Program Overview

Culture, Advocacy, and Leadership Program

The Culture, Advocacy, and Leadership (CAL) program at Vanderbilt University is an interdisciplinary major that combines a rich understanding of human culture with an ethical sense of advocacy and widely applicable leadership skills. This program prepares students for a wide range of advanced studies or career paths after graduation.

Curriculum

The program of study in CAL is both structured and individualized. After completing a series of required courses (FOUNDATIONS Part I), students work with a faculty mentor to choose courses inside or outside of CAL related to their Area Focus. This allows students to adapt their course work to countless modern problems, including:

• Law and justice
• Sports and culture
• International relations and human rights
• Conflict and peace
• Global migrations and diaspora
• Entrepreneurial leadership and economic justice
• Popular culture and American values
• Environmental legacies and global solutions
  • And more After completing their Area Focus, students complete FOUNDATIONS Part II, undertaking an intentional, ethical, and purposeful civic-engagement experience, where they practice leadership and advocacy through partnerships based on service, mutual respect, and shared authority. Students complete the major with a senior seminar in which they reflect on their varied experiences.

Courses and Seminars

Most CAL courses are small, ensuring close student-faculty interaction and abundant opportunities for students to conduct their own research. Recent course offerings include:

• Speaking, Leading, Engaging
• Responsible Advocacy in a Complicated World
• Hip-Hop Culture in America
• Conspiracy Culture in America
• Global Perspectives on American Cultures
• Sports, Culture, and Society
• Moral Leadership and Character in American Culture
• Democracy, Deliberation, and Lived Experience
• American Futures The small class sizes and structure of the program ensure that students receive conscientious mentoring from a faculty member that supports their interests, passions, and career goals.

Honors Program

The Honors program offers exceptional students the opportunity to pursue more intensive work in their Area Focus with an interdisciplinary faculty committee. Students complete a two-semester sequence, beginning with reading and research in an interdisciplinary field and culminating in a thesis written in the spring semester of the senior year.

Special Opportunities

CAL majors can take advantage of study abroad programs by applying some of their abroad courses to the major requirements. Experiential Maymester sessions taught by CAL faculty members are also available. Majors can also take service-learning courses offered at Vanderbilt. In addition, CAL offers many opportunities for students to deeply engage with their community at several levels:

• Locally, through a program of city walks designed to acquaint students with the history and social geography of Nashville
• Regionally, through a series of road trips where students investigate local cultural sites under the guidance of faculty experts
• Internationally, through partnerships with nonprofit groups, community organizations, and government officials

After Vanderbilt

A major in culture, advocacy, and leadership provides an individualized and intense interdisciplinary undergraduate research experience that prepares students for practically any career path they wish to pursue. Recent graduates of the program have gone on to law school and graduate school, as well as jobs in:

• Politics
• Tech
• Business
• Music
• Consulting
• Law
• Government
• Medicine
• Communications
• Journalism
• Public service
• Nonprofit administration
• Community organizing
• Higher education
• And much more

Faculty

Our faculty include some of the most creative and exciting teachers and scholars at Vanderbilt. Many have won major teaching, service, and research awards and have received prestigious national and international honors for their contributions to the study of culture, advocacy, and leadership. The CAL faculty is drawn from the Departments of:

• African American and Diaspora Studies
• Anthropology
• Communication Studies
• Economics
• English
• History
• Philosophy
• Political Science
• Religious Studies
• Sociology
• Theatre
• Gender and Sexuality Studies
• As well as Vanderbilt Law School, Divinity School, and Blair School of Music