Information About the Psychology Program

Interested in declaring a major or minor in Psychology? Go here for more information.

Our primary objectives in the psychology department are to discover and teach the factors that underlie behavior and mental processes. We seek to educate undergraduate students in the disciplinary content and methods of the field and help students develop their information literacy as well as their communication and cognitive skills.  Please see our full Learning Objectives here.

The psychology program at St. Lawrence exposes students to the wide variety of subfields in psychology.  Our scientific approach is featured in Introductory Psychology, which covers a wide variety of topics, including development, personality, the biological bases of behavior, sensation and perception, learning, memory, social behavior, and abnormal behavior.  We then offer in-depth investigation of these and other topics in upper-level courses.

See courses regularly offered across three broad areas of the field—Biological/Evolutionary, Social/Cognitive, and Applied—here.

In addition, we offer courses on applied areas of psychology such as environmental psychology, sport psychology, and clinical psychology.  Students also have the opportunity to pursue an internship through the Community Psychology course and to conduct independent projects in collaboration with faculty members.  Click on this link for the guidelines to independent [IP guidelines] projects.

Numerous laboratory courses allow students to engage in hands-on learning, practicing research techniques, replicating experiments and investigating topics of individual scholarly interest.

The department strongly encourages and rewards meritorious achievement. Students who meet the eligibility criteria may join Psi Chi, the International Psychology Honorary. In addition, each spring psychology faculty members select outstanding majors as recipients of the J.H.L. Roach Award, the Susan Beucher Cady Prize, the Judith Mearig Memorial Prize, and the Peter Silverhart Award, which are presented at the Moving-Up Day ceremony.

Psychology is one of the most popular majors at St. Lawrence. Alumni surveys indicate that a substantial number of graduates enter graduate school in psychology and related fields. In addition, the Bachelor of Science degree in psychology has provided many students with the liberal arts foundation for careers in business, law, medicine, education, human services and other areas.