The mission of the Department of Psychology is to provide quality instruction in behavioral science to the students of California State University, Fresno. The program is designed to promote and develop skills in critical thinking and expression, quantitative reasoning, scientific literacy, and an appreciation of different perspectives in psychology. These abilities may be applied to diverse occupations, graduate training, and community service.
Undergraduate Goals and Student Learning Outcomes
Goal 1: Knowledge Base of Psychology. Students can demonstrate familiarity with the major concepts, theoretical perspectives, empirical findings, and historical trends in psychology.
- Students can demonstrate knowledge and understanding of theory and research in at least two of the following areas: biopsychology, cognitive, learning, motivation, sensation and perception.
- Students can demonstrate knowledge and understanding of theory and research in at least two of the following areas: clinical, developmental, personality, and social.
- Students can demonstrate knowledge and understanding in history and systems, research methods, and statistics.
Goal 2: Research methods and Critical Thinking in Psychology. Students can understand and apply basic research methods in psychology, including research design, data analysis, and interpretation.
- Students can use the library, data bases, and the Internet to locate relevant research, theory, and information necessary to plan, conduct, and interpret results of research studies.
- Students can formulate a testable research hypothesis and design a basic study to address psychological questions using an appropriate research design and methodology.
- Students can collect data under supervised direction.
- Students can enter and analyze data using a computer statistical package and interpret basic descriptive and inferential statistics.
- Students can apply APA ethical guidelines in the design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, and reporting of psychological research.
- Students can write an APA style empirical research report, demonstrating an understanding of the various section of the report, including the introduction, method, results, and discussion.
Goal 3: Career Preparation and Development. Students can acquire basic written and oral presentation skills and obtain an understanding of the range of career and advanced educational opportunities available to those with a degree in Psychology.
- Demonstrate effective written communication skills.
- Demonstrate effective oral presentation skills.
- Demonstrate numerical literacy.
- Understand the field and educational experience required for potential careers, including, for example, counselor, social worker, clinical psychologist, psychiatrist, university professor, school psychologist, applied behavior analyst, and special education teacher.