Psychology Concentration

Coordinator:
Karen Tinsley, Psychology Department

The program in psychology emphasizes the contribution that psychology can make to a liberal arts education through stimulating intellectual development, personal growth, respect for others, and social responsibility. The psychology curriculum is designed to familiarize students with current methods and theories in the many specialized areas of investigation in the discipline, such as biopsychology, sensation and perception, cognition, learning, personality, social processes, clinical, and development.

Students electing a concentration in psychology will identify a particular focus in the field, and, with the assistance of an advisor, select courses to fit that interest. Throughout the concentration, they will be encouraged to appreciate different approaches and perspectives; to learn to observe psychological phenomena; and to recognize the role of multiple causation in the determination of human behavior.

The concentration in Psychology is not available to psychology majors.

Requirements

Students must take four courses (16 credit hours), at least one of which is one of the three introductory level survey courses (PSY 100: General Psychology; PSY 224: Developmental Psychology; and PSY 232: Introduction to Personality) and two of which are upper-level courses (SPST 340, independent studies, internships, and special topics can be included).

Since the concentration is so individualized, and to insure its coherence, the interested student should declare it early in order to take maximum advantage of the required collaboration with a departmental advisor. We recommend that a written form be presented to, and signed by, the chair of the department, and taken to the Registrar's Office, along the same lines as the current form declaring a major. (To insure completion of the concentration with four courses, we recommend that such declaration be made before the student begins the third psychology course.)

In addition to completing the four courses approved by an advisor, students are required to write a three- to five-page statement about these four courses and submit it to the department chair; this statement should indicate the coherence of the particular courses taken, including some discussion of both the breadth of the material studied and the depth of the student's special interests. The statement is to be signed by the psychology departmental advisor, who, in turn, submits it to the chair of the psychology department. If the department chair thinks revisions are necessary, he or she will ask for them.