PSYCHOLOGY.

Psychology Major - Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Major in Psychology, the scientific study of behavior, and enter a field of great fascination and endless variety.

Psychologists seek to unravel the multiple relationships between how the person's varied ways of doing things affect (and are affected by) that person's environment. As a Psychology major at Catawba College, you’ll find that our academic program balances the “scientific” aspects of the discipline with the “application” of that science to issues of human concern.

Thanks to the flexibility built into the B.A. in Psychology degree program, Catawba students learn the multiple facets of Psychology while in the midst of a strong liberal arts curriculum. They supplement coursework with integrative experiences outside the classroom, including practica, internships, and substantive professional research conducted side-by-side with inspiring faculty.

You may not yet be certain about HOW you will "use" your Psychology major after you graduate. At Catawba, our flexibility acknowledges and addresses that uncertainty.

Minor in Psychology

Catawba offers a minor in Psychology.

Psychology Program Highlights

Catawba College’s Psychology Department helps students to develop and hone skills that are needed for today’s jobs and for jobs that don’t yet exist.  Our goal is to help students acquire the generalized skills, traits, and qualitative knowledge that employers seek, including graduates who can write clearly and to the point, have the ability to accurately collect data and make evidence-based analysis of it, and can draw useful and accurate conclusions.  Catawba Psychology grads have the ability to work collaboratively on research tasks, acquire hands-on methods of communicating scientific information, and an ability to think critically about ethical issues and debates.

All Psychology majors at Catawba College do required research and most do research that is presented at regional conferences to which these students travel.  Research is part of almost everything offered in this academic program and is seen as a method of culminating experiences.

Students pursuing a B.A. in Psychology must complete an integrative experience to graduate.  Psychology majors complete either research presented at a conference, an internship, or both.

Internships or Fieldwork for Psychology Majors.

Seventy five percent of Catawba College Psychology majors graduating between 2017 and 2019 have had or will have internships or fieldwork off campus.  Some of their experiences have entailed working with teen parents on parenting and life skills at Families First! Rowan; collecting data about dog interpersonal and cognitive behaviors at the Yale University’s Canine Cognition Lab; shadowing physicians and assisting with pharmacy stocking at the Community Care Clinic; service as a Court Advocate Intern with the Family Crisis Council; and working with autistic children and children with cerebral palsy to train and develop their gross and fine motor skills and behavior modification protocols at Partners in Learning.

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Research Experiences in Psychology.

There is no college that provides research opportunities to its students as Catawba College does, especially in the Psychology Department. All Psychology degree seekers at Catawba have completed at least one research project and more than three-quarters of them have presented their research at a convention.

Catawba College Psychology majors have won conference travel grants and financial awards for their projects and their papers presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and Southeastern Psychological Association annual conferences. These Catawba students have also published research in peer-review journals, including “Social Behavior and Research” and “Journal of Cognitive Behavior.” 

Research topics explored by students pursuing a B.A. in Psychology at Catawba include:

• What’s in a Tweet? How Religious Affiliation Influences Celebrity Tweet Content.
• Can Language Study Positively Impact Divergent Thinking.
• How social status influences “affect language” in Tweets.
• Effects of glucose in chewing gum on memory performance.
• Cross-cultural patterns in liking of names and name letters.
• Effects of background color presentation and word emotionality on recall of text.

Study Abroad in Psychology.

The Catawba College Cross-Cultural Psychology course recently took students to Puerto Rico to see how the lingering recovery efforts from Hurricane Maria are still affecting this U.S. territory and its residents.

Other multidisciplinary courses offered recently that paired Psychology faculty with their peers in another academic program include Neurodiversity, team-taught by Psychology and Theatre Arts, and Death and Dying, team-taught by Psychology and English.

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