Explore Your Potential

Birmingham-Southern's challenging, high-quality academic curriculum prepares our graduates to do just about anything they want to do.

Explorations Curriculum

At Birmingham-Southern, we have taken the traditional undergraduate curriculum and re-focused it to address the needs of the increasingly complex and inter-connected world of the 21st Century. Our Explorations program provides students with the skills and perspectives that professional schools, graduate schools, and employers want them to have--to communicate effectively, to solve problems with competence and creativity, to understand local and global competing interests, to make connections among a perplexing array of fields of information--and to be agile and adept in doing so. As students explore their interests and their own potential through engaging and challenging study, they prepare themselves to be engaged members—many of them leaders—of their communities.

Courses of Study

To complete their degree requirements, students typically enroll in four classes in the fall term, one during the January Exploration Term, and four in the spring.The college currently offers five bachelor's degrees in more than 50 programs of study, as well as interdisciplinary and specially individualized majors and dual degree programs.

Faculty

More than 96 percent of faculty members hold a doctorate or highest degree in their field. The low 13-to-1 student-to-faculty ratio allows for personal interaction between student and professor in the classroom and beyond.

Donald C. Harrison Scholars Program

With its small classes, interdisciplinary courses, innovative curriculum, and more, Birmingham-Southern is indeed an "honors college." But within this honors college is the Harrison Scholars Program that extends the boundaries of learning even further with opportunities such as specially-designed courses just for Harrison Scholars, preferred registration, special lectures, travel/research stipends, access to Honors advisors, Honors housing, and many other benefits.

Other Special Programs

The academic program at BSC is complemented by opportunities that give students a wealth of life experiences out of the classroom. Such experiences deepen students’ engagement with their communities and the wider world, and they oblige students to wrestle with complex problems first-hand.

The Contract Learning Center enables students to expand their classroom experiences through local internships, mentorships, and research opportunities.
The Bunting Center for Engaged Study and Community Action organizes service-learning projects locally, nationally, and overseas, as well as providing service opportunities during Fall Outreach Day and Alternative Spring Break.
The Hess Center for Leadership and Service coordinates a series of academic courses, research opportunities, advocacy internships designed to deepen students’ understanding of the complex phenomenon of leadership.
The Sklenar Center for International Programs provides logistical support for students planning to study or pursue internships or volunteer opportunities abroad, and it serves as a source of information on international post-graduate studies, fellowships, and teaching opportunities.
The Stump Entrepreneurship Scholars is for students who have demonstrated an exemplary entrepreneurial spirit through their work—both inside and outside of the classroom. Such work could include initiating a business plan or activity, developing a non-profit or service learning project, implementing a program in the fine arts, theatre, or music, or other creative endeavor.
The Vail College Fellows Program provides support for joint faculty/student collaborative research projects for which students receive either a unit of academic credit or a tuition stipend. Vail Fellowships often result in scholarly presentations or joint publications by the professor and the student.

Academic Resource Center

The college's Academic Resource Center is a multi-faceted approach to academic assistance that enhances the support services available to students. The ARC includes a writing center and foreign language and math labs among other areas.