COURSE CURRICULUM

The Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Applied Linguistics is a 120-credit-hour program that combines the study of language, communication, and analytical thinking with practical skills applicable to a wide range of professional fields. Students must maintain a minimum overall, university, and program GPA of 2.0 and complete 34 credit hours within the major while also fulfilling general education and Liberal Arts and Sciences competency requirements. The program offers three concentration options that allow students to tailor their education to specific career goals. The General Linguistics concentration explores language structure, development, history, world languages, and language attitudes while providing opportunities to specialize through electives in areas such as linguistic anthropology, Hispanic linguistics, philosophy, mathematics, and language studies. The Speech Pathology and Communication Sciences concentration combines linguistics with communication disorders, sign language, phonetics, and language development, providing a strong foundation for students interested in speech-language pathology and related professions. The Computer Science and Data Science concentration integrates linguistics with programming, data structures, statistics, web programming, and computational problem-solving, preparing students for careers involving language technology, data analysis, and computational linguistics. All concentrations include a career seminar and a capstone cooperative education experience that allows students to apply their knowledge in professional settings. The program also offers a Departmental Honors Track for high-achieving students, which includes advanced coursework, faculty-guided research, portfolio development, participation in the Wichita Linguistics Club, and completion of an honors thesis project. Applied learning is a central component of the degree and may be fulfilled through designated linguistics courses with practical learning components, cooperative education experiences, service-learning opportunities, or research projects. Students develop valuable skills in communication, critical thinking, language analysis, research methods, quantitative reasoning, and problem-solving. Graduates are prepared for careers in translation, interpreting, education, publishing, speech and language services, computational linguistics, data science, international affairs, market research, government agencies, and technology-related fields, while also gaining a strong foundation for graduate study in linguistics, communication sciences, education, computer science, and related disciplines.