Proposal for a PhD and MS in Psychology
Executive Summary
The School of Psychological Science at Oregon State University proposes to offer a Ph.D. and M.S. in Psychology. The program will have a focus on applied psychology, with areas of concentration in Engineering Psychology, Health Psychology, and Applied Cognition. Graduates of the Psychology Ph.D. program will be qualified to define, assess, analyze and evaluate problems in both the private and public sector that are behavior based. The proposed program is designed to have a strong research component, ensuring that graduates have the tools to tackle a variety of applied problems.
Psychology as a field is a core discipline that feeds expertise on topics related to behavior and cognition into other fields. A recent analysis of citation patterns between disciplines identified psychology as one of seven “hub sciences” in terms of scientific influence on other disciplines (Boyack, et al., 2005). OSU is the only Carnegie Doctoral/Research-Extensive University in the country that has no doctoral program in Psychological Science, which has a detrimental effect on OSU’s ability to meet its mission. In keeping with this, the proposed program is designed to be able to foster collaboration with other OSU academic units and to support OSU’s broader research and graduate education enterprise. Psychological Science is a necessary and integral component of all three of the signature areas described in OSU’s strategic plan, and the proposed program is designed to directly intersect with OSU’s mission as described in that plan.
People with doctoral-level expertise in psychology are necessary for Oregon to meet its challenges. Virtually all of the pressing issues in Oregon today have an unavoidable behavioral component. As noted above, psychology is a “hub science”, feeding expertise into other disciplines. The proposed program is specifically designed to feed psychological expertise into areas of critical state needs, especially with regards to health, engineering and technology, and education. Psychology graduate programs in general tend to have far more applicants than they can admit, and this is true of Oregon’s graduate programs.
We anticipate admitting up to five students per year, with an expectation that approximately 25 students will ultimately be enrolled in the program at a given time once the program is fully operational.