The undergraduate anthropology program at UTSA reflects the diversity of the field: cultural anthropology, archaeology, physical anthropology, and linguistic anthropology. Anthropology is both an applied and an academic discipline. A B.A. in anthropology provides students with a solid liberal arts background coupled with the foundations for cross-cultural literacy. In a world that is increasingly multicultural and rapidly globalizing, anthropological skills and knowledge are useful for understanding and negotiating a complex, rapidly changing world. Anthropologists find themselves in a wide range of non-academic jobs in such areas as criminal justice, education, business, health care, museums, and economic development, as well as in academic settings.

Students take a suite of four core courses (one in each of the sub-fields of anthropology) as a foundation for subsequent upper division work. We are committed to a four-field approach both philosophically and pragmatically. Philosophically, the different branches of anthropology are committed to understanding and explaining what it is to be human. We as anthropologists can only gain from the knowledge generated by these diverse branches outside of our particular specialization. From a pragmatic perspective, if your goal is to finish your college career with a B.A. major, we want to provide you with as full and broad an experience as possible. For students thinking about pursuing a graduate career, a broad four-field background helps avoid having to make-up deficiencies at the graduate level, and to be as competitive as possible in four-field master's programs, which are in the majority in U.S. universities.