UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM

At UC Davis, the Psychology program has several objectives:

  • it presents an introduction to the study of individual and group behavior;
  • it provides a liberal arts curriculum for students looking for employment in business, government, personnel work, and other fields directly after obtaining their bachelor’s degree;
    and
  • it prepares students for graduate study in various areas of psychology, leading to teaching, research and applied work.

Students who have majored in psychology at UCD have selected many different careers after graduation. Psychology majors have gone into industry, teaching, sales, social work, counseling, medicine, the ministry, and nursing, to name a few.


THE MAJOR

The psychology program at UCD is broad and includes students and faculty with a variety of interests. The department has developed five major areas of emphasis:

Perception Cognitive Neuroscience Psychology, which involves the study of awareness and thought, and includes such topics as perception, learning, memory, and consciousness; Psychobiology, which involves the study of the biological correlates of behavior and includes such topics as physiological psychology, sensory processes, health psychology, and animal behavior; Social-Personality Psychology, which involves the study of the individual in his or her social environment and includes such topics as personality theory, abnormal psychology, individual differences, developmental psychology, and social psychology; Developmental, which includes imaging the developing brain, children's psychological understanding or theory of mind (e.g., knowledge about people's thoughts, beliefs, desires, and emotions), children’s language development, children's social development; and Quantitative, which includes experimental design and the analysis of variance, regression analysis, and multivariate analysis.

The department offers the Bachelor of Arts program for students interested in the liberal arts and the Bachelor of Science program geared for students with an interest in either biology or mathematics. The main objective of both programs is a broad introduction to the scope of contemporary psychology. In addition to completing a number of common core courses for their degree, students may take specialty courses on such far ranging topics as sex differences, genius and creativity, and environmental awareness.

The department strongly encourages students to become involved in individual research projects under the direction of faculty members and to participate in our internship program to broaden your experiences and understanding of the field of psychology.