Bachelor of Science in Psychology

The psychology program consists of 32 credit hours in psychology and 9 credit hours in mathematics. 49 credit hours are in free electives, which is enough to complete a minor or second major if you so choose.

All courses are 3 credits unless noted.

Clarkson Common Experience

The following courses are required for all students, irrespective of their program of study. These courses are offered during the fall semester, with FY100 First-Year Seminar being required of only first-year students. Both FY100 and UNIV190 are typically taken during the fall semester of the first year at Clarkson.

FY100 First-Year Seminar (1 credit)
UNIV190 The Clarkson Seminar (3 credits)

Psychology Core Requirements

Students must complete three of the following courses:

Educational Psychology    
Neuroscience and Society
Diversity Science    
Organizational Behavior    
Human Sexuality    
Cyberpsychology
The Psych of Psychoactive Drugs            
Consumer Behavior
Current Readings in Animal Behavior    
Dir. Res./Psychophysiology 
Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology     
Qualitative Research Methods        
J&DM for Biomedical Sciences    
Developmental Psychology
Adult Development and Aging
Prenatal, Infancy, and Child Development    
Counseling Psychology    
Mental Health Professional Experience
D.S. in Psychology
D.S. in Social Psychology
D.S. in Physiological Psychology
Dir. Res./Cultural Psychology
Dir. Res./Health Psychology
Dir. Res./Cognitive Psychology
Dir. Res./Social Psychology
Dir. Res./Clinical Psychology
Thesis/Dissertation in Psychology

Physiological requirement – (must take 1)

Perception 
Biological Psychology
Cognitive Neuroscience 
Neurobiology

Cognitive requirement – (must take 1) 

Animal Learning and Cognition 
Human Cognitive Evolution 
Learning and Memory
Judgment and Decision Making

Health and Well-being requirement – (must take 1)

Community Psychology 
Abnormal Psychology 
Health Psychology 
Clinical Psychology

Social and Cultural requirement – (must take 1)

Personality Psychology 
Motivation and Emotion 
Cultural Psychology
Advanced Topics in Social Psychology

Psychology Electives

Mathematics

Students must complete three courses in mathematics (MA) numbered 100 or above, including one calculus and one statistics course for a total of 9 credits.

Knowledge Area/University Course Electives

Students will have at least 15 credit hours available to use toward Knowledge Area and/or University Course electives to satisfy the Clarkson Common Experience requirements.

Free Electives

Students will have approximately 49 credit hours available to use toward courses of their choice.

Real-world experience is the hallmark of a psychology degree at Clarkson. If you're interested in clinical experience, you might find an internship or co-op at the Ogdensburg Mental Health Clinic, St. Lawrence Health's Chemical Dependency unit, The Arc New York, Renewal House or the Reachout crisis hotline. Students also have internships at national organizations like Accenture.

You could also find an opportunity at a local business or inside Clarkson's human resources office or even design your own.

Learn more about career development and internships at Clarkson.

Psychology students regularly travel to national and international conferences, where they present research. Often, that work is conducted with our faculty members. We encourage students to find faculty with similar interests and collaborate on projects; you could even publish your work as a research article.

Our faculty research interests include:

Hearing and Attention Lab – Dr. Lauren Petley

Attentional control supports our everyday functioning in myriad ways. Without it, we
would lose our capacity to complete difficult tasks, and our behavior would be
dominated by reflexive actions. Yet the study of attention is dominated by visual
research, limiting our understanding of its multisensory nature, and access to cognitive
testing for the visually impaired. After successfully developing an auditory version of the
classic Flanker task, we’ve incorporated it into an auditory Attention Network Test – the
first of its kind to successfully measure the three brain networks that are targeted by this
task.

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Motivation and Emotion Lab – Dr. Lisa Legault

In the MEL, we explore what motivates people to grow, learn, connect with others, and
act on their values. Drawing primarily on self-determination theory, we study how
autonomy, psychological need satisfaction, and internalized motivation shape wellbeing,
education, prejudice reduction, social justice engagement, and prosocial behavior. A
central theme of is to understand how people move beyond external pressure or
compliance to genuinely embrace values as part of who they are. Ultimately, our
research seeks to translate motivational science into environments and practices that
help people become more autonomous, engaged, socially responsible, and capable of
meaningful change.

Examples of recent student research projects include:

• Describing the psychological contents of peoples’ motivations to be
  antiprejudiced
• Examining the effectiveness of antiracist content on Instagram
• Understanding the importance of climate anger in fueling climate action
• Exploring how human agency fosters the development of virtuous character traits

Evolution and Cognition Lab – Dr. Andreas Wilke

We explore youths’ ability to identify, organize and recreate clumped, dispersed and
random spatial patterns. Our recent research finds that many adolescents naturally
misinterpret random patterns, but their understanding improves following targeted
instruction. These findings provide new insight into how pattern perception develops
throughout childhood and adolescence and suggest that statistical reasoning can be
strengthened through simple educational interventions.

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Culture, Family, and Child Development Lab — Dr. Ying Zhang

The CFCD Lab examines how family, cultural, and social experiences shape
development, relationships, and well-being. Undergraduate students are actively
involved in research projects and gain hands-on experience with different stages of the
research process, from developing research questions and reviewing literature to
analyzing data and presenting findings at conferences.

Examples of recent student research projects include:

• Early Head Start Engagement and Parent–Child Relationships: Investigating
  how families’ engagement with Early Head Start services relates to the quality of
  parenting and children’s self-regulation.
• Maternal Mental Health and Relationship Stress: Examining how relationship
  stress and family experiences are associated with maternal postpartum
  depression.
• Diversity Education in Psychology: Developing an open-access diversity
  education resource informed by a literature review and outreach to support
  diversity learning in psychology.
• Cell Phone Use and Emotion Regulation in College Students: Examining how
  patterns of cell phone use are associated with emotion regulation and
  psychological well-being among college students.

Psychology minors develop the critical skills of problem-solving and communication. These skills include being able to formulate a problem; acquiring the information needed to solve the problem, either through researching the existing literature or designing methods to collect new data; analyzing and interpreting the information; integrating the information and applying it to the problem; and communicating the solution to others.

All courses are 3 credits unless noted.

Psychology Minor Core Requirements (18 credits)

Students are required to take of the following courses:

PY151 – Introduction to Psychology AND
Any 5 Psychology (PY) 3 credit courses numbered 200 or above (only one of which can be the directed research or internship).

Biology, Behavior and Society Minor

To understand human cognition, social behavior and social organization, you need a background in multiple disciplines. This minor provides a foundation in biology, psychology and social science, so you can join the discussion. Learn more about the biology, behavior and society minor.

Cognitive Neuroscience Minor

Study the mechanisms that guide processes like attention, memory, perception and emotion. This minor is ideal for students interested in clinical health careers, such as medicine, physical therapy, clinical psychology and neuropsychology. Learn more about the cognitive neuroscience minor.

Health Psychology Concentration

We offer several classes aimed at psychology majors interested in health science careers. Choose any six of these to complete this concentration:

• Abnormal Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Health Psychology
• Human Sexuality
• Learning and Memory
• Motivation and Emotion
• Physiological Psychology
• Psychiatric Center Professional Experience
• Social Psychology
• The Psychology of Psychoactive Drugs

Pre-Health Sciences Advising Track

A psychology degree can take you in many directions. If you're interested in pursuing a career in the health sciences or healthcare, we'll work with you to ensure you're going the right way. Each semester, faculty advisors will help you choose classes and activities that can make it easier to get into graduate programs. The departmental psychology curriculum is so flexible that it provides an ideal starting point for students who want to double major (e.g., degrees in psychology and healthcare, or psychology and biology) within their regular course load.

Available advising tracks include:

• Occupational Therapy (feeds into Clarkson's OT Program)
• Physical Therapy (feeds into Clarkson's PT Program)
• Physician Assistant Studies (feeds into Clarkson's PA Program)
• Pre-dental
• Pre-medical
• Pre-optometry
• Pre-pharmacy
• Pre-public health
• Pre-veterinarian

Clarkson has established multiple professional partnerships with local psychiatric and mental health facilities to give our undergrads the rare opportunity to observe — and conduct — clinical work and supportive care in professional and community-based settings. Throughout an entire semester, participating students will spend a full day each week (or the equivalent) at one of our local partner sites, working with psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, peer support staff and other members of mental health teams. These students will encounter a wide range of conditions and concerns and may have the opportunity to work with children and adolescents, adults and sexual offenders.

Few, if any, undergraduate psychology programs offer students this level of professional immersion and clinical experience.

Participating students may observe and be involved in numerous forms of intervention and support, including:

• Case management
• Crisis intervention
• Diagnostic evaluation
• Education
• Individual and group counseling
• Medical evaluation
• Occupational therapy
• Physical therapy
• Psychosocial support
• Psychological testing
• Psychopharmacology
• Recreational therapy
• Socialization
• Structured learning therapy
• Task and skill training
• Vocational assessment

At the internship sites, students will not only observe professionals and support staff providing care and discussing treatment and intervention plans, but they will also have the opportunity to be directly engaged in clinical and support activities while receiving support and feedback from professionals and Clarkson faculty.

More about our professional partnership with the St. Lawrence Psychiatric Center

How has natural selection shaped our behavior? How does social pain affect our mental and physical health? How does motivation affect social perceptions, relationships and behavior? Our faculty ask these and other questions in our specialized labs — and so will you.

Labs include:

• Culture, Family and Child Development Lab
• Evolution of Cognition Lab
• Hearing and Attention Lab
• Motivation and Emotion Lab
• Phenomenology Lab