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The University of Scranton Psychology Department is proud of the three major components of a quality education: faculty, students, and facilities.

Our 10 full-time faculty all hold doctoral degrees in psychology and are actively involved in research spanning the discipline: clinical, cognitive, developmental, industrial-organizational, learning, physiological, perception, and social. In addition to their teaching commitments, faculty members supervise research, publish regularly, review for journals, and coordinate grants. Additional information on the faculty is provided in Section III of this Handbook.

The three departmental student organizations are the Psychology Club, Psi Chi, and the Association for Psychological Science Student Caucus. The Psychology Club is open to any university student interested in psychology. Annual events include a fall picnic, a holiday dinner, community service projects, and a spring picnic.

Psi Chi is the National Honor Society in Psychology with chapters in 759 universities in all 50 states. The local chapter was founded in 1969 and is composed of psychology majors in the upper 35% of their class in general scholarship and of superior scholarship in psychology. Each year Psi Chi organizes an initiation dinner, a GRE Psychology review, and trips to a regional convention.

The local chapter of the Association for Psychological Science Student Caucus was organized in 1991 to promote critical thinking and discussion of topics related to psychology. This organization and the faculty coordinate the Annual University of Scranton Psychology Research Conference. This meeting typically draws over 200 registrants, attracts more than 40 paper presentations, and features an invited address by a prominent psychologist.

Research - There are over 3,000 square feet of research space in the department, which relocated in 1993 to the second floor of an extensively renovated Alumni Memorial Hall. This includes a complex for audio-video recording, a computer-based cognitive/perception laboratory, space for general research, and environmentally controlled animal facilities.

Computers - The department is at the forefront of computer applications. We have over 40 IBM-compatible personal computers connected through a high speed network to the University's main computers, laser and color printers, and other input/output devices. This system allows ready access to word-processing, computer-assisted instruction, graphics, data analysis, the Internet and the World Wide Web (visit our web page, http://academic.uofs.edu/department/psych/).

Affiliations - The Psychology Department is a charter member of the Council of Undergraduate Psychology Programs (CUPP). We are also a liaison institution of the Eastern Psychological Association (EPA) and a member of the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR).

The effectiveness of the University of Scranton psychology program is demonstrated in part by the following achievements:

Periodic surveys of our graduating seniors show widespread satisfaction with the program. For instance, in Spring 2008, 98% of our graduating psychology seniors gave the overall program an A or B, and 100% rated the quality of teaching as an A or B. Also, 77% of the class gave the department a grade of A or B for opportunity to do research, and 82% gave the department a grade of A or B for the opportunity for practical experience.

A notable proportion of our graduates go on to Ph.D. programs in psychology with financial assistance. Achievement is also demonstrated in a study from the Office of Institutional Research at Franklin and Marshall College, which shows that over the last decade for which data were analyzed (1986-1995), the University of Scranton ranked 24th out of 254 comparable 4-year private institutions as the baccalaureate source of Ph.D.s in Psychology. Twenty University graduates received doctorates in psychology during the 1990's.

Our students' knowledge of psychology, as measured by standardized tests, is well above the national average. This is reflected in their performance on the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) Psychology Subject Test and the Educational Testing Service (ETS) Major Field Achievement Test in Psychology. Compared to other institutions, the University of Scranton scored at 88^th percentile on the psychology achievement test in Spring 2006.

Psychology majors continue to conduct and present research at a rate far exceeding national norms. In the 2007-2008 academic year, for example, 15 current and past psychology undergraduates co-presented a paper or co-authored an article/book chapter with psychology faculty members.

An indirect measure of instructional and faculty quality are awards bestowed by independent bodies. The University of Scranton chapter of the Association for Psychological Science Student Caucus has twice been chosen as the outstanding chapter in the entire country. Both Dr. John Norcross and Dr. Tim Cannon were honored as Pennsylvania Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

In June 1993, the Psychology Department relocated to the newly refurbished Alumni Memorial Hall, which provided larger and more modern facilities. Our space includes two computer labs with 22 workstations, two fully-mediated dedicated classrooms, a fully-mediated dedicated seminar room, nine research labs, and ten faculty offices, among other improved features.