Undergraduate Practicums
- PSY 460, 461 – Instructional Practicum. In this practicum, you would serve as a teaching assistant for an instructor in a course in which you exhibited an exceptional performance. The most common courses in which assistants are needed are PSY 201, PSY 221, and PSY 301, although you may ask any professor if they would like to mentor you as a teaching assistant. You will have an opportunity to assist in preparing and managing course materials and activities.
- PSY 480, 481 – Community Practicum. To complete this practicum, you work as a student volunteer for 135 hours in a community organization that you select based on your interest. Review specific instructions on enrolling as well as a list of organizations that have supervised or expressed an interest in supervising JSU Psychology students.
- PSY 485, 486 – Applied Behavior Analysis Practicum. In this practicum, you will practice applying behavior analytic principles to help solve various socially significant problems. This practicum is completed under the supervision of Dr. Bayles who you can see for more information and enrollment approval.
- PSY 490, 491 – Individual Research. In this practicum, you will work on a research project with a faculty member and possibly other students. Faculty are always engaged in a variety of research projects and are often seeking students to help them with tasks, such as reading literature, developing new projects, collecting data, entering data, and so forth. For those students that are especially dedicated, these contributions can result in a conference presentation or even a publication in a psychology journal. There is no one faculty member who supervises research – if you are interested in this practicum, you should read the biographies of each faculty member in the department and then contact the faculty member with whom your interests most closely align. Note that there may not be a faculty member who does research in exactly the same area you are interested in, but it is still beneficial to get research experience in any field before you apply to graduate programs in psychology.
- PSY 498, 499 – Honors Thesis. For those students that are highly motivated, the honors thesis option allows them to stand out above the crowd in their graduate applications. These students typically complete an entire research project from start to finish and write up an APA-style paper that details their findings. These students usually work more independently than students enrolled in Individual Research. Again, contact faculty members whose interests align most closely with yours to discuss the honors thesis option.