Degrees & Majors

English majors study language and literature alongside the craft of writing, developing skills considered integral to education in the humanities and prized by employers around the world. We examine language, literature and culture in ways that help communities connect with broader audiences, expand access to knowledge and address pressing social issues.

Undergraduate coursework in English guides students in thinking critically, reading widely and writing imaginatively. Many classes also explore practices that are not, strictly speaking, “writing” at all, such as oral compositions, hypertexts, podcasts and folk art.

At Georgia State, English majors can select from several areas of concentration:

• Literature,
• Rhetoric and Composition,
• Creative Writing,
• Pre-education and
• British-American Joint Studies (partnership with Northumbria University)

Majors in each concentration complete their course of study with a focused Senior Seminar that invites students to demonstrate their abilities as writers and thinkers working in a specific discipline.

The B.I.S. in Environmental Science program provides a foundation in the physical and life sciences, policy, and global and urban sustainability issues. This concentration emphasizes a broad-based course of study, exposing students to the complex social and scientific processes involved in understanding and addressing environmental issues. Students are encouraged to develop specific areas of focus depending on their future goals (e.g., graduate school, government agencies, and environmental consulting firms).

The Department of World Languages & Cultures offers an Undergraduate Certificate of Language Ability as a credential for students that provides tangible proof of their world language abilities in oral and written communication. The certificate serves as an ideal complement to a major in other areas of study including business, international relations, public healthy, criminal justice and hospitality.

The certificate program is open to any student at Georgia State pursuing an undergraduate degree, including heritage speakers.

Students can earn the certificate in:

• Arabic
• Chinese
• French
• German
• Japanese
• Korean
• Spanish

The B.S. in Game Development trains students for coding, programming and software-intensive game development careers. The program is for students aspiring to gain the background and technical skill necessary for a career in game development or science, technology, engineering and mathematics-related areas in computational media and connects students to the region’s game design companies and to the industrial ecosystem for games development in the region.

The major, while mainly preparing students for careers in the videogame companies and start-up enterprises, can also prepare students for careers in game production, animation, motion graphics, postproduction and wider software development industries, including social media analytics, Web and application development.

The Creative Media Industries Institute (CMII) is partnered with the Georgia Film Academy and collaborates with the Georgia Film Academy on related certifications in esports management for students who want to work in that and associated sectors.

Geography focuses on the interdisciplinary study of the human and physical world. As the Association of American Geographers describes it, human geography examines “spatial aspects of human existence,” while physical geography examines patterns of climates, landforms, vegetation, soils and water.

The geography concentration prepares students for a variety of public and private sector jobs, and provides a solid intellectual foundation for students getting advanced degrees in the social or natural sciences.

The Department of Geosciences includes a diverse faculty of scholars from the disciplines of geography, geology and hydrology. Research clusters in the department investigate pressing urban environmental issues, including water, from water governance to water quality and quantity, climate change and quantity, geochemical processes, and geographic information systems and informatics.