Psychology BA

Psychology seeks to understand human cognition, emotion, experience, and behavior. The Psychology Program at Ramapo College educates students in both the science and profession of psychology.  Teaching psychology in a liberal arts context makes clear the interconnections between psychology and other disciplines and promotes critical reasoning skills.

The program nurtures learning by immersing students in a variety of theoretical orientations, research methodologies, and human diversity issues. Students also gain hands-on experience in the practice of psychology through fieldwork or through an independent research project. Students are trained to appropriately apply their psychological knowledge to issues in the world and to become discriminating readers of social and behavioral research. Students who are interested in graduate school are encouraged to participate in independent research under the guidance of a faculty member.

To attain these goals, the program requires that students complete four core courses: Introduction to Psychology, Statistics, Research Methods in Psychology, and Data Analysis in Psychology. The remaining requirements are structured around a number of courses that are grouped into eight categories. Students are required to take at least one course from each of these categories. This structure allows flexibility and choice, yet insures that students will be exposed to content in the areas of social, developmental, cognitive/neuroscience, and personality/clinical and socio-cultural psychology. Majors also take an elective course in psychology.

In fieldwork courses students generally work in a mental health or educational agency in the community such as a school for special children. In the fieldwork setting, students are required to act in a professional manner and abide by ethical guidelines, while in the classroom, they are guided in the development of their abilities to apply psychological concepts, research and theory to their field experiences. In the research course students design and implement a piece of original research under the close guidance of a faculty member in psychology. The final psychology requirement is a 400-level seminar in the fourth year: Capstone Seminar in Psychology. Examples of these include “Black Issues in Psychology,” “Eyewitness Memory,” “Child Maltreatment,” and “Cultural Nature of Development”.

Psychology is an appropriate major for a student seeking a career in any one of the human-service professions and for a student planning graduate work in psychology. Graduates may find opportunities for employment in a variety of settings such as community mental health centers, counseling services, substance-abuse programs, geriatric facilities, hospitals, probation services, and schools.  Other opportunities lie in the fields of advertising, consulting, consumer research, criminal justice, education, environmental policy, evaluation research, human factors engineering, marketing, personnel, and product planning.

The psychology major is offered by the School of Social Science and Human Services leading to a B.A. degree. A psychology minor is available.