Psychology B.S.

For millennia, our survival as human beings has depended on our ability to understand and predict others' behaviors. Today, personal and professional success continues to depend on understanding and predicting human experiences and behavior. Psychology is the scientific study of these experiences and behaviors. Given humans' imposing complexity, psychologists employ a range of perspectives, including evolutionary, biological, social, organizational, institutional, and sociocultural. In turn, these perspectives influence psychologists' levels of explanation, from genetics to brain physiology, personality, individual differences, social interactions and group memberships, the institutions that we inhabit, and the cultures in which we spend our lives. Like all liberal arts disciplines, psychology addresses human experience, but what makes psychology unique as a scientific discipline are the concepts that psychologists use to make sense of people and the methods that they use to learn more about them.

Our baccalaureate programs provide students with a strong general background in all areas of psychology and with the ability to think and reason critically in a wide variety of settings. All psychology students complete three critical courses essential to achieve those goals: PSY 1001 (Introduction to Psychology) provides a broad overview of what psychologists know about human behavior; PSY 3001W (Introduction to Research Methods) focuses on the skills necessary to generate new knowledge; and PSY 3801 (Introduction to Psychological Measurement and Data Analysis) addresses the skills necessary to test hypotheses using statistical methods. Students will complete additional courses focused on their individual interests, and even if they never plan to become psychological scientists, students will develop the skills needed throughout their lives to be sophisticated evaluators of psychological information and to navigate the complexities of human behavior.

The B.S. degree emphasizes outside coursework closely related to biological and quantitative psychology, including fields such as neuroscience, cognitive and computer science, biology, chemistry, and mathematics. The B.S. prepares students for graduate work in psychology and related fields, and we encourage students interested in the biological, genetic, or evolutionary underpinnings of human behavior to complete outside courses in the life sciences, including biology, chemistry, and evolution. We encourage students interested in quantitative approaches and the cognitive underpinnings of human behavior to complete outside courses in mathematics, statistics, and computer science. A B.S. degree in psychology provides a valuable background for a variety of careers and graduate and professional academic programs, including psychology, medicine, neuroscience, and computer science. A professional career as a psychologist requires training beyond the baccalaureate degree.