Society, and Culture (4)
HIST 124/A History of Business in America OR HIST 108/The History of Work (4)
REL 117/Business Ethics (4)
SOC 117/The Sociology of Management (4)
Note: Core courses can also fulfill an elective requirement if not taken to fulfill a core requirement.
II. Tracks (8 credits)
Choose eight credits from one of the following tracks:
Track A: Communication, Culture, Commerce and Ideology
ANTH 20/Economic Anthropology (4)
ENG 65/Business Writing (4)
HUM 21/Culture and Exchange (4)
LING 10/Language, Communication and Culture (4)
REL 127/Business Ethics (4)
SOC 110/Sociology of Mass Communication (4)
THEA 64/Show: Business (4)
Track B: Business, Society and Polity
BSC 10/Corporations in Context (4)
CSCI 70/ Impact of Computing Technology (4)
HIST 124/A History of Business in America (4)
HIST 108/The History of Work (4)
PANAF 180/Pan-African Studies Seminar (Blacks in Business OR The Invisible Element in Entrepreneurial Success) (4)PSCI 102/Public Policy and Administration (4)
PSYC 149/Seminar in Industrial Organizational Psychology (4)
SOC 117/The Sociology of Management (4)
SOC 115/Political Sociology (4)
SOC 131/Sociology of Work (4)
III. BSC 101/Business, Society and Culture Capstone Course (4 credits)
Independent Study Courses (INST 150), Special Topics Courses (BSC 29), or internships may fulfill a BSC elective requirement if approved by the BSC Director.
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