The Bridging Disciplines Programs (BDPs) at The University of Texas at Austin allow undergraduates to earn a certificate in one of 17 different interdisciplinary concentrations:
- Explores the development of children and the social forces that impact them, focusing on topics such as adolescence; children and health; children, media, and the arts; children and public policy; and more.
Conflict Resolution & Peace Studies
- Promotes conflict resolution in interpersonal, institutional, societal, and global contexts.
Criminal Law, Justice & Inequality
- Allows students to examine the institutions that shape the origins, functions, and effects of the criminal legal system—from policing, to courts, to prisons—in social life.
- Teaches students to apply a multidisciplinary framework for human-centered design thinking in order to solve product, systems, service, and social problems.
- Explores the use of computer technology and production techniques to create digital art. Students develop skills in areas such as gaming, animation, computer-generated music, and interactive media.
- Examines a variety of disciplinary approaches to environmental processes and contemporary environmental issues, including sustainability, conservation, food and natural resource management, media, and policy.
Ethics & Leadership in Business
- Examines issues of morality applicable to business people and organizations. Topic areas may include corporate social responsibility, ethical leadership, conflicts of interest, organizational culture, and consumer protection.
Ethics & Leadership in Health Care
- Study of ethical issues in health care policy, administration, and delivery. Topics may include abortion, euthanasia, palliative care, scientific research with human subjects, technological innovation, and access to health care.
Ethics & Leadership in Law, Politics & Government
- Explores law, politics, and government through the lens of leadership and ethics. Topics may include government leadership, civic participation, public policy, and social change.
- Introduction to the study and practice of domestic and international human rights issues. Students choose courses related to social groups and social justice; nationalism, imperialism, and war; and theory, policy, and institutions.
Innovation, Creativity & Entrepreneurship
- Allows students to develop skills to bring creative thinking and an entrepreneurial mindset to their career goals, whether they are interested in turning their ideas into a new venture or initiative, being part of a startup team, or bringing
creative new ideas into more established organizations.
Non-profits & Social Entrepreneurship
- Introduces students to social enterprise and administration of non-profit organizations. Concentration areas include art and social change; community welfare and social justice; environment; health and healthcare; international development; and youth and family.
- Offers the opportunity to develop an understanding of how museums, archives, libraries, galleries, and related institutions function as sites of collecting, education, and research.
Patients, Practitioners & Cultures of Care
- Explores health, health care, healing, and social justice issues from a variety of humanistic perspectives.
- Examines the development and implementation of public policy, focusing on how change happens. Topics include communication policy; economic policy; education policy; science and technology policy; and race, immigration, and citizenship.
- Explores how new technologies such as artificial intelligence and the internet of things are changing how cities deliver services, as well as the ethical, social, and policy implications of these innovations.
Social Inequality, Health & Policy
- Examines the causes and consequences of the huge disparities in health, life expectancy, and medical care delivery in the world today, exploring topics such as social/economic disparities, public health, and policy. Concentration areas include public health; family, fertility, and the life course; and migration and diaspora.