The sociology program allows course work specialization in such areas as family, criminology and deviance, social organization and change, minority relations, demography, urban problems, medical sociology, and sociology of religion. Six of the 30 hours required may be taken as a minor outside the department. Selection of a minor requires approval of the graduate committee. In the sociology program, in lieu of a foreign language, each student is required to demonstrate proficiency in computer analysis of data.
The anthropology core curriculum requires courses in the following four basic sub fields: archeology, biological anthropology, linguistics, and cultural anthropology. Students in the anthropology program are encouraged to use the minor to develop an area of emphasis either within the department (such as linguistics or sociology) or outside (such as biology, Latin American and Iberian studies, or museum science).