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B.A. Degree in Psychology
Minor in Psychology
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.
Catawba offers a minor in Psychology.
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. Our graduates can write clearly and to the point, have the ability to accurately collect data and make evidence-based analysis of those data, and can draw useful and accurate conclusions. Catawba Psychology grads work collaboratively on research tasks, acquire hands-on methods of communicating scientific information, and develop 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 a part of many classes in our academic program and is a culminating experience.
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.
Students interested in pursuing a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology are eligible to apply for a Departmental Psychology Scholarship. Applicants for this scholarship must have an SAT Math and Critical Reading sub-scores of 1050 or greater (ACT Composite equal to 23 or greater) and a grade point average of 3.0 or above. Online applications for the Catawba College Psychology Scholarship must be completed by January 5 each year.
Apply for this Scholarship
Two-thirds of Catawba College Psychology majors graduating between 2017-2020 had internships or off-campus fieldwork. Some of their experiences included working with children as play therapist interns; 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; learning applied behavior analysis with children with ODD and ADHD at a summer camp; shadowing physicians and assisting with pharmacy stocking at the Community Care Clinic; service as a Court Advocate Intern with the Family Crisis Council; shadowing guidance counselors at several local schools; 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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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:
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.
Outcomes
PSYCHOLOGY DEGREE JOBS.
Recent Entry-Level Jobs of Catawba B.A. Psychology Graduates include:
GRADUATE SCHOOLS.
Graduate Schools Enrolling Catawba Psychology Majors
Catawba College Psychology alumni have been accepted into the following graduate schools:
"I really enjoyed the feeling of competence and mastery that you gain from seeing a big project from beginning to end.
"It was a lot of work and the workload was overwhelming at times, but the busy work never felt pointless or unimportant in retrospect. Many other schools don’t put this much emphasis on going step by step through the whole research process and I got the feeling they were missing out. This was particularly evident when talking to few Psychology majors from other schools at a recent conference who didn’t seem as intellectually interested in what conclusions you could (or couldn’t) draw from the research being presented."
Breki Bjarnason '18
B.A. Psychology with Minors in Business Administration and Sociology
Fuel your passion for all things psychological by participating in the Psychology Club, a psychology interest society, or Psi Chi, the national psychology honors society.
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