Anthropology Major, B.A.

About This Program

Passionate about learning all aspects of what it means to be human, anthropologists study the cultural and biological diversity in people as well as the interactions between human culture and biology.

As an Anthropology major at MSU Denver, you will experience a holistic education that encompasses Anthropology’s four traditional subfields: Cultural Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, Linguistic Anthropology and Archaeology. You can specialize in one or more of these four primary areas with your upper-division coursework. Plus you will learn conceptual and methodological tools for observing and studying the culture and biology of ancient and modern humans.

Your MSU Denver Anthropology education will also transcend the boundaries of the classroom. MSU Denver students have the opportunity to participate in local field-based experiences, study abroad in countries such as Japan and Italy and conduct research in partnership with professors. Numerous Anthropology students present their work at MSU Denver’s Undergraduate Research Conference and other local and national professional meetings.

Your Anthropology degree program will give you the chance to acquire real-world work experience. MSU Denver students have the opportunity to participate in work-study programs in the Anthropology program’s three laboratories: The Laboratory of Anthropology, which houses MSU Denver’s archaeological and skeletal collections, the Ethnography Laboratory, which conducts cultural and linguistic anthropology research, and the Human Identification Laboratory, which provides forensic anthropology field and laboratory services. You can also earn course credit for internships at outside agencies such as the Douglas County History Repository, History Colorado, and F.C. Vogt Company, as well as independent studies that you design in conjunction with our faculty.

Benefits of Earning Your Degree at MSU Denver

Our Ethnography Lab has state-of-the-art field equipment and technologies used by professional ethnographers to support courses in cultural and linguistic anthropology, providing undergraduate students with hands-on training in ethnographic data-gathering and qualitative data analysis.

Specializing in field location and recovery as well as laboratory analysis of human skeletal remains, our Human Identification Lab provides high-quality forensic anthropology field and laboratory services, including forensic osteological analysis, historic/archaeological osteological analysis, search and recovery and excavation.

The Laboratory of Anthropology houses our archaeological and skeletal collections as well as an extensive collection of teaching casts that includes living and fossil primates, fossil hominins and pathological specimens.

MSU Denver is located on the Auraria Campus adjacent to downtown Denver, Colo., and near the city’s many museum’s and cultural institutions including History Colorado, the Colorado Historical Foundation and the Black American West Museum. Vibrant and multicultural, the campus is shared by MSU Denver, University of Colorado Denver and Community College of Denver.

Career Opportunities for Our Graduates

What can you do with a B.A. in Anthropology from MSU Denver?

Cultural resource management, museum curation, archiving, conservation and education for a start! The four main career paths for anthropologists and archaeologists are academics, corporate/ business, government and nonprofit/community-based.

Featured Faculty

Sanaa Riaz

Associate Professor Sanaa Riaz is a cultural anthropologist who studies the negotiation of tradition, modernity, secularism and class ideologies in Islamic praxis, particularly in the domain of religious education. Rather than focusing on radical groups, she highlights the importance of the responses of mainstream middle- and upper-class urbanites to fluctuating state policies and Western involvement, their class aspirations and professional concerns, in examining Islamic practice and education.

Todd Yokley

Professor Todd Yokley is a biological anthropologist whose research involves analyzing how climate and other selective pressures have shaped human evolution. To date, his research has concentrated primarily on variation in the nose and nasal passages, revealing a pattern of variation that appears to reflect selection for more efficient heat and moisture exchange under certain environmental conditions. He is also interested in broader issues such as bioenergetics of past human populations, the emergence of modern humans, climatic adaptation among non-human mammals and primate paleontology.

Alumni at Work

Many MSU Denver graduates earn master’s and doctoral degrees before going onto careers teaching at the collegiate level, running their own archaeological projects, managing research facilities and more.