Program Requirements and Opportunities

Published annually, the Course Catalog sets out the requirements of the academic programs--the majors, minors, and concentrations. Each Bryn Mawr student must declare a major before the end of the sophomore year. Students may also declare a minor or a concentration, but neither is required for the A.B. degree. Students must comply with the requirements published in the Course Catalog at the time when they declare the major, minor and/or concentration.

The Course Catalog also sets out the College requirements. Students must comply with the College requirements published at the time they enter Bryn Mawr College.

For more information, visit the Catalog Homepage to view the current content. To view Catalogs from previous academic years, visit the Catalog Archives page.

The Program in Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and North African Studies (MECANA) offers a minor focusing on the study of the area from Morocco to Afghanistan, from antiquity to the present day. Bryn Mawr students can investigate the history, politics, and cultures of the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa through coursework, independent study, study abroad, and events here and at neighboring institutions. 

The Director of MECANA is also the advisor for the concentration and can assist students to plan coursework and independent study, including independent majors.

There are two tracks in the MECANA concentration: one requires study or competence in a modern regional language, the other does not.

Track 1
The first track consists of six courses in the Humanities or Social Sciences that include pre-modern and modern topics distributed in the following manner: 

1. A basic course that offers a broad introduction to the region and its peoples. When available, students should take MEST 100: Introduction to MECANA Studies at Bryn Mawr. If this course is not available, students will select a comparable introductory course in consultation with the MECANA advisor(s).

2. Five elective courses, including: 

  • at least one course at the 300 level, in a specific area to be chosen in consultation with the MECANA advisor. This area might be defined in terms of conceptual, historical, or geographical interests and, in many cases, will be connected to work in the student's major.
  • at least one course must be in the Social Sciences, and at least one course must be in the Humanities.
  • at least one course must be pre-modern/early modern in content (before 1800) and at least one course must be modern or contemporary in content (after 1800). 

3. Of the six courses required for the minor, only two may form a part of the student's major. 

Track 2
The second track includes language study. Students opting for this track must take the equivalent of two years of study of a modern regional language. Four additional courses distributed as follows are required for the minor: 

1. A basic course that offers a broad introduction to the region and its peoples. When available, students should take MEST 100: Introduction to MECANA Studies at Bryn Mawr. If this course is not available, students will select a comparable introductory course in consultation with the MECANA advisor(s).

2. Three elective courses, including: 

  • at least one course at the 300 level, in a specific area to be chosen in consultation with the MECANA advisor. This area might be defined in terms of conceptual, historical, or geographical interests and, in many cases, will be connected to work in the student's major.
  • at least one course must be in the Social Sciences, and at least one course must be in the Humanities. 
  • at least one course must be pre-modern/early modern in content (before 1800) and at least one course must be modern or contemporary in content (after 1800). 

3. Of the courses required for the minor, only two may form a part of the student’s major.

For Middle Eastern languages taught at Bryn Mawr and Haverford, please see the course listings for the Bi-College Program in Arabic and the Bryn Mawr offerings in Hebrew. Additional regional languages may be offered at the University of Pennsylvania.


For minor advising please contact, Marc Schulz (mschulz@brynmawr.edu), Professor of Psychology and Director of Data Science.


List of Courses

BIOL B115 (Computing Through Biology)
BIOL B250 (Computational Methods in the Sciences)
BIOL B330 Ecological Modeling
CITY B201 (Introduction to GIS for Social & Environmental Analysis)
CITY B217 (Research Methods in Social Sciences)
CITY B328 (Analysis of Geospatial Data Using GIS)
CMSC B109 (Introduction to Computing)
CMSC B110A(Introduction to Computing)
CMSC B113 (Computer Science 1)
CMSC B113A (Computer Science 1)
CMSC B151 (Data Structures)
CMSC B380 Recent Advances in Comp Sci-Info Retrieval & Web Search
CMSC B383 (Recent Advances in Computer Science: Computational Text Analysis)
CSMC H265 (Critical Study of Data and Algorithms)
CMSCH 360A001 Machine Learning
CMSCH 360A00A Machine Learning
DSCI B100 (Introduction to Data Science)
DSCI B201 Ethics in Data Sciences
DSCI B210 Quantifying Happiness: Efforts to study and alter happiness
DSCI/PSYCH B314 (Advanced Data Science: Regression & Multivariate Statistics)
DSCI B315 Bayesian and Frequentist Statistical Inference
ECON B253 (Introduction to Econometrics)
ECON B304 (Econometrics)
ENVS 307 Introduction to Fisheries Science
GEOL B104 The Science of climate change
HLTH B302 Survey Methods for Health Research
MATH B104  Basic Probability and Stats
MATH B195 (Statistics for Data Science)
MATH B205 (Theory of Probability with Applications)
Math 208 (Introduction to Modeling and Simulation)
MATH H201 (Linear optimization)
Math B295 (Select Topics in Mathematics): “Math Modeling and Sustainability” and “Statistics with R” versions of this course
MUSC H255 Encoding Music
PHIL B258 Data Ethics in Social Media
POLS B233 (Intro to Research Design and Data Analysis)
PSYCH 318 (Data Science with R)
PSYCH 330 Reproducible Research
PSYCH B205 (Research Methods & Statistics)
PSYCH B205A(Research Methods & Statistics)
SOCL B265 (Quantitative Methods)
SOCL B327 (Capital & Connections)
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Contact Us

Data Science

Marc Schulz
Professor of Psychology on the Sue Kardas Ph.D. 1971 Professorship and Director of Data Science
mschulz@brynmawr.edu
610-526-5039

Nina Fichera
Administrative Support Staff
nfichera@brynmawr.edu