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Department of Psychological Sciences

Department Description

Our department provides educational and research opportunities at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

The Undergraduate Program

In addition to providing service courses that are taken by a large portion of the total undergraduate student population, our undergraduate program also offers specific training for a large number (400+) of Psychology majors.The psychology major curriculum is purposely flexible to accommodate:

  • students who plan ultimately to attend graduate school in psychology
  • students who desire an undergraduate program that will lead to a job specifically in a particular field (e.g., an entry level counseling or clinical position)
  • or students who simply want to obtain a Bachelor's degree and enter the workforce.

The Graduate Program

The Department of Psychological Sciences also has a strong graduate program consisting of four major areas of concentration for the Ph.D. degree:

  • Animal Learning/Behavioral Neuroscience
  • Cognitive and Human Factors Psychology
  • Industrial/Organizational Psychology
  • Social/Personality Psychology

In addition, we have a Master of Science (MS) in Psychology with an emphasis in Industrial and Organizational Psychology (MIOP) Program and an Occupational Health Certificate program.

As an academic unit of a land-grant institution, the department recognizes a major responsibility in the provision of training in applied science. At the same time, it maintains that this can only be accomplished within the context of a basic science program. Our programs are first and foremost research-oriented curricula in general psychology that emphasize a broad grounding in the traditional subject matter and experimental methods of psychology.We warmly welcome students to our department and encourage you to contact us for further information.

  • Contact for Behavioral Neuroscience/Animal Learning: Dr. Mary Cain, mecain@ksu.edu
  • Contact for Cognitive and Human Factors Psychology: Dr. Gary Brase, gbrase@ksu.edu
  • Contact for Industrial/Organizational Psychology: Dr. Patrick Knight, knight@ksu.edu
  • Contact for Personality-Social Psychology: Dr. Mark Barnett, barn@ksu.edu