How does technology impact society? As an engineer, you will be faced with ethical choices about the technologies you create. Are you ready to expand your education with GE Humanities courses exploring the complexity and nuance of technology? Join the Humanizing Technology Certificate Program! The Humanizing Technology Certificate Program is a Humanities Division initiative targeted to early career Engineering students but open to all UCSC undergraduates. During the Summer Session, the program is also open to visiting students . The program features small class sizes and GE courses that examine the goals and impacts of technology in various ways. How to Earn the Certificate Take three of the six Humanities courses listed below. There are no prerequisites and you can take the courses in any order you choose. Each course fulfills a different GE requirement. Certificate Completion Once you complete three classes and grades have been posted, you will receive an email with your certificate signed by the Dean of Humanities. You will also receive a Humanizing Technology Certificate digital badge to add to your LinkedIn. Connect with the Humanizing Technology Advisor Students can connect with the Humanizing Technology Certificate advisor by sending an email or setting up an appointment on Slug Success. Advisor: Maya Woolfe (she/her), Director of Student Engagement. Email Advising Email advising is great for asking quick questions. Please email us at humadvising@ucsc.edu with your UCSC email account and provide your full name and student ID number (SID). Please allow 3-5 business days for a response. Email advising is great for asking quick questions. Please email us at humadvising@ucsc.edu with your UCSC email account and provide your full name and student ID number (SID). Please allow 3-5 business days for a response. Appointments Schedule 30-minute appointments on Slug Success or the Navigate app .For help with Slug Success, please refer to these how-to guides . Schedule 30-minute appointments on Slug Success or the Navigate app .For help with Slug Success, please refer to these how-to guides . Here is a direct link to the HUM Tech Advisors Appointment Availability Upcoming Courses Offered ​As of Fall 2026, our course code will be HTEC, not HUMN. You can still find courses by searching the class search with the subject Humanizing Technology. Fall 2025 courses: HUMN 15 Ethics and Technology, TA GE HUMN 25 Humans and Machines, TA GE Winter 2026 courses: HUMN 15 Ethics and Technology, TA GE HUMN 55 Technologies of Representation, IM GE Spring 2026 courses: HUMN 55 Technologies of Representation, IM GE LIT 81E The Influencers: How Social Media Shapes Us, PE-T GE LIT 160P WTF is going on?: Media literacy in the age of disinformation, PE-H GE Summer 2026 courses: HUMN 15 Ethics and Technology, TA GE HUMN 25 Humans and Machines, TA GE HUMN 35 Language Technology, CC GE HUMN 55 Technologies of Representation, IM GE Fall 2026 courses: HTEC 35 Language Technology, CC GE Learn More about the Courses HUMN 15 Ethics and Technology (Textual Analysis GE) This course explores ethical, social, and political issues raised by existing and emerging technologies. Watch videos from Humanities and Baskin Engineering faculty. HUMN 25 Humans and Machines (Textual Analysis GE) This course explores the tension between humans and machines, between people and objects increasingly resembling them. Watch videos from Humanities and Baskin Engineering faculty.

HUMN 35 Language Technology (Cross-Cultural Analysis GE) This course provides a comparative, historical framing of the development of communication technologies and practices, considering a variety of cultures and societies across human history. Watch videos from Humanities and Baskin Engineering faculty. HUMN 45 Race and Technology (Ethnicity and Race GE) This course examines how the construction of race connects with constructs in science and technology. Watch videos from Humanities and Baskin Engineering faculty. HUMN 55 Technologies of Representation (Interpreting Arts and Media GE) Focusing on technologies of representation like photographs, selfies, and surveillance data, this course explores how viewers and makers derive meaning from images and how power operates in their creation and circulation. Watch videos from Humanities and Baskin Engineering faculty. LIT 81E The Influencers: How Social Media Shapes Us (PE-T GE) Social media influencers influence us. But who—or what—is influencing the influencers? This course pulls back the curtain on how social media platform design, surveillance capitalism, and algorithmic incentives have reshaped communication, identity, belief, and social conflict. LIT 126H Artificial Intelligence and Human Imagination , (Cross-Cultural Analysis GE) This course uses a cultural framework to study the promises and perils of AI, with a dual focus on the technosystems themselves and the role of AI in the social imaginary. Listen to the Talk of the Bay podcast on KSQD and read the related article about the course. LIT 160P WTF is going on?: Media literacy in the age of disinformation , (PE-H GE) Our world is saturated with information and much of it is inaccurate. This class teaches how to identify bad information and how to keep it from spreading. It explores the role and responsibility of journalism in the world and why it matters. It investigates where information originates and the motivations of those producing, spreading, and sharing it, and pushes students to consider their media diet and how it affects their life and understanding of the world Watch Videos from our Faculty Humanities Alumni in Tech Panel, Winter 2024 March Slugs and Steins with Professor Pranav Anand: Event Recap , March 2024 Humanizing Technology Grad Profile: Mark Howard , March 2024 Humanizing Technology Grad Profile: Caitlin Flaws , December 2023 Humanizing Technology Grad Profile: Mia Tempestt Boykin , October 2023 Humanizing Technology Grad Profile: Dustin Gray , October 2023 When Humanists Met Technologists , August 2023 Humanizing Technology Fellows Program welcomes four teaching fellows and two peer mentors for 2023–24. Ethics and Technology/TEQ Deck Workshops, Spring Quarter 2023, co-sponsored with the Center for Public Philosophy . Let’s Talk About ChatGPT Panel Event, March 21, 12-1:30 p.m., recording available here. UC Santa Cruz receives National Endowment for the Humanities grant to connect studies of humanities, engineering Humanizing Technology Launch Event, November 7, 4-6:30 p.m., Crown College Plaza “Humanizing Technology,” is a certificate program that provides humanities training targeted to early-career engineering undergraduate students at UC Santa Cruz. Previously funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities under their Humanities Initiatives at Hispanic-Serving Institutions program, the project brings humanistic methods and thinking to contemporary issues in technology and engineering. It is led by principal investigator Jasmine Alinder (Dean of Humanities) and co-principal investigators, Pranav Anand (Professor of Linguistics) and Laura Martin (Porter College Lecturer and Project Manager at The Humanities Institute). The Humanizing Technology Certificate Program encourages students to explore the impacts of new and existing technologies. At the same time, it helps students develop their critical thinking about social and cultural systems that inform these technologies, and provides them with tools for becoming socially responsible professionals. The certificate offers engineering students a pathway to fulfill GE requirements with courses that have a direct relevance to their majors and career interests, and it gives students an opportunity to develop community and a sense of belonging in smaller learning environments. The courses integrate humanities concerns and approaches with the biotechnological, computational, robotic, electronic, and data scientific technologies engineering students study and will develop in their careers after graduation. Overall, the certificate courses and program aim to give students a humanistic foundation for designing and implementing new technologies and to encourage a consistent awareness about the consequences of new and existing technologies as well as the historical, social, and political contexts of technological design and application, based on extensive case studies. The courses were developed in an innovative, collaborative, and interdisciplinary framework, and were informed by stakeholder conversations with faculty, students, and staff in the Baskin School of Engineering. Partnering with The Humanities Institute and UC Santa Cruz’s Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning (CITL), the Humanities Division convened an instructional community of faculty and graduate students to plan and devise the certificate courses. Kendra Dority, Associate Director of Graduate Programs at CITL, created and led the summer course design institute, and, along with CITL’s Founding Director, Jody Greene, facilitated the workshops. Together, they guided the instructional teams through an evidence-based design process to develop their course themes, syllabi, learning objectives, assignments, and assessments. The resulting courses are small and discussion-oriented, with assignments that encourage students to develop their own viewpoints on the sources and impacts of technological systems, and to convey those viewpoints clearly and confidently. Above all, the courses help students learn how to grapple with difficult questions that lack clear “right” answers. Affiliated Faculty Pranav Anand, Linguistics Ben Breen, History Martin Devecka, Literature Kirsten Gruesz, Literature Kate Jones, History Lauren Lyons, Philosophy Matt O’Hara, History Dimitris Papadopoulos, History of Consciousness Kyle Parry, History of Art and Visual Culture Felicity Amaya Schaeffer, Feminist Studies/Critical Race & Ethnic Studies Amanda Smith, Literature Rasmus Winther, Humanities Division Zac Zimmer, Literature Affiliated Graduate Students Mykel Brinkerhoff, Linguistics Debbie Duarte, Literature Caitlin-Anne Flaws, Literature Dustin Gray, Philosophy Mark Howard, Politics Won Jeon, History of Consciousness Marilia Kaisar, Film and Digital Media Allison Nguyen, Psychology LuLing Osofsky, History of Art and Visual Culture Mia Tempestt Boykin, Literature Merve Ünsal Genç, Film and Digital Media Project Partners Baskin School of Engineering Teaching & Learning Center The Humanities Institute The Center for Public Philosophy Thank you to our partners