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About the Program
You can make a difference with your life in many ways. The Human Development and Social Relations (HDSR) Program at Earlham integrates a liberal arts education with professional training and experience. You can begin exploring your vocation in your college years, and prepare for a variety of careers after graduation.
Earlham's HDSR Program fosters effective engagement with the institutions of society to address the needs of individuals, organizations, and communities. In the best tradition of the liberal arts, this interdisciplinary major draws on the perspectives of several fields of study across the Earlham curriculum – psychology, sociology, anthropology and philosophy – to provide an integrated understanding of the relationship of individuals and institutions in a continually changing world. In addition, students participate in five HDSR seminars designed to integrate their work in each discipline. In these seminars students consider the issues individuals face as they work to make a difference in individual lives and organizational settings. The seminars also include experiential learning projects and discussion of the many paid and unpaid internship/volunteer experiences HDSR majors pursue while at Earlham.
Human Development and Social Relations is a unique and academically challenging interdisciplinary program. It provides graduates with a solid foundation in liberal arts and the social sciences, with emphasis on values, ethics, and appreciation of the strengths of diversity. Overwhelmingly, HDSR graduates report that they would major in HDSR again.
HDSR students gain experience with the practical and ethical dimensions of professional roles and responsibilities. The five interdisciplinary seminars foster:
- an appreciation of the relationship of individuals to the social webs that link experience and opportunities;
- the ability to analyze the organizational and societal structures that need to be addressed in achieving goals for individuals and organizations;
- the capacity to assess individual experience and social problems in ways that suggest possibilities for change;
- the ability to understand others and to assess diverse views and understandings as part of the knowledge of individual and social life;
- a balance between the ideals held for individuals, organizations, and society, and an understanding of the obstacles to achieving those ideals, thus preparing people for the challenges involved in working toward particular goals;
- an engagement with the ethical and personal issues of professional life;
- a perspective on how one's own experiences and values shape each student's experience of others and of social life.
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