Berea College offers five interdisciplinary minors that combine multiple departmental offerings. These minors include Broadcast Journalism; Digital Media; Film Production; Forest Resource Management; and Law, Ethics, and Society. Each minor has an identified divisional home and the associated Divisional Chair works with the minor advisor to provide curricular oversight and administrative approvals.
Broadcast Journalism
The minor in Broadcast Journalism allows students to be trained in the basics of both broadcast production and talent in the two core courses, and the three distribution courses will allow students, with careful advising from faculty, to emphasize in production or talent, resulting in creating a well-rounded student who is able to develop skills needed for post-Berea employment. The minor teaches skills in interviewing, journalism writing, video editing, lighting design, camera operation, audio design, acting for the camera (talent), voice and diction, staging, and broadcast directing, and develops critical thinking and creative skills that can be applied in a variety of media fields (print and broadcast journalism, public relations, graphic design, etc.).
Digital Media
The Digital Media minor provides opportunities for coherent, explorational, and multidisciplinary study of the broad range of media that form such an important part of the world that we live in. Students taking this class will engage with multiple forms of digital media, both in terms of production and analysis. This approach aims to supplement and complement students’ major disciplinary study, whether they are preparing to enter graduate study or the world of work beyond Berea.
Film Production
This interdisciplinary minor consists of three theater courses with distribution courses from many alternative disciplines. The Film Production Minor can be combined with any major.
Forest Resource Management
The curriculum for the Forest Resource Management minor is an interdisciplinary minor which combines a foundation of classes in ANR and BIO with distribution courses which can be selected to provide focus in wildlife, natural resources, wood utilization, or management. This minor develops broadly educated graduates and prepares them for careers in sustainable natural resource management.
Law, Ethics, and Society
The Law Ethics, and Society [LES] divisional minor provides opportunities for coherent, disciplined, and multi-disciplinary study of law that is rooted in the liberal arts and the aims of liberal learning. Paramount purposes include students developing careful, normative understandings of law, justice, and society, both in the United States and internationally. This approach aims to supplement and complement students’ major disciplinary study, whether they are preparing to enter graduate study or the world of work beyond Berea.
The LES minor explores law as an enterprise in which moral argument, distinctive practices of interpretation and reasoning, and coercive force are employed to structure society, address conflicts, effect social change, and engage social, political, ethical/moral, and economic issues that arise for institutions, organizations, and people. The LES minor offerings rely on legal and other materials to explore questions that are both theoretical and practical/applied; that affect both public and private life; that involve quandaries about justice and injustice; that address tensions between liberty and authority, community and individual, process and outcome; and, that engage matters of proper interpretation and reasoning in and about law.