The HDFS Life Span Human Services major is an ideal major for those who are thinking of going into the helping professions. It allows students to become knowledgeable about individual development across the lifespan, about families, and about human service agencies and how they work. It gives students the skills they need to be effective human services professionals, and students who graduate with this degree can expect to get jobs in human service agencies. or to go on for further studies in areas like social work, guidance counseling, other forms of counseling, or graduate programs that prepare one to do research in academic settings.

The information below will help you plan your coursework over the next two or three terms. (Be sure to check when this information was last updated.) If you have a checklist for the major or your degree audit, it might be useful to refer to that while looking at this information. It would be a good idea to review the information for each year, to be sure you don't miss something.

Information concerning the internship is at the bottom of the page.

First-year Students

If you know as a first-year student that this is a major that interests you, you can begin right away to take the courses that are required and try to get them in order where that matters.

In addition to taking care of general education courses, you should take some or all of the following:

  • HDFS 129
  • HDFS 229, or 239, or 249 (you need two of those; note, if you have already taken Psy 213: Developmental Psychology, it will count as HDFS 229)

These courses are offered every semester.

  • STAT 200 (math) is required for the major and will also count as a General Quantification course.

This course is offered every semester.

Sophomores

During your sophomore year, you can finish taking the 200-level courses required for the major. But you should also take the 300-level courses that are required. You must have taken all of them except HDFS 301 by the end of your Sophomore year. HDFS 129 is a prerequisite for all of these courses.

  • HDFS 311: Interventions; beginning in the fall of 2007, we plan to offer this course every term.
  • HDFS 312W: Methodology is offered in both the fall and spring. You must have taken STAT 200 and received a grade of 'C' or better before you can take 312W. HDFS 312W is a prerequisite for all 400-level courses.
  • HDFS 315: Family Development is offered in the fall and in the spring. It fulfills a US course requirement, and we usually offer it as a writing-intensive course (HDFS 315Y).

Once you have completed HDFS 312W, you may begin to take 400-level courses.

Juniors and Seniors

In your junior year, you will take HDFS 301 and any of the other 300-level courses you have missed, but you are now ready for the real meat of the major. Most of the upper-level courses for the major are offered only once a year, so be sure that you are ready to take them and plan in advance. All of the 400-level courses have HDFS 312W as a prerequisite.

HDFS 301 and HDFS 411 are offered every semester.

We offer the following upper-division courses in the fall.

  • HDFS 401: Project Planning and Evaluation (prerequisite, HDFS 411)
  • HDFS 445: Adult Development and Ageing (prerequisite HDFS 249)
  • HDFS 433: Developmental Transition to Adulthood (prerequisite, HDFS 239)
  • HDFS 418: Family Relationships (prerequisite HDFS 315)
  • HDFS 414: Resolving problems in human development and family studies
  • HDFS 455: Administration of Human Services Programs

We offer the following upper-division courses in the spring.

  • HDFS 429: Advanced Child Development (prerequisite, HDFS 229)
  • HDFS 428: Infancy (prerequisite, HDFS 229)

The major requires you to take 6 credits of additional 300- and 400- level courses in HDFS. The 400-level courses above will fulfill that requirement. You must also take 6 credits of 400-level courses that support the major. These may also be the HDFS course. Remember, however, that courses in other disciplines fulfill this requirement, so check areas like psychology, sociology, health policy administration, biobehavioral health, criminal justice, counselor education, nursing, and kineseology to see if courses are being offered that will help you meet your own goals while completing the major.

The Internship

For this major, you are required to do an internship. It has three different parts, composed of different courses.

HDFS 401 is about program and project development and evaluation and includes an internship preparation component. It should be taken in the fall before you do your internship, ideally in the seventh semester, but no earlier than the 6th. HDFS 411 is a prerequisite for HDFS 401. HDFS 401 is offered only in the fall. In that way, most students would do their internship in the spring. But life being what it is, look ahead, talk to your adviser and figure out when you will have your course work completed and be ready to do your internship, and take 401 the fall before then.

HDFS 495C, the internship itself, is an eight-credit course. For each credit, you are expected to put in four work hours at the site per week. (This comes to around 32 hours per week over a fifteen-week term. Should you do the internship in the summer, you will need to do more than thirty-two hours per week as you will have fewer than 15 weeks.) HDFS 402 is a professional seminar designed to be taken while you are taking the internship; it is the capstone course for the major. Normally students do the internship in their 8th semester, but for those who can graduate early, it will be the last semester.

Students may not enroll for HDFS 402 and HDFS 495C unless they have successfully completed (a grade of C or better) every course required for the major. Should a student have earned a D, or an F, in any of these courses, that course must have been repeated, and a grade of C has been earned before the student may be enrolled for an internship.

As of 2007, we are offering an internship only in the spring and summer.

For more information on the internship, visit the internships web site.

Disclaimer Clause: The above represents our intentions and present plans, and you all know what happens to "the best laid plans of mice and men." Therefore do not regard this as gospel. Check with your adviser, and check back here frequently for news of changes.