Semester Requirements

http://www.rit.edu/cla/psychology

Program overview

The bachelor of science degree in psychology provides students with a strong grounding in the discipline of psychology, integrated with a technological focus. Upon entry, students are assigned a faculty adviser to mentor their progress through the program. Curriculum planning strategies and career discussions occur with each student’s faculty mentor.

Curriculum

The program is unique and encompasses four key elements: the choice among five upper-level interdisciplinary tracks, a solid grounding in experimental methodology and statistics, the capstone sequence of courses, and a cooperative education requirement.

Interdisciplinary tracks

Students choose one of the following interdisciplinary tracks: biopsychology; clinical psychology; cognitive psychology; visual perception; or social psychology. Technology is integrated into these tracks to produce a nontraditional and career-oriented psychology major. The tracks are also active fields of research in psychology, and students receive training that provides a strong foundation for graduate school and employment in related fields.

The biopsychology track studies brain function as the basis of behavior. It focuses on topics such as lateralization, cortical specialization, brain injury, and psychopharmacology. Psychophysiological measures (including EEG, EMG, and skin conductance) are covered in depth along with the relationship between brain chemistry and behavior. Students perform laboratory work on the brain and its relationship to attention, memory, language, perception, and psychological disorders.

The clinical psychology track emphasizes the scientific and empirical foundations of clinical and applied work. Empirically based methods are introduced to understand and modify human psychological problems. This track prepares students for graduate programs in mental health.

The cognitive psychology track uses an interdisciplinary approach to study processes such as judgment, decision making, memory, learning, language, problem solving, and attention. The track explores the interaction of human factors, psychology, and technology.

The social psychology track introduces to the complexity of human behavior in groups. Behavior in pairs, small groups and larger aggregations is covered in different classes. Like the other tracks, students learn by doing studies and reading relevant literature.

The visual perception track focuses on human perceptual systems. Vision is presented as the integration of anatomy, physiology, and behavior. Students learn psychophysical methods. The track covers cutting-edge topics such as color perception, perception of 2D features, 3D perception and our interactions with objects, and neural plasticity.

Cooperative education

The program requires students to complete a cooperative education experience for one semester. This is normally done in the summer after the junior year, but can be done in any semester after the second year in the program. The co-op experience is in a psychology-related field and does not carry academic credit.

Psychology, BS degree, typical course sequence (semesters), effective fall 2013

Please see New General Education Curriculum–Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) for more information.

(WI) Refers to a writing intensive course within the major.

* Please see Wellness Education Requirement for more information. Students completing bachelor's degrees are required to complete two Wellness courses.
† The First Year Seminar requirement is replaced by an LAS Elective for the 2013-14 academic year.

‡ Students may choose one of the following courses to fulfill the psychology capstone: PSYC-402 (WI), PSYC-501, or PYSC-510 (WI).

Additional information

Career opportunities

The unique requirements of this major ensure that each student is well-prepared for advanced study in psychology or a related field, employment in industry or in human service agencies, or other career opportunities.