Public Health-related Majors

Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Bioethics

This major requires 12 courses. Prerequisites do not add any additional courses. It is a Bachelor of Arts major that satisfies the Humanities requirement of the Rochester Curriculum.

  • Key goals for this major:
  • Provide students with the tools to think about the major ethical and related legal questions that arise in medicine and public health;
  • Understand the frameworks in which individual moral decisions should be made;
  • Understand the frameworks in which social and political moral decisions should be made;
  • Understand the most important controversies in bioethics;
  • Develop the tools to analyze moral arguments in bioethics; and
  • Develop the tools to construct arguments that contribute to some of these debates.

Requirements of the Major (prerequisites in parentheses):


A. Foundational Courses:
None    
B. Common Core (5 courses):
PH 101 Introduction to Public Health I (none)
PH 102 Introduction to Public Health II (PH 101)
PH 103 Concepts of Epidemiology (none)
STT 212 Appl. Stat. for the Biological and Physical Sciences I (none)
PHL 228 or
PHL 225
Public Health Ethics or Medical Ethics (none)
C. Specific Core Requirements:
Required Core (3 courses)
PHL 102 General Ethics (none)
PHL 223W Social and Political Philosophy (PHL 102)
PSC xxx Health Law (none)
One Additional Bioethics Course: (must be Public Health Ethics if not taken as part of the core)
PHL 225W Medical Ethics (none)
PHL 228W Public Health Ethics (none)
PHL xxx Clinical Ethics (none)
D. Electives (3 courses, 2 of which must come from Philosophy and Ethics):
I. Philosophy and Ethics
PHL 103 Contemporary Moral Problems (none)
PHL 220/220W Recent Ethical Theory (1 in ethics)
PHL 226 Philosophy of Law (1 in PHL)
PHL 230W Environmental Justice (1 in PHL)
II. History, Sociology, and Anthropology
HLS 116 Introduction to the U.S. Health System (none)
HIS 208/208W Medicine, History and Social Reform (none)
HIS 209/209W Changing Concepts of Health and IllnessMedical Sociology (none)
SOC 262 Medical Sociology (none)
ANT 216 Medical Anthropology (1 in ANT)
HIS 287 History of International and Global Health (none)
E. Upper-Level Writing Requirement:
Students will be required to register for two upper-level writing courses within this major.
F. Capstone Senior Seminar (final year):
This course would be one of the two courses fulfilling the Upper-Level Writing Requirement of the College.

Distinction Program:

This major will offer a distinction program in which the terms “distinction”, “high distinction”, and “highest distinction” will reflect the quality of performance in the major. A GPA of at least 3.40 will qualify for “distinction”; a GPA of at least 3.60 will qualify for “high distinction”; and a GPA of at least 3.80 will qualify for “highest distinction”.

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