RC minors are open to every LSA student, whether or not you are a part of the Residential College Michigan Learning Community program. Each one is interdisciplinary and built around a real problem rather than a single department: how cities work, how crime and punishment shape a society, how technology reshapes daily life, or how theater gets made. They're designed to sit next to almost any major and give it a sharper edge, pairing coursework with hands-on experience you can actually point to later. Each minor is 15 credits, and most can be built around what you already care about.
Make an appointment to discuss or declare one of the RC minors.
For other questions, contact:
RC Academic Services
1816 East Quad
734.763.0032
Read more about the RC Minors below:
Drama Minor
The RC Drama minor teaches you to make theater from the inside out: acting, playwriting, devising, dramaturgy, and directing, with no prior experience required. You start with one foundational course, then build the rest around what you want to get good at, from classical text to new performance. Some of the most distinctive work happens off the main stage, through the Prison Creative Arts Project, the trauma-informed Telling It program, and Shakespeare in the Arb, the annual outdoor production at Nichols Arboretum.
What you carry out of it reaches well past the stage. Learning to read a room, collaborate under pressure, and hold an audience matters in law, teaching, public policy, arts administration, and any job where you have to win people over in person. It pairs especially well with a major that will eventually put you in front of others.
More about the Drama Minor
Crime & Justice Minor
American incarceration has grown enormously over the last several decades, and crime has sat near the center of the country's politics the whole time. The Crime & Justice minor is built to help you understand why. You study the history of crime and criminal law, competing theories of punishment, and the social conditions that decide who gets policed, charged, and imprisoned, and who doesn't.
It's one of the most direct minors to pair with a future in law, policy, social work, journalism, or government. On a law school or graduate application, it signals that you've thought seriously about justice rather than just taken a passing interest. You can also get out of the classroom entirely, through options like Semester in Detroit and courses taught inside Michigan prisons.
More about Crime & Justice
Urban Studies Minor
More than half the world now lives in cities, and the people who shape them, planners, developers, organizers, policymakers, come from a mix of fields rather than one. The Urban Studies minor gives you that mix. You draw on urban planning, sociology, African American Studies, and social work to understand how a city forms, what makes it work, and why its benefits and burdens fall so unevenly.
The part that sets it apart is Detroit. Through Semester in Detroit you live in the city, take courses on its history and art, and intern with a local organization, so what you read in class meets an actual place. If you're heading toward planning, public policy, community development, or nonprofit work, this is a minor you can build a real career story around.
More about Urban Studies
Science, Technology, and Society (STS) Minor
Every new technology changes how people live before anyone decides whether it should, and someone has to ask who it helps and who it harms. STS trains you to be that someone. You examine the ethical, environmental, and social sides of new tools and methods, how science and medicine actually work as human institutions, and how questions of gender, race, and class run through all of it.
It's hard to name a field this isn't relevant to right now. Whether you're headed into tech, medicine, research, design, law, or policy, employers and graduate programs increasingly want people who can both build technology and think clearly about its consequences.
Last Updated: 07/17/2026
