Anthropology is the study of the cultural, historical, physical, and linguistic behavior of people from all parts of the globe both in the past and the present.  It allows students to develop an appreciation for all the lifeways that exist or have existed on our planet and to understand how they came into being, how they interact and how they change. 

The goal of anthropology is to understand the development and the behavior of people by analyzing and comparing human characteristics and customs in all times and places. The anthropology program at Kansas State University provides excellent opportunities to approach this goal because of the presence of world-renowned specialists in all major divisions of anthropology. All courses are taught by this faculty. 

Majors are given a stimulating program that provides them with the breadth of perspective and skills of discernment and analysis they need to understand and cope with many kinds of human situations. A major in anthropology provides an excellent foundation for professional training in numerous fields, including teaching, international service organizations, and federal and private agencies. Anthropology supplies an essential perspective on human experience, a perspective that provides an integrative, comparative, and humanizing outlook. Such an outlook is important to professionals who deal with human problems and wish to achieve sound, relevant conceptual and theoretical perspectives. 

The skills one may gain by studying anthropology include: 

An ability to control personal and cultural biases and viewpoints in order to discern more accurately the views of people whose ideals and behaviors are different from one's own; 

Alertness in recognizing the biological and cultural factors affecting the behavior of individuals and groups; 

Competence to discern how comprehensive social systems are integrated, how the cultural, biological, and environmental parts of which they are made influence and depend on one another; 

An ability to use anthropological techniques of collecting and analyzing sociocultural data; 

The capability to effectively translate the wants and needs of the people of one culture so that they can be understood by the people of another culture.

Students should develop a sound major with their interests and career goals clearly in mind and combine it with carefully selected courses from other disciplines. Opportunities for employment or further training can be very wide indeed! See the page on careers for more information.