The General Social Sciences Program offers one minor: Commerce and Society. This minor is made up of multidisciplinary courses from departments throughout the social sciences. Students interested in this minor should meet with the Tykeson College & Career Advising Social Science Advisors, who can be reached at socialsciadvising@uoregon.edu.

Declare the COSO Minor

Commerce and Society

The buying and selling of goods shapes our lives every single day and connects us with people around the globe. The Commerce and Society minor allows students to analyze how these daily transactions work and how they impact people, governments, and the environment. Coursework for the minor encourages the examination of the relationship between commerce and issues such as climate change, social inequality, and globalization from a variety of social scientific perspectives.

The Commerce and Society minor is a great option for:

• Entrepreneurial and socially conscious students interested in learning sustainable, equitable business practices.
• Intellectually curious students who want to take courses from multiple different departments on campus like political science, global studies, business, and economics.
• Independent students who want to tailor the minor to their schedule and their interests.

Requirements

The Commerce and Society minor requires: 

• Three (3) core courses (12 credits)
• Six (6) elective courses (24 credits)
• 36 credits in total—students may take no more than three (3) courses from the same subject code (includes both preliminary core and specializations courses)
• 16 upper-division credits
  • At least 4 of these credits must be at the 400 level
• At least 20 credits must be taken at UO
• All courses must be taken for a letter grade (C- or better)
• No more than three (3) courses may count towards another major, minor, or certificate
• The Commerce and Society minor is designed for students that are not majoring in GSS-Applied Economics, Business, and Society. A GSS-AEBS major will not be permitted to declare this minor in Commerce and Society

Core Courses

Students must complete all three (3) core courses for a total of 12 credits.

• PHIL 120 Ethics of Enterprise and Exchange
• GLBL 270 Globalization and the Global Economy
• PS 210 Politics in Business

Electives

Students must complete 24 elective credits from the courses below. At least 16 credits must be upper-division. At least one course must be at the 400 level (recommended that students take a 400-level course from a subject code in which they have previously taken a course). Topic courses count toward the minor no matter what the topic. The courses on this list do not have pre-requisites (except where noted). Students are encouraged to request approval of upper-division courses from any department on related topics and courses that have pre-requisites (in cases where students have completed the required pre-reqs).