Cultures and Languages

We live in an increasingly diverse and global society. When you graduate, you need to be "world-ready," not just work-ready. You need to demonstrate flexibility. Versatility. Sensitivity to different cultures and people. The enriched interpersonal communication and relationship-building skills that come from increased cultural awareness. These are traits both employers and graduate school admissions officers want to see. No matter what the field, fluency in cultures and languages outside of your own give you a competitive edge. 

Studying a language also benefits me when working in a scientific environment: Sometimes I approach a problem as if it were a foreign language, and I go through the problem-solving process by breaking things down as if it were a word in Japanese whose parts I just needed to break down in the basic meanings.

— Chisom Obasih (Japanese and neuroscience majors, chemistry minor, certificate in Asian studies)

Read about Chisom's Dietrich School story, merging neuroscience and Japanese.

Popular Majors

Students interested in cultures and languages often explore such majors and minors as:

Enrichment Opportunities

Students interested in cultures and languages have enhanced their studies with some of the following opportunities:

Career Choices

  • Recent graduates in cultures and languages have gone on to exciting careers, with such titles as: 
  • Account executive, Leo Burnett Worldwide (Read Marissa Murin's story here.) 
  • Attorney, Clark Hill Thorp Reed
  • City planner, NYC Department of City Planning (Bronx)
  • Data and performance officer, United Nations Foundation 
  • Data scientist, Spotify (Read Jason Ng's story here.)
  • Director of professional development and programs
  • Dual-language teacher, Worcester Public Schools (Read Rachel Gately's story here.)
  • Enterprise architect, U.S. Air Force Office of Business Transformation
  • Epidemiology specialist, Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services
  • Internal medicine resident, Kaiser-Santa Clara
  • Senior classification analyst, HCL America onsite at Google Pittsburgh (Read Margo Lynch's story here.)
  • Market researcher, Management Science Associates, Inc.
  • Research consultant, China Digital Times 
  • Restaurant owner, award-winning chef, and entrepreneur, Apteka vegan eatery (Watch video)
  • Supply chain manager (Tokyo, Japan) (Read Sanaa Ahmed's story here.)
  • Data Scientist at the PNC Financial Services Group, Inc (Read Courtney Zelinsky's story here.)
  • Machine Translation Systems Engineer at Amazon Pittsburgh (Read Steve Sloto's story here.)
  • Spanish teacher at Somerset Christian School (Read Sarah Sleasman's story here.)