Psychology

Faculty

Director and Associate Professor Garza; Professors Churchill and Kugelmann; Associate Professors Fisher-Smith and Swales; Assistant Professor Landrum

About the Psychology Graduate Programs

The graduate program in psychology is devoted to the recovery of some of the great traditions in 20th Century psychology, while preparing students for making contributions to psychology in the 21st Century. Offering an ongoing array of foundational courses in phenomenology, psychodiagnostics, psychotherapy, lifespan development and qualitative research, the Master’s program in Psychology provides a range of special topics classes, including spirituality, sexuality, health psychology, multicultural studies, primatology and film. The distinguishing character of the program is its existential-phenomenological orientation, which draws upon the traditions of depth psychology, hermeneutics and humanistic psychology, as well as Continental thinking and feminism.

The “great books” of the aforementioned fields provide the backbone for the program; that is, primary sources such as Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas from the phenomenological tradition; Freud, Jung, Adler, Horney, Sullivan, Klein and Schafer from the psychodynamic tradition; Rogers, Allport, Murray, Maslow, May and Bugental from the tradition of American humanistic psychology; Binswanger, Boss, Buytendijk, Minkowski, van den Berg, Laing and Szasz from the European tradition of existential psychiatry; and figures like Giorgi, Colaizzi, von Eckartsberg and others from the Duquesne “school” of phenomenological research.

Bolstering its position as a program that represents and supports qualitative research as well as a broadly defined humanistic tradition in academic psychology, the department contributes editorially to the publication of the APA division journal The Humanistic Psychologist.

Admission Requirements

Application for admission includes a completed application form, two letters of reference, a statement of purpose, an intellectual autobiography, a sample of academic writing, official transcripts of previous college work and GRE General Test scores that are not more than five years previous to the date of application. Possession of a bachelor’s degree is prerequisite to matriculating in the program.

Admission as a graduate student in psychology is contingent upon an academic foundation in the discipline of psychology. This foundation can be demonstrated by the successful completion (a grade of B or better) of at least a three credit course in each, General Psychology and Statistics/Experimental Design, or other course offerings as determined by the program director.

Degrees and Requirements

All master’s degrees in psychology require a minimum of 30 credits. There are three degree options: the MPsy with or without clinical concentration and the MA. While compliance with the State Licensing Boards' requirements is ultimately each student’s responsibility, students seeking to qualify for LPC certification in Texas should pursue the 60 credit MPsy with Clinical Concentration.

The degree options and credit requirements for each are presented in the charts below.

Specific course requirements for the three degree plans are as follows: