Become a Psychologist

To give some idea of the range of topics that are possible, a sample of titles of recent dissertations done by our graduate students is shown.

Within I/O psychology, a student may choose to specialize in such areas as personnel psychology, training and development, individual assessment, work motivation, group and organizational processes, or psychometrics, among others. Such specialization may be achieved with courses in counseling psychology, advanced seminars in industrial/organizational psychology, personality assessment, social psychology, cognition, psychometrics, statistics, speech communications, sociology, industrial relations, marketing, political science, or management.

Coursework

While it is difficult to describe a typical graduate student program, the following features characterize most of them. Since the department requires each PhD candidate to satisfy a set of General Distribution Requirements by taking relevant courses in each of four areas (individually chosen), most students spend a significant portion of their first two years taking the relevant courses. Most students then begin the I/O psychology seminar at the start of their second year. This sequence runs for two years and is intended to examine all the major I/O topic areas in depth. It is also an opportunity to build professional identification with the field and to develop professional associations and friendships with students and faculty that will last for years to come.