Catalog 2023-2024

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Department of Psychology

Faculty: Associate Professor Cummings, Department Chair; Janet R. Matthews Ph.D. Endowed Chair of Psychology, S. Blessing; Professor Koterba; Associate Professors Elzy, Festini, Gangi, Hardin, Husband, Marsh, Odgaard, Patrick, Stasio, Yuen; Assistant Professors J. Blessing, Orban, Rosenfeld; Assistant Teaching Professors Houghton, Jordan.

The mission of the Department of Psychology is to offer students a high-quality, state-of-the-field educational experience in psychology as a behavioral, cognitive, social science and applied discipline. Those majoring in psychology receive curricular and extracurricular experiences that meet or exceed all educational standards for undergraduates set by the American Psychological Association.

The values inherent in our teaching, advising and programming include the following:

  • Excellence in the classroom and extracurriculum.
  • Professional and personable faculty-student relations.
  • Reliance on the rational and empirical methods of science in human enquiry.
  • Critical thinking and judicious consumption of information and opinions.
  • Active faculty involvement in scholarship and professional activities.
  • Experiential and service learning as adjuncts to classroom instruction.
  • Human diversity and cultural awareness.
  • Liberal arts-based, multidisciplinary understanding of human problems and prospects, including attendant ethical considerations.

The Department of Psychology offers both a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Science in psychology. The B.A. degree is intended for those students who will seek employment at the baccalaureate level or enrollment in a wide variety of Master’s or Doctoral programs. These programs may be research oriented (e.g., social, developmental, industrial/organizational, and some areas of clinical psychology) or more applied in nature (e.g., counseling, social work, organizational behavior, business administration, school psychology, guidance counseling, law). The B.S. degree is intended for those students interested in areas of psychology that are more oriented towards biology, neuroscience, neuropsychology, or medical-related fields and other graduate programs related to psychology that also require a strong natural science and mathematics background (e.g., cognitive science, cognitive psychology, biopsychology, neuroscience, genetic counseling, psychiatry, and some areas of clinical psychology). The student may not earn both a B.S. and a B.A. in psychology.

All B.A. and B.S. psychology majors take a 17 credit-hour foundation of psychology courses, 20 credits of required courses from the various emphasis areas, and an additional 8 hours of psychology courses. The B.A. requires a minimum of 45 credits in psychology classes plus MAT 160 (4 credits), and the B.S. requires a minimum of 45 credits in psychology classes, plus the natural science and mathematics courses (24 credits) listed below.