Business
The Business minor is a strong complement to virtually any major. Courses prescribed for the minor are taught by Penn State faculty providing courses to the B.S. in Business and the A.S. in Business Administration. It provides students with the opportunity to develop and apply skills appropriate to the business contexts of their chosen majors. Students pursuing the Business minor must complete 13 credits of prescribed coursework and six credits of additional coursework. A grade of C or better is required for all courses in the minor. The prescribed thirteen credits of coursework presents students with a critical foundation of core business disciplines: accounting, management, marketing, and either macro- or micro-economics. The six credits of additional coursework must be taken at the 400-level.
The official requirements for this minor can be viewed in the online Undergraduate Bulletin under the program requirements.
Psychology
The Psychology minor is designed to provide undergraduate students with a broad overview of topics and domains within psychology, knowledge and skills related to research methods in psychology, and deeper knowledge of research, theory, and application in one or two specific content domains. Students completing this minor will find a flexible selection of coursework in psychology. The content domains from which students may select courses include biological, clinical, cognitive, developmental, industrial-organizational, and social psychology. Students may choose courses that emphasize theory or application of psychological principles. A number of these courses examine the application of psychological research to societal issues.
The official requirements for this minor can be viewed in the online Undergraduate Bulletin under the program requirements.
Marketing
Marketing is a broad field with a primary purpose of generating demand for an enterprise's products or services. It involves understanding consumer behavior and social dynamics to identify consumer preferences and guide firms to successfully fulfill the preferences.
The American Marketing Association has defined Marketing as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings valuable to customers, clients, partners, and society at large. Not only does marketing guide firms’ managerial decisions in the marketplace, but it also offers insights into consumer awareness, public policy making, and non-commercial exchange of value (e.g., altruistic giving).
The official requirements for this minor can be viewed in the online Undergraduate Bulletin under the program requirements.
Sports Studies
The Sport Studies minor is a broad, interdisciplinary, intercollege educational program for teaching students how to critically explore the role of sport (broadly defined) in human societies. It brings together the multitude of scholarly resources that Penn State currently possesses in the study of sport in society into a coherent program to provide novel learning opportunities for undergraduates. The Sport Studies minor fosters a critical understanding of sport in human societies. The program stresses the connections between sport and other social institutions and cultural concepts, examines sporting traditions across cultures and time periods, and analyzes sport from a multiple methodological perspectives. The minor examines the role of sport in shaping identities - including ethnic, racial, class, and gender identities as well as local, regional, national, and global identities. The minor explores how the commercialization of sport effects the way it is marketed and the extent to which economic incentives shape sport and how other businesses use sport. The minor also employs sport to explore the relationships between multiple knowledge domains - from the Arts, Humanities, Business, Law, and the Sciences (including the Health Sciences, Natural Sciences, and the Social and Behavioral Sciences) - that provide a broad overview of the world we inhabit.
The official requirements for this minor can be viewed in the online Undergraduate Bulletin under the program requirements.
Exploring Minors Offered at Other Penn State Locations
In most cases, students do not have to be enrolled in the college that offers a particular minor in order to pursue that minor. For example, a student can be enrolled in a Penn State Greater Allegheny major and still pursue a minor offered at another location as long as Greater Allegheny offers the courses required for the minor.
Note, however, that a student may not change from a campus that offers his/her major to a campus that does not offer the major in order to complete a minor.
For more information about Penn State Minors, visit the Undergraduate Bulletin.
