It is my pleasure as Chair of the Department of Human Sexuality Studies and Director of the National Sexuality Resource Center at San Francisco State University to welcome you to our newly revised and updated website. We encourage you to explore the resources and links provided by this window into a rich and growing intellectual field—sexuality.

Sexuality studies is a field, not a discipline, and today more than ever it needs strong and highly motivated students, researchers, and leaders who will move sexual literacy in the US and globally ahead in the coming years.
At San Francisco State University my colleagues and I are pleased to teach and research at one of the few programs of undergraduate study on sexuality in our country, and the only graduate degree program defined in the field of sexuality at a public university. In addition to our own HMSX courses, we have a large number of affiliated Graduate and Undergraduate Studies faculty in other departments, including Sociology, Communication History, Health Education, Political Science, Anthropology, Women’s Studies, who offer cross-listed courses with our Program. Our HMSX courses offer a broad spectrum of fascinating, evidence-based knowledge, based in part on our own research, concerning how sexuality organizes the subjectivities of desire, pleasure and intimacy in human development, male and female roles and identities, social institutions, social movements, cultures and communities, citizenship, government policy and politics, and globalization, including the advance of sexual and reproductive rights as part of a larger arena of human rights. Our faculty employs the latest theories, methodologies, and data to understand these and other areas of human experience and relationships. We also give special importance to the role of sexuality research and policy in helping to promote social justice for all Americans regardless their race, social class, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, political persuasion.

If you are a prospective student seeking to enter our undergraduate studies program, I encourage you to call, email or meet with our Undergraduate Studies advisor, Dr. Hector Carrillo . We offer a Minor degree in Sexuality Studies, and a Minor degree in LGBT Studies. Both of these degrees are capped off with a special small seminar like course (HMSX 680), which enables individual projects and honors thesis type papers to culminate the students’ study of sexuality at SFSU.

For those of you who are prospectus applicants to our Graduate Program with a Master of Arts degree in Human Sexuality Studies, I urge you to email, call or visit in person our Graduate Studies coordinator,
Dr. Rita Melendez. Our Graduate Program is research oriented with a focus on the social, psychological, and health sciences. Through a sequence of small, knowledge oriented seminars that offer the chance to get to know and work closely with our faculty, Human Sexuality Studies employs a multidisciplinary approach that offers the latest theory, methodology, research design, data analysis, and comprehensive understanding of how sexuality is handled in the anthropology, sociology, psychology, history, and public health in particular. Our graduate students go on to PhD programs in these fields, get research jobs, work in advocacy and social service agencies, and sometimes move into administrative and leadership positions in community and national organizations.

Finally, please take a moment to visit the web sites of two centers that are part of our Department of Human Sexuality Studies: the NSRC (National Sexuality Resource Center), and the CRGS (Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality), both of which are housed at our new downtown location at 835 Market St in San Francisco. These centers are our arm into the world and communities in need. They provide critical resources, including American Sexuality Magazine, and our peer-reviewed journal, Sexuality Research and Social Policy, as well as many tools, and the latest cutting edge research on issues that include adolescent and female sexuality, community college sexual literacy, and the use of technologies in sexual relationship formation. Students from our Program work as interns and research assistants at the centers. We also offer an annual Summer Institute on Sexuality, Society and Health—and urge you to consider attending.

Best wishes and please contact us if we may be of help!