Focus Areas, Exploratory Tracks and Common Majors and Courses
A focus area is a starting point for your academic exploration. These distinct collections of programs and courses allow you to investigate your interests in order to guide you to the major that aligns most closely with your future goals. You are assigned an advisor within your focus area who can help you explore majors and courses at USU.
You can click on each of these broad focus areas to discover the tracks you can explore. Some tracks and majors are considered to be within multiple focus areas.
Connect & Collaborate
Values interpersonal connections, teamwork, clarity, empathy, leadership, and innovation. Enjoys engaging in dialogue, public speaking, conflict resolution, managing, writing, content creation, and media analysis. Apt to be articulate, empathetic, creative, detail-oriented, culturally aware, and thrives in dynamic, interactive settings. Driven to lead or manage others to meet organizational goals or create economic growth.
Helping Others
Values supporting, nurturing, and caring for others with a strong focus on interpersonal skills. Thrives in social settings and derives deep personal fulfillment from meaningful interactions. Demonstrates qualities of being agreeable, cooperative, friendly, warm, patient, tactful, and responsible, consistently fostering positive relationships and achieving success through teamwork.
Expressing Creativity
Values independence, self-expression, unstructured methods, and aesthetic beauty. Utilizes creativity, imagination, intuition, and writing to appreciate and critically analyze the work of others in museums, theater, and books. Demonstrates a strong interest in languages and world cultures, which enriches understanding and appreciation of diverse perspectives.
Assess & Apply
Values observation, inquiry, and analysis. Seeks practical outcomes and enjoys outdoor exploration. Enthusiastic about understanding natural processes and predicting outcomes. Enjoys studying living organisms and natural resources, with a focus on opportunities in research, teaching, or industry. Concerned with the impact of science on the environment and living beings. Apt to be thoughtful, investigative, observant, and analytical.
Analyzing
Values intellectual effort, scientific inquiry, and mathematics. Aims to understand and predict physical and biological phenomena and practices. Enjoys working with theories, conducting research, and designing and testing ideas and systems. Apt to be analytical, cautious, independent, curious, introspective, critical, and studious.
Values applying scientific principles to promote human health and wellness. May be interested in diagnosing, treating, and managing health conditions, working in a laboratory or clinical setting, and cultivating positive health choices. Many students interested in this focus area may consider themselves to be dedicated, intelligent, compassionate, and curious.