About the Program

Over its 40 years as one of Canada’s most innovative programs, Arts & Science at McMaster has established an enviable reputation for providing an educational environment that equips its graduates to excel in work and/or further study in a wide range of fields. The Arts & Science Program is designed to provide students with a broad-based, interdisciplinary education. Its curriculum has been planned with three major objectives in mind:

• to enable substantial work in both the arts and the sciences
• to develop skills in writing, speaking, and critical reasoning
• to foster the art of scholarly inquiry into issues of public concern

The Arts & Science Program stresses active, self-directed, and cooperative learning, with emphasis on social awareness and on the development of a wide range of transferable skills. Our Program, which has an enrolment target of 70 first-year students, remains small by design. Its limited size facilitates close relationships between students both academically and personally, while small class and tutorial sizes promote lively interaction between professors and students.

For the B.Arts Sc. Honours degree, students take specifically designed ARTSSCI courses as well as electives. Students can use their electives to pursue a Combined Honours Program (Arts & Science may be combined with over thirty different subjects from across the University), to focus on a particular area (a minor), or to satisfy broad interests.

The integrated set of required courses, offered exclusively to Arts & Science students, include Inquiry courses, which cover a range of disciplines and focus on the development of problem-based learning and critical thinking skills. The individual and collective expertise of Arts & Science faculty members, many of them award-winning teachers, enables the Program to continue to forge new ground in undergraduate education. Our instructors, who have diverse disciplinary backgrounds, work closely with students in the creative process of interdisciplinary inquiry.

Electives, experiential learning initiatives, and exchange opportunities allow students to tread new paths of discovery, while individual study and fourth-year thesis courses provide an opportunity to work with McMaster researchers from across the University. Additional cooperative learning experiences include the Artsci Student Scholars Program, the McMaster Discovery Program, the Common Reading Program, and the New World of Work Forum.

The Program prepares students for a variety of future endeavours, and has a tradition of producing graduates who shine in a remarkable array of meaningful careers.

For more information, click here to watch Arts & Science Program Information Sessions and learn more about this unique and highly regarded program from Artsci instructors and students. 

Further Education

Arts & Science students often pursue further education in a variety of fields, such as:

Anthropology, Biochemistry, Biology, Bio-statistics, Botany, Business Administration, Chemistry, Classics, Communication, Community Development, Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, Diplomacy, Ecology, Economics, English, Environmental Studies, Epidemiology, Fine Arts, Forensic Biology, French, Geography, Gerontology, Health Policy, History, International Development, Library Science, Linguistics, Mathematics, Medical Sciences, Nutrition, Pharmacology, Philosophy, Physics, Political Science, Psychology, Religious Studies, Resource Management, Sociology, Urban Planning

Professional and Technical Programs

Many Arts & Science graduates enter professional or technical programs such as:

Architecture, Dentistry, Journalism, Law, Medicine, Midwifery, Naturopathy, Occupational Therapy, Photography, Physiotherapy, Social Work, Speech Pathology, Teaching, Theatre