The UCI Religious Studies program currently offers two certificates. While these certificates are not on your formal transcript, students will be awarded a printed certificate and description they can use to enrich their résumé and vocational path in other degrees, work opportunities, or graduate school.
Students in any UCI school can enrich their degree path by adding a specialized Religious Studies Certificate.
Certificate in Religions and Cultures
The Certificate in Religions and Cultures is available for undergraduate and graduate students in any school across campus. Students who take the 5A (Islam, Judaism, Christianity), 5B (Asian/Global Traditions), and 5C (Religious Dialogue) series will have a robust engagement with several wisdom and cultural traditions in their internal diversity, ongoing evolution, and reinterpretations across time and place. These classes challenge any simple understanding of what "religion" is and does, and enable students to multiply their perspectives on big questions. The Certificate will provide students adaptive skills that enrich any major or minor such as navigating diverse sources to better understand religion in the public sphere, practicing cross-cultural dialog on difficult topics, and considering religion through the lenses of history, evolution, ritual, politics, and lived practice, among others. Students who earn this certificate will nearly have completed the 4 required courses for the major or minor in Religious Studies.
Requirements:
- REL STD 5A World Religions I
- REL STD 5B World Religions II
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REL STD 5C Religious Dialogue
Certificate in Jain Studies and Nonviolence
The Certificate in Jain Studies & Nonviolence is available for undergraduate and graduate students in any school across campus. The certificate emphasizes the historic development of the internally-diverse Jain community and tradition alongside other perspectives in the Indian subcontinent, as well as key Jain concepts and practices including plural ontology, Jain "Universal History," karma theory, many-sided knowledge, philosophy of nonviolence and practical restraints, views of plants and animals, Jains in India and diaspora, ritual and devotion, and a critical assessment of how Jain thought might apply to contemporary ethical issues.
Given that the Jain concept of nonviolence, though rooted in antiquity, contributed to the practical nonviolence of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., this certificate invites students to consider new applications of nonviolence in the context of cultural and political diversity and multispecies flourishing.
Requirements:
- REL STD 120 Jain History, Philosophy and Ethics
- REL STD 126 Topics in Jain Studies (topics vary)
- A third relevant course (*see details below)
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1.5-2 page single-spaced reflection that analyzes/unifies the three courses in some way. For example, this analysis could demonstrate a reinterpretation or expansion of Jain nonviolence, illuminate a methodological challenge to Jain Studies or a gap in another field, connect or complement concepts across courses through a new application or theoretical lens, among other possible overlaps.
*The third relevant course can be in any program or school. However, you must provide a brief rationale as to why you feel it meaningfully overlaps Jain Studies and nonviolence. To ensure the class will work, feel free to reach out to Professor Brianne Donaldson with the course and its relevance a minimum of two months prior to graduation. (b.donaldson@UCI.edu)
Please click here to declare your intent to complete the Certificate in Jain Studies & Nonviolence
Questions? Contact:
Michelle Spivey, Religious Studies Program Administrator, spiveym@uci.edu
Brianne Donaldson, Shri Parshvanath Presidential Chair in Jain Studies, b.donaldson@uci.edu
Header image: "This Is What Dreams Are Made Of" by Emily Walker (mixed media)
