International Affairs is for students who want to learn how the world works, including questions about the ways in which countries interact with one another (foreign policy, international organization, peace, and conflict) and the internal politics and society of countries and regions (democracy, authoritarianism, economic change, and ethnicity). International Affairs students develop skills to answer these questions from multiple disciplines across the social sciences and humanities.

International Affairs is an interdisciplinary major made up of classes from political science, foreign language, economics, history, and other related majors. The essential courses to complete in a two-year program before transferring to JMU and majoring in International Affairs are foreign language classes and elementary statistics. Students without at least a year of college-level foreign language will struggle to complete the major’s language requirement without delaying graduation. It is also helpful if students take macroeconomics, microeconomics, international relations, and comparative politics.

• Create a schedule for all required courses, pay attention to prerequisites and when courses are offered, complete your first math and English courses in your first year
• Connect with an advisor at your community college and James Madison University within your first year via College Connect

Many International Affairs majors choose to pursue a minor or second major in one of the disciplines that make up their first major, such as foreign language, history or economics, or one of the cross-disciplinary minors that also intersect the International Affairs major, such as African, African-American and Diaspora Studies, Modern European Studies, Asian Studies, Latin American, Latinx and Caribbean Studies, Middle Eastern Communication and Migration, Women and Gender Studies, or Humanitarian Affairs. Many International Affairs students choose to study abroad in one of JMU’s semester programs in Florence, Salamanca, and London or in one of more than fifty short-term programs operated by JMU faculty.

Most of our students complete their major and degree requirements within the standard four-year period. Our graduates are also able to find jobs in a variety of fields—in both the public and private sectors—once they leave JMU. Our alumni network has proved helpful in directing our majors toward job and career prospects upon graduation. For those who are interested, the Washington Semester supplies both academic coursework as well as potential career networking. International Affairs can also continue to JMU’s Master’s in European Union Policy Studies in Florence, Italy.

• Completing your Associate transfer degree post-high school satisfies all lower division general education requirements and increases the chance of completing your bachelor's degree?
• Exceeding 3 years or 90 credits at your community college means you may have exhausted your financial aid at that college and have limited your future financial aid at: James Madison University