Degree Requirements | Career Opportunities

Undergraduate Degree Requirements

1. General Education Requirements (53-65 hours)
For a general outline, see USC Undergraduate Bulletin. Students should also see department guidelines for distinction between the B.A. and B.S. degrees.

For the B.S. degree, students must take at least 15 credit hours from an approved combination of MATH (141 and above), STAT (201 and above), and CSCE (102 and above) courses to satisfy the Mathematics/Analytic Reasoning requirement.

2. Major Requirements (32-33 hours)
All majors must complete at least 32 hours of geography courses, including the core requirements of 9 hours:

GEOG 201 or 202 (4 hours)
GEOG 210 (3 hours)
GEOG 495 (3 hours)

All majors must complete enough additional hours in one of the following tracks to bring them to the required 32-35 hour total, with at least two courses at the 500 level (excluding GEOG 595). A minimum grade of C is required for all courses used to fulfill major requirements.

Physical/Environmental Geography
GEOG 201, 202, and 343 (11 hours); and at least three additional courses selected from GEOG 309, 346, 347, 348, 370, 371, 430, 516, 530, 545, 546, 547, 548, 566, 567, 568, 569, 570, 571, 573 (9-12 hours); and at least one other course from geographic information sciences at the 200 level or above (3 hours)

Human/Economic Geography
GEOG 311 or 312 (3 hours); a course in regional geography (3 hours); and at least five additional courses selected from GEOG 312, 324, 333, 344, 370, 378, 420, 511, 512, 515, 544, and 581 (15 hours); and at least one other course from geographic information sciences at the 200 level or above (3 hours)

Geographic Information Sciences (GISc)
GEOG 341, 345, 363, 531 (12 hours); at least three additional courses selected from GEOG 541, 551, 554, 562, 563, and 564 (9 hours); and one other non-GISc course course at the 200 level or above (3-4 hours)

General Geography
a course in regional geography (3 hours); a course from the geographic techniques (3 hours); and six other courses at the 200 level and above (18-23 hours)

3. Cognate or Minor
See the USC Undergraduate Bulletin–College of Arts and Sciences (12-24 hours)

4. Electives
See USC Undergraduate Bulletin–College of Arts and Sciences (0-24 hours)

Minors
The Geography Department offers minors in the following areas:

Cultural Geography
Environmental Geography
General Geography
Geographic Information Science
Meteorology and Climatology
Physical Geography
Regional Geography

top