UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz Graduate School of Education launched its first undergraduate education major with classes set to begin in fall 2027.

Prospective students are currently being accepted to the new Education and Society major, a Bachelor of Arts degree, according to Tarek Azzam, chair of the Department of Education.

The Gevirtz Graduate School of Education includes the Department of Counseling, Clinical and School Psychology, the Department of Education and the Teacher Education program. It currently offers master’s and doctorate degrees and postgraduate teaching credentials.

It also offers three undergraduate minors in applied psychology, educational studies and science and math education. 

“We believe that the major is going to open up a lot more doors and more pathways,” Azzam said. 

He added that the department recognized there was a high demand for an undergraduate major for students interested in education, education policy and teaching after conducting a study about three years ago. 

Before launching the major, the educational studies minor within the Gevirtz School was one of the largest on the university’s campus, according to Azzam. 

“There was really an unmet need here, and we felt like we really needed to be able to contribute to that,” he said.

Azzam noted that the major will not grant students teaching credentials, and that is still a separate program, but the major prepares students for it.

Undergraduate faculty director and Professor Jason Duque, who was previously an adviser for the education minor, said the development of the major moved quickly. 

“It’s absolutely stunning,” he said.

UCSB’s move to offer this new major aligns with a trend seen on other UC campuses that have added education majors. Most recently, UC Berkeley launched the major about a year ago, Azzam said. 

The major is designed to be interdisciplinary, pulling from different areas of study including psychology and social sciences, Azzam said, to “bring together and really try and address education issues out there.” 

“It takes a team in different ways of looking at an issue or situation to come up with a solution to literacy rates, math rates, engagement issues, student dignity,” Azzam listed off. 

Duque and Azzam added that UCSB faculty have turned to the other UC campuses that launched the major to learn from their process. To start, about 75 students will be accepted, Azzam added.

The preparation courses required for the major include learning across the lifespan, education and human diversity and education research. 

Following the completion of those courses, students can begin to specialize in their areas of focus, Azzam said. In the upper-division courses, students can focus on areas including science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, and ecology and the environment. 

“There’s actually a lot of interest in that. Like how do we actually use education to help prepare future generations about dealing with climate change, as an example,” he said. 

Students will also be expected to work in the community.

“That is something we are already doing, but we are going to really formalize it as part of that process to really help to make sure there’s a nice connection between what we are learning in the classroom and how it operates in the real world,” Azzam said. 

For Duque, the addition of the major is not “changing the road” but rather “paving a new lane.”

Students currently enrolled in the education minor may be able to switch into the undergraduate major, but plans for how to do so are still being figured out, according to Azzam. 

“We are really focused on the incoming students at this point, and then we can admit current students that are in the minor,” he said. 

This isn’t UCSB’s only new undergraduate major coming to campus. The university announced the addition of an undergraduate artificial intelligence major about five months ago.