General Education Requirements

NYU Tandon Humanities/Social Science (HUSS) Electives 

NYU Tandon TCS HU/SS (humanities and social science) course offerings for Spring 2025 .                                                                                  

24 credits of Humanities and Social Sciences, as explained below:

1. First-Year Writing Requirement (2 Courses, 8 credits)

Fall Semester: EXPOS-UA 1 (Writing the Essay) or EXPOS-UA 4 (International Writing Workshop I)

Spring semester: EXPOS-UA 22 (Advanced Writing for Engineers) or EXPOS-UA 9 (International Writing Workshop II)

These courses are offered by the NYU Tandon Expository Writing Program. 

2. Humanities and Social Science Elective Requirement (4 courses, 16 credits)

Students must complete 4 humanities or social science courses. These 4 courses can be within a single cluster or across multiple clusters. For optimal breadth of experience, TCS encourages students to take electives across clusters and/or across disciplines within a cluster. These 4 humanities and social science electives must satisfy the following:

• For new first-year students entering in or after Fall 2022, one course must be a course in ethics and technological and/or scientific practice.
  • Most students will take STS-UY 2144: Ethics and Technology to fulfill this requirement, but other ethics courses may serve to fulfill this requirement, with the permission of a student’s major advisor and the TCS Ethics Program Director.
  • STS-UY 2144 Ethics and Technology is considered and introductory, survey course and students can take it during their 1st or 2nd year.
  • Please note that BTM majors must take STS-UY 2144 Ethics and Technology as it is a required course for the major.
• 1 must be a Tandon Advanced Seminar, identifiable by course number 4504 in one of the following areas STS-UY 4504; CAM-UY 4504, URB-UY 4504 or TCS-UY 4504. These courses are capped at 18 students with a focus on research and writing. Advanced Seminars require the completion of EXPOS 1 & 2 or an equivalent.
• 2 additional courses chosen from the humanities and social sciences (the TCS department has a full offering of humanities and social science courses).

Important Notes

• As of the Fall 2021 semester, the Advanced Seminar course replaced the Writing Intensive requirement. If you've already completed a writing intensive course, you do not have to take the Advanced Seminar. If the writing intensive course you took was a level 2000 course, you still need to complete a level 3000 humanities course, as listed above. 
• Although we strongly encourage students to take their Advanced Seminar at Tandon, there are approved Advanced Seminars at other NYU Schools
• The TCS department abbreviates level 2000 to level 2, level 3000 to level 3, and level 4000 to level 4

The TCS Department offers elective courses that fulfill Tandon's undergraduate requirement for courses in humanities and social sciences — part of the undergraduate core curriculum. These courses explore the relations among science, technology, and society from three general approaches and modes of inquiry:

Culture, Arts and Media (CAM)

The CAM cluster explores how cultural practices and artifacts in a wide range of media reflect, influence, and interact with developments in science and technology. Courses are based on philosophy, media studies, music, literary studies, art history, rhetoric, and anthropology. 

Science, Technology and Society (STS)

STS cluster courses explore the interrelationships among science, technology, culture, and society. STS unites and investigates a myriad of disciplines, including history, philosophy, rhetoric, literary studies, and sociology. The questions posed are: How do science and technology shape society? How do social processes frame scientific and technological enterprises? What is the relationship between the content of scientific and technological knowledge and the social and intellectual context in which it is created? 

Society, Environment and Globalization (SEG)

Courses in the SEG cluster address the way the critical areas of society, environment, and globalization are interlinked and how they affect the experience of modern life. Coming from the complementary perspectives of the humanities and social sciences, SEG courses provide students with a broad and multicultural perspective on how environmental issues and global exchange in this “flat world” are changing society, here and across the world. 

The following courses are offered by the department on a regular basis. However, each course is not offered every semester. 

Special Note About Course Descriptions: You can find the full description on the NYU Bulletin.

SEG Electives from Other Departments

FIN-UY 2003 Economic Foundations of Finance

Humanities and Social Science Courses at other Schools within NYU

Tandon students have the opportunity to complete some of their humanities requirements at other schools within NYU. The TCS Department maintains an ongoing list of approved NYU courses that satisfy the humanities requirement.

The advanced seminar requirement should be fulfilled with a Tandon course (indicated with 4504).

Credits from NYUs School of Professional Studies (SPS) are not accepted at Tandon.

List of approved HUSS courses at other NYU Schools -Use the arrows at the bottom of the excel to see all the courses categorized by NYU school/global campus. Please note, you must be signed in with your NYU email/NET ID to access the list.

Form to evaluate NYU course for HUSS credit - Please use this form to submit NYU courses that are not on the list above. Please submit one course at a time and include the syllabus. We will then respond letting you know if the course is approved or not. If it is approved, we will also add it to the full list of approved HUSS courses (linked above). 

Please email [email protected] with any questions.

Humanities and Social Science Courses Outside of NYU

If you are considering taking a course outside of NYU for the humanities/social science elective (HUSS), please email the course syllabus to [email protected] along with the Permission to Complete Courses Outside of NYU form. Find the form on the Registration Forms page

We will respond letting you know if the course is approved as a HUSS elective and will fill in the appropriate fields on the form for the HUSS course. The student is then responsible for including why they are requesting to take a course outside of NYU on the back of the form and submitting it to their academic advisor for their signature. Further instructions on final submittal of the form are located on the top section of the form. 

Please note this does not pertain to official NYU study away sites.