About Social Sciences

OTC Social Sciences Department

The Social Sciences department strives to provide students with accessible, high quality and affordable technical and general education courses. These courses are are necessary for successful completion of the Associate of Arts degree, Associate of Applied Science degree, 43-Hour General Education Block Transfer and Transfer Course Articulation Agreements.

Objectives

Success in the Social Sciences programs require the student to master the abilities of reading, writing and thinking in a logical manner. We believe these skills are crucial to attaining career opportunities and/or furthering a student’s higher educational goals. Social sciences courses will help students master the following:

• Develop an understanding of themselves and the world around them through study of content and the processes used by historians and social and behavioral scientists
• Discover, describe, explain, and predict human behavior and social systems
• Understand the diversities and complexities of the cultural and social world, past and present, and come to an informed sense of self and others. (Students must fulfill the state statute requirements for the United States and Missouri constitutions)
• Explain social institutions, structures and processes across a range of historical periods and cultures
• Develop and communicate hypothetical explanations for individual human behavior within the large-scale historical and social context
• Draw on history and the social sciences to evaluate contemporary problems
• Describe and analytically compare social, cultural, and historical settings and processes other than one’s own
• Describe and explain the constitutions of the United States and Missouri