Oleg Vasilchenko

One year studying in the SDAC program

When I finished my bachelor’s in international business studies at the FAU, I was looking for a master’s program that would incorporate a broad field of social sciences. Soon I stumbled across the SDAC program and the description sounded amazing: a multidisciplinary program, small course sizes, and a lecturer as personal mentor. First, I was sceptical if every of the beforementioned promises could be fulfilled. After studying for one year in this program I can say that this scepticism was unnecessary.

The program itself is highly interdisciplinary: Anthropology, Economics, Politics, Sociology, Philosophy, and History are included in the curriculum. Studying these fields with the focus on decision-making provides a huge amount of contextual knowledge, not only from the theoretical scientific perspective but also with many practical implications. All the lecturers of the program are highly qualified in their respective fields, additionally they encourage the students to implement trans-disciplinary approaches in every possible form.

Because of the small number of participants in this program the direct contact with lecturers is always possible (and encouraged). Not only the lecturers provide a great amount of knowledge, but also the fellow students with their various backgrounds contribute to the truly unusual and exciting study experience.

Naturally, one must also mention that the program is challenging. Without comprehensively preparing for every course session during the semester much of the potential knowledge gain could be lost. Especially the process of changing my perspective on scientific methods from a narrow to a broader sense took some time and was connected with a lot of work.
After one year studying in this program I still can highly recommend it to everyone who wants to receive a wide perspective of humanitarian scientific fields while also ensuring to gain comprehensive knowledge in all these areas.