What Makes our Program Unique
Our program emphasizes real-world applications of anthropology, with faculty expertise in community engagement, sustainability, globalization, cultural heritage and the arts, museology, archaeology, forensic anthropology and primatology. All anthropology majors are mentored by an anthropology faculty member who will guide them through the program and toward their future goals. Many of our students conduct independent research or travel internationally. Our students have received funding for their projects, published their research, and won regional and national awards for their academic work. Students can get involved with Anthropology Club, and, if eligible, they can join Lambda Alpha National Anthropology Honor Society.
Distinctive features of the program include opportunities for supervised research and fieldwork, internships, training in museum work in conjunction with our ethnology museum laboratory, and involvement in community projects. The anthropology lab houses resources for analysis of artifacts and skeletal remains. The SIUE anthropology department offers field schools in archaeology, biological anthropology and cultural anthropology.
Whatever your interests in anthropology, our goal is to help you explore those interests, and to find ways to translate them into a career when your education with us is complete.
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville exists in and serves a region that includes the lands of the Kiikaapoi (treaty in Edwardsville, 1819); The Illinois Confederacy, including the Peoria, Kaskaskia, Michigamea, Cahokia, and Tamaroa (treaty in Edwardsville, 1818); Dhegiha Siouan peoples; and others. We affirm their contemporary and ancestral ties to the land and their contributions to this place. In alignment with the academic mission of the institution, we are committed to building responsible relationships with indigenous communities through the development of educational pathways and opportunities for indigenous students and the advancement of research and knowledge about indigenous peoples, cultures, and histories.
