WHY CHOOSE TO STUDY PSYCHOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO?
- Learn about yourself and others
- Psychology is a popular Major
- Prepare for employment - develop marketable skills
- The Bachelor's degee in Psychology as a stepping stone to further studies
- Our commitment to excellence
- Learn from award-winning Psychology faculty members
- Several academic plans to choose from
- Student recognition
- Further information
LEARN ABOUT YOURSELF AND OTHERS
Psychology, the study of mind and behaviour, is one of today's most exciting and rapidly advancing scientific frontiers.
Students choose to study psychology because they find the discipline fascinating and they want to learn how and why they and others think and behave the way they do.
The Psychology Department at the University of Waterloo is one the largest of its kind in the province of Ontario. Our faculty members have expertise in several of the subareas of Psychology including behavioural neuroscience, clinical, cognition, developmenal, industrial/organizational, and social. At the University of Waterloo you can explore a very broad range of topics such as:
- how people see, hear, think, and solve problems
- workings of memory and attention
- acquisition of linguistic, cognitive, and social abilities in infants and young children
- interpersonal and intergroup relations
- communication and persuasion
- cultural influences on behaviour
- cognitive factors that influence reading disabilities and attention disorders in children
- schizophrenia, depression, self-esteem, and anxiety disorders in adults
- neural, physiological, and chemical bases of behaviour
- feelings, thoughts, and behaviour of people in work situations; employee stress; and leadership and motivation processes in work organization
In addition to studying the wealth of knowledge that already exists in the field of Psychology, Psychology Majors also learn the scientific procedures for acquiring new knowledge in Psychology. As a result, they become critical consumers of information. For example, they question the bases of claims (e.g,. anecdotal evidence versus sound empirical evidence) made in the media regarding people's abilities and inclinations.
PSYCHOLOGY IS A POPULAR MAJOR
The Psychology Department is one of the largest and most diverse departments at the University of Waterloo.
More students graduate annually with a Bachelor's degree in Psychology than a Bachelor's degree in any other Major in the Faculty of Arts.
At the University of Waterloo (uWaterloo) there are currently 800 Psychology Majors. Approximately 68% are enrolled in Honours Psychology. The remainder are in either Three Year General Psych or Four Year General Psych. Those in Honours are pursuing the Major in a variety of ways including Honours BA Psychology, Honours BSC Psychology, Joint Honours Psychology (various Home Faculties), Honours Psychology and Arts and Business, etc. In addition, there are approximately 260 students in Majors other than Psychology who are pursuing the Psychology Minor.
According to the Canadian and American Psychological Associations, Psychology is one of the most popular Majors in North America.
PREPARE FOR EMPLOYMENT - DEVELOP MARKETABLE SKILLS
In addition to the wide variety of marketable skills provided by a liberal arts education (e.g., interpersonal, oral and written communication, organizational, time management, critical thinking, and problem solving), Psychology Majors also develop distinctive marketable skills including observation, analytic, numeracy, computer, and oral and written communication skills. These skills are attractive to employers who expect employees to be able to clarify problems/questions that arise a work and to collect and analyze data in order to draw conclusions and to make recommendations and/or decisions.
THE BACHELOR'S DEGREE IN PSYCHOLOGY AS A STEPPING STONE TO FURTHER STUDIES
Undergraduate training in Psychology opens doors to a vast array of studies at both the college level e.g.,
- Behavioural Science Technology
- Communication Disorders Assistant
- Corporate Communications and Public Relations
- Marketing Management, Social Services Worker, etc.
and the university level e.g.,
- Criminology
- Education,
- Law
- Social Work
- Marriage and Family Therapy
- Communication Sciences and Disorders, etc.
Feedback from colleagues at other universities indicates that our Honours Psychology alumni are well trained and immediately ready to engage in more advanced studies in Psychology (MA, MASc, PhD, PsyD).
Areas of specialization at the graduate level
OUR COMMITMENT TO EXCELLENCE
The Department of Psychology is one of the largest and most diverse departments at the University of Waterloo. We are committed to providing students with a high quality educational experience that broadly represents the exciting field of Psychology.
Feedback received from our last undergraduate program review (2010) was very positive:
"The Department's...faculty are world-class, and the Department has succeeded in recruiting a bright, energetic, and collegial group of young scholars... Both undergraduate and graduate students show clear evidence of academic achievement due to a well-developed curriculum and abundant opportunities for research involvement. A large and well-functioning co-operative education program helps to bridge the scholarly aspects of the discipline with its practical aspects, and to help launch students into successful careers in a range of fields. The academic programs and scholarly efforts of the faculty are clearly focused on addressing a wide range of pressing social needs, and serve the province and the country well."
Comments provided by Vanessa Huyder about the time she spent as an undergraduate student at uWaterloo:
"I thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated Waterloo’s psychology program! I received excellent training, not only through the regular classroom activities, but through the various research opportunities and mentorships provided by faculty members and graduate students. Valuable hands-on experience was provided through the honours thesis project, working alongside expert researchers as a research assistant and being involved in lab meetings and discussions. However, the aspect I appreciated most about Waterloo’s program was the professors’ dedication to their students and passion for the material they were teaching."
Vanessa graduated with an Honours BA in Psychology June 2008 and is currently enrolled in our graduate program in Clinical Psychology.
LEARN FROM AWARD-WINNING PSYCHOLOGY FACULTY MEMBERS
We are confident that you will find the study of Psychology extremely interesting and that the Psychology faculty members at uWaterloo will challenge you to achieve your very best.
Our students are exposed to the cutting edge research methods, theories and experiments in the science of the mind that now appear in the news headlines on an almost daily basis.
Examples of the honours and awards received by Psychology faculty members in recent years include:
- Outstanding Performance Award - Contributions in Teaching and Scholarship (uWaterloo)
- Excellence in Research Award (uWaterloo)
- Distinguished Teacher Award (uWaterloo)
- Outstanding Performance Award (uWaterloo)
- Canada Research Chair
- Premier's Research Excellence Award
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
- New Investigator Award from the American Psychological Association
- New Investigator Award from the Ontario Mental Health Foundation
- Early Research Award from the Government of Ontario
- President's New Researcher Award from the Canadian Psychological Association
- American Psychological Foundation Award
- Fellow Status awarded by the Board of Directors of the American Psychological Association
- Society for Personality and Social Psychology's Theoretical Innovation Prize
- Donald T. Campbell Award for Distinguished Research in Social Psychology
- Excellence in Graduate Supervision (uWaterloo)
- Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology
- Donald O. Hebb Distinguished Contribution Award - from the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science
- Distinguished Lifetime Service to the Society - from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology
- CPA Donald O. Hebb Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology as a Science from the Canadian Psychological Association.
- Killam Prize Laureate for the Social Sciences, Canadian Council for the Arts
Many of the faculty members have been active as editors, associate editors, consulting editors or as members of editorial review boards for major scholarly journals.
Activities of our faculty members by departmental division (Clinical, Cognitive, Cognitve Neuroscience Developmental, Industrial/Organizational, Social).
SEVERAL ACADEMIC PLANS IN PSYCHOLOGY TO CHOOSE FROM
| FACULTY OF HOME REGISTRATION | CHOICE OF ACADEMIC PLAN IN PSYCHOLOGY |
ARTS (Those in the first five of the six groups in this category earn a Bachelor of Arts degree = BA)
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APPLIED HEALTH SCIENCE ENGINEERING ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES |
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| MATHEMATICS |
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SCIENCE (These students earn a Bachelor of Science degree = BSc)
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Further details about the above academic plans are available in the Undergraduate Calendar and in the Psychology Undergraduate Student Handbook.
STUDENT RECOGNITION
In addition to awards and scholarships granted at the University and Faculty levels, the Department makes annual awards (to approximately 6-10 students) in the form of Bryden Scholarships and Walters Scholarships in recognition of outstanding undergraduate achievement. Dr. Richard H. Walters was the founding Chair of the Psychology Department and an eminent scholar in the field of child development. Dr. M. Philip Bryden was a long-time member of our department and a highly respected researcher on brain lateralization. These awards reflect our commitment to undergraduate education and our recognition of the outstanding achievements of these students.
Each year we typically are able to award 6-10 of our best students a prestigious NSERC (Natural Science and Engineering Research Council) Undergraduate Student Research Award/Apprenticeship. These awards provide financial support for outstanding students to become actively involved in the research programs of NSERC-supported faculty members in the Psychology Department on a full-time basis for four months.
In addition to our formal scholarship and research awards, a high proportion of faculty members (and graduate students) in our department benefits from the contribution of undergraduate students to their research labs. It is not unusual for there to be 110-130 students per term, particularly in the Fall and Winter terms, to be serving as volunteer and/or paid research assistants. The research assistant positions provide valuable experience for undergraduate students seeking an enhanced education with an aim towards graduate school. We are proud to state that our alumni have gone on to succeed at the top graduate programs in Canada, the United States, and in Europe. Furthermore, the high level of involvement of undergraduate researchers in our faculty laboratories helps to keep our faculty members among the most productive in North America.
Further Information
Please explore our website for further details about our department and programs.
If you have any questions, please contact one of our academic advisors.
Last updated April 27, 2012
