4-Term Pathway - Foundation Certificate in Humanities - Continue to Bachelor of Arts (Honours) - Criminology and American Studies

Program Description For students who've finished high school but don’t meet the entry requirements for university, a Foundation Certificate can help them gain entry to an undergraduate degree. After completing this pathway option students qualify for progression to the 1st year of an undergraduate degree at the University of Essex.

A student’s course length is determined mainly by their English language level (UKVI IELTS score). Students on all course lengths take a set of common or similar modules to gain a solid base of skills for university. Students taking a course longer than 2 terms, will take additional modules designed to improve one or more of their English language level, academic skills, and basic knowledge of particular subjects.

Bachelor of Arts (Honours) - Criminology and American Studies

This course gives students an excellent understanding of the global patterns increasingly found in criminal justice policies and criminal offences. The School takes a social view of crime, a view which links crime to issues of power, resources, rights, (in)equality, governance and culture. This leads them to ask, for example, why certain groups of people are more likely than others to become offenders, why certain kinds of offenders are more likely than others to be caught, how some governments commit ‘state crime’ and why so many people are simultaneously fearful of, yet fascinated by, crime.

Crucially, students also have the opportunity to spend either a term or a full academic year studying in the United States, so they can explore and become immersed in American culture.

The degree is built to be extremely flexible and student-led, and as students progress through the course they can choose from an enormous range of options from across the humanities and social sciences, including:

• Contemporary social issues, such as the struggles for racial justice • The legacies of slavery and the civil rights movement • Environmental protection of the ‘wilderness’ of the Far West • Native American histories and rights • Organised crime, surveillance and counter-terrorism • Environmental harm • Visual criminology • Social history and crime

Based within the Interdisciplinary Studies Centre (ISC), American studies offers a truly multidisciplinary approach, giving students knowledge of the many ways to understand key areas of the American experience. They draw on multiple perspectives in order to reach a deeper understanding of the world we inhabit, opening up exciting possibilities to discover the American continent. The cities, vast open plains, mountains and deserts shape diverse and intriguing ways of life.

By encouraging students to think and operate across traditional boundaries, the course has produced confident, assertive and intelligent graduates who have become successful in many professional fields.

The criminology modules are taught by the Department of Sociology, which is rated Top 10 in the UK for research quality (REF 2014).