Degrees & Majors

Our stand-alone M.S. Neuroscience degree is offered to students who are seeking graduate training without necessarily planning to pursue a doctoral degree. Students receive training via academic coursework, research, teaching and outreach activities. Our program emphasizes the research aspect of graduate training and so all MS students must either complete a capstone project or successfully conduct and defend an approved thesis. The thesis option is only recommended for students that are interested in eventually pursuing a doctoral degree.

Graduate students in the Neuroscience Institute receive interdisciplinary training by working with Core Neuroscience Faculty and more than 50 Associate Faculty from other departments, including Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Education, Mathematics, Public Health, Psychology, Philosophy and Physics. Students can obtain training in a wide range of research methodologies, and have the opportunity to teach and attend journal clubs, seminars and distinguished speaker series.

Students can train in:

• behavioral neuroscience and neuroendocrinology,
• neurogenomics and genetics,
• neuroimmunology and cardiometabolic diseases,
• computational neuroscience,
• neuroethics, and
• primate behavior and cognition.

Philosophy teaches a person how to think critically and creatively, how to write clearly and persuasively, and other skills valuable to a wide range of careers, including law, business, the sciences and education.

The Department of Philosophy has three areas of strength:

• Social, Legal, and Political Philosophy
• Philosophy of Mind, Cognitive Science, and Neurophilosophy
• The History of Philosophy

The department also offers a series of courses in applied ethics, which provides students useful skills for their careers and their lives. Courses in this area include Introduction to Ethics, Sex and Love, Race and Racism, Biomedical Ethics, Philosophy of Law, Business Ethics, and our signature experience course in which students prepare to compete in the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl.

Georgia State has one of the most highly regarded terminal M.A. programs in philosophy in the country, with strong placement into prestigious Ph.D. programs and a lauded teacher-training program.

In addition, the department has developed three areas of research strength:

• Social, legal and political philosophy
• Neurophilosophy and empirically informed philosophy of mind
• Kant and Post-Kantian German philosophy

The Master of Interdisciplinary Studies program in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) prepares students for a range of careers in government, public service, entrepreneurship and the corporate world.

Georgia State's program helps students become familiar with, and capable of contributing to, ongoing debates about the nature of good political and economic institutions, as well as the policies and practices best suited for creating and sustaining them. Students develop the intellectual skills of the social scientist who seeks to understand how social, political and economic institutions operate and are interrelated, and the moral philosopher who seeks to critically evaluate these institutions and the social world more generally, in relation to how they ought to operate.

Historically, philosophy, political science and economics were deeply connected.  The intellectual father of modern economics, Adam Smith, was a philosopher concerned with moral and political philosophy.  PPE, as a contemporary academic field of study, began at Oxford University in 1920 and has spread across the English-speaking world.