Ep. 41 - What is the Psychology major?

In Episode 41 of the CSUSB Advising Podcast, Matt Markin chats with Dr. Michael Lewin, Professor and Department Chair of Psychology!  What is the Psychology major? What skills will students obtain from their classes? What career opportunities are there? What resources are there for students in Psychology? Find out in this episode!

For more information, check out the Psychology website.

Learn more about the Psychology faculty.

Psychology department contact: psychology@csusb.edu 

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Transcript

0:07  
Welcome back to another episode of the CSUSB advising podcast. My name is Matt Markin, an academic advisor here at Cal State San Bernardino. And on today's episode, we're going to learn more about the psychology major. And today's guest is the Department Chair of Psychology. And that is Dr. Michael Lewin. Dr. Lewin, welcome to the podcast.

0:25  
Thanks for having me, Matt. Very excited to talk with you and students about psychology.

0:31  
Yes, 100%. So let's start off with the first question. And that still kind of tell us a little bit about yourself, what was your path into higher ed and to CSUSB?

0:41  
Well, I remember, as I work with students here at Cal State, I remember when I was their age, and I was a freshman, and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my education in my career, I started out to please my father to follow a pre med kind, of course, although I quickly found out as I took the classes that I wasn't enjoying those classes so much, and wasn't really excited about following that career path. And luckily, I took a general education course in psychology, Introduction to Psychology. And that course really piqued my interest in the field. So I switched from being a pre med major, to a psychology major, but actually, initially, my interest was pre law. I always wanted, I kind of thought law would be a cool profession, I took a business law minor at my institution, I did go to a state university in New York. And when I took some of the psychology classes for pre law, I started to get involved in extracurricular activities, that's going to be a theme that I'm going to talk about today is that you know, whatever major you choose, but especially in psychology, we have lots of opportunities to get involved in activities outside of the classroom. And if it wasn't for those activities, I don't think I would have followed the path that I follow today. So specifically, as I took psychology classes, I got involved in research and advisor suggested that I should do some research, also thinking about clinical psych psychology, so an advisor and advise that maybe I'd volunteer in a psychiatric hospital or a clinic. And I'll talk more about those opportunities as well a little bit later. But if it wasn't for those are opportunities, I don't say I think I probably would have continued on with my law school path. I'm originally from Queens, New York, and made my way slowly West with different educational opportunities. And that's another theme that I'll talk about a little bit too, when if I get a chance to talk with them about graduate school. So basically, through those extracurricular activities and good academic preparation, that opened up doors for me to follow into my path as a clinical psychologist.

3:16  
Yeah, and it'd be great to definitely chat about those opportunities outside the classroom, and how that can really help with developing students and furthering their kind of knowledge base in education. And so let's talk about the psychology major. How would you describe psychology?

3:34  
That's a good question. A definition could be that psychology is the scientific study of the mind, and behavior, but it includes the role of the brain and the central nervous system, and the effects of the brain and central nervous system on behavior, emotions. Our thoughts are our cognitions. That's a broad general definition. But when I think more specifically about psychology field, most people think of psychology as a therapist or a clinical person. That's just only one area of psychology. And in our department, we have many areas represented. So for instance, we have social psychologists that study social behavior or behavior in social settings, including issues like social justice issues, and how that affects behaviors. We have cognitive psychologists that focus on how we think, and how we remember how we interpret information in our environments. We have biological and neuroscience, psychologists that study the brain and central nervous system, and how that affects our behaviors, emotions and the way we think. We have industrial organizational psychologists that study the psychology of the workplace, in terms of personnel selection, and managing people maximizing effectiveness in the workplace. I don't want to leave anybody out. We have developmental psychologists that study how over time is from infancy, or from birth to adulthood. We study how people develop their facilities or their thinking, their memory, moral developments, all kinds of different developmental aspects. So those are just a few. And the nice thing about our department being as large as it is that we have representation across all these different areas.

5:41  
Yeah, absolutely. And maybe we can talk a little bit more about that within the major psychology does offer a few different concentrations, correct?

5:49  
It does. So we have basically three concentrations. So in the psychology major, you can either have a concentration in general psychology, and in that area, basically, it prepares you for a multitude of different areas. So basically, it's sort of if you're not as interested in the other two concentrations, the general concentration allows you the flexibility to take coursework, say for instance, if you're interested in my area of clinical psychology, you can take coursework and abnormal psychology, introduction to psychotherapy, we have psychopathology, of childhood behavior modification. So if you were interested in just a broad area of psychology, the general psychology track is a very good track. For other students who have very specific interests, particularly in neuroscience or bio psychology, we do have a neuroscience, bio psychology track, or concentration. Now, one thing about concentrations you should be aware of is the definition of concentration means that they have overlap. So you do take some general psychology courses no matter what the concentration, and I can review those a little later. But the it's sort of like a specialization in the concentration in say, neuroscience, or bio psych. And then the last concentration is industrial organizational psychology. That concentration, prepares students for careers maybe in human resources, also prepares them for graduate programs in IO. There's an option to work with oh boy, human resource, like a minor, in addition to you just need to take a few more courses. I'll defer to one of our coordinators for that if people are interested, as our website we have a list of all our concentration coordinators. So those are the three concentrations.

7:56  
And then aside from concentrations, do you also offer any minors and psychology?

8:02  
We do we have one general psychology minor. Because a minor requires less coursework than the concentrations. There aren't any different concentrations within the minor, just a set psychology minor. And since I've been the chair, which is only about six months, I'm noticing I'm getting a lot of inquiries from students in related fields who want to have a psych background and they choose, they apply for the minor because like, for instance, nursing students that are going to be working with patients, kinesiology students, particularly those who are interested in physical therapy are, you know, will sometimes want to do a psychology minor, because they see that their work will involve working with people.

8:52  
With the bachelor's degree, students will hear sometimes that certain majors are impacted. So psychology is one of those what does it mean for the major to be impacted?

9:03  
Yeah, that's a really good question. It means that when we have transfer students transferring or freshmen applying, we have more students that are interested in becoming psychology majors, then we do have openings and faculty resources to teach them. I mean, on one level, you could say, Well, why don't you just keep making the classes larger and larger and larger. And actually, we did that for many years. And when we started becoming concerned that it was affecting the quality of the education, that students can easily get lost in these large sections, so similar to other majors on campus, and even with our impaction we still have larger classes but less than we used to. And so basically means that we have more students interested in being psychology majors, than we have seats in our classes and capacity. I can talk a little bit here, what it means is, is that we, because we're impacted, we have a thing called a pre psych major, which means that before you can become a psychology major, you first must apply, and pre psych majors that are impacted as well. But you apply to become a pre psychology major. And there's a sort of set core of classes that students take as part of the pre psych major, they must complete them all with a 2.5 GPA or higher. And, and no grades of C below see in those core classes. And then they can be come full fledged either general psych majors, bio psych majors, or industrial organizational side majors. And I should say also, the pre psych major, Matt matches with our concentration. So there's a pre general psych, a pre Industrial Organizational psych, and a pre neuroscience or bio psych. And one piece of advice I'll give is, if you're not sure, you should start with the general Psych.

11:11  
And generally speaking, what are students learning in in their classes or learning with within the major?

11:17  
It's a really good question, because one of the issues that we face in psychology, and I think part of the reason it's such a popular major is that we can all identify with psychology, we all are human beings, we have relationships, we have thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, sometimes that puzzle us, whether it's our own behavior, or the behavior of others. And it's natural that we would want to gain some expertise, and how to understand human behavior better. So one of the major misconceptions is that psychology number one is an easy major, because it's common sense. And actually, a lot of the psych major, we emphasize teaching psychologists to be scientists first. And we talk about the science of human behavior, that students may be surprised to find that when they take psychology courses, they're not just all about psychotherapy or therapy courses, there are courses about the science of psychology, heavily weighted in experimental methods, statistics, as well as biological psychology because as our science is advancing, we're learning more and more than almost every area of psychology is heavily influenced by the brain and the nervous system.

12:50  
And, of course, a question we get a lot and is about careers, you know, what can I do with this major? So can you elaborate on career areas that maybe you've seen students, your students graduate? What they've gone on to do?

13:06  
Sure, I think I'm going to differentiate this answer for what can you do with a bachelor's degree in psychology? And then also, how does obtaining a master's degree or even higher if that's what somebody's interested in? How does that expand their possibilities? It's an interesting question, because I think that in general, there are many different employment sectors that are interested in psychology majors, because they're looking for people who in their minds should have better understanding of human behavior, and might be more effective in in a job setting where working with people is a big part of it, and also learning how to deal with difficult situations involving people. So some examples when I did a search recently, our social services, so many graduates have site degree work in social services fields, working for government agencies, welfare, other organizations that involve working with families, children and communities to provide better assistance. I mentioned human resources before so any big either government agency or private corporation. They have human resources, departments that are responsible for adhering to the rules regarding employment and also providing resources to individuals who work in these large corporations. Education is a big employer of psychology majors. A lot of psychology majors end up becoming teachers having the psychology background, if you do decide to follow the getting a credential to teach. They are interested in psycho Oh geez, majors, marketing and advertising in the, in the business world. In psychology they are very interested in learning about consumer behavior. And they believe that somebody with a psychology background might be helpful in that regard. research careers working as researchers doing psychological research, whether it's in university settings, hospital settings, private research, organizations, health care with a bachelor's degree. Many of our students get jobs while they're actually as undergrads are some more seniors working as applied behavioral analysis, working with children on the spectrum on the autism spectrum, and helping children and families sort of improve their communication and behaviors. Those are just a few at the undergrad level. Sales, by the way, is another one that I've heard that because of your people skills that you were developed in the psych major, understanding what reinforces people what motivates people can help in that field as well. Certain careers, I think, the pay and the scope of the work improves. So for instance, my area which is clinical psychology, and involves training, marriage and family therapist, you would need a master's degree in order to be able to get a license to practice independently as a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Although our major actually prepares people for a variety of different mental health careers. So many of our psych majors are highly desired by our masters in social work program. We also have a program over in educational counseling and guidance, which is in Psych, but they draw from our psych majors, and train people to become educational counselors and or licensed professional counselors. So for mental health careers, and to make to be able to do engage in private practice to make a better income, the master's degree becomes more desirable. And certainly if you want to become a professor, which I highly recommend it my 28th year and feel so fortunate to have found this career. It's one of the most rewarding careers I can imagine. I feel like rarely a day goes by that I feel like I worked hard. Not that I'm not working hard, but it just feels natural. I enjoy what I do so much the day goes by really quickly. So those kinds of jobs require more of a doctorate degree. And in our department, I guess I'm jumping ahead we do offer three master's programs, one of which is a master's in Psychological Science. And that program is designed specifically to help undergrads who want to go on for PhD or a doctoral degree, and maybe become a professor or a researcher or work in certain organizations that require doctorate degrees. That program is very successful in helping students go on to doctoral programs. A program that I'm more involved in is the clinical counseling program. And that program, we train, marriage and family therapists for licensure, and careers. We've had that program since the 1970s. So we have a great network of graduates that are working in the Inland Empire. And then last but not least, is our Industrial Organizational program and award winning program recognized as one of the top master's programs in IO psychology several years ago. Their Students also have been they've been around for a long time that program have a great networking and successful in careers working in industry. Some of the IO professors cryptically joke that their graduates make more money than the professor's which makes us happy. Just makes us wonder sometimes about that. We love our work. So it's great when our students are very successful. So there is a little bit of that trend. I would say in psychology, there are people that make a living fine, fine without a master's or doctorate degree. But depending on what you want to do in psychology, there are a master's degree may help provide more access to higher paying, and spirit certainly if you're interested in working as a therapist, or as a professor, or even in industry in a higher paying capacity. The Industrial Organizational master's program in addition can be helpful.

19:54  
Yeah, so so many different different avenues and let's say someone as soon as listen to this right now. When they're like, I'm now really interested in psychology, but maybe they're on the fence of, should I pursue it? You know, do I want to get into the pre major? Do you have any suggestions for that student or like an intro course they might be able to take?

20:14  
Sure. So from a coursework standpoint, we have two courses that I would recommend, even if you're still debating about psychology, we have Introduction to Psychology, Psyc 1100. It's a general survey class of all those areas I mentioned before. So abnormal psych and clinical psych is in there, but so is social site. So his cognitive site, so his biological psych, all of those areas are covered, Industrial Organizational site, within this general survey class. I'm not going to say it's an easy class, because I do remember I had a friend of mine who was a straight A student, as he when he graduated as an undergrad. But he almost got to be an intro to psych even though he got an A in all the computer science classes. Because it's a course that there's a lot of material, a lot of stuff to, to understand. But it will give you a great background in psychology, and help trigger for you what areas of psychology, you might be interested in another course, which is only two units, and it's completely online. But and it's a little bit self paced, but you do get access to professors talking about their areas, and that's called a Psych 1101. And that is psychology as a major. And so that course goes over what it is to be a psychology major, what opportunities there are. So it takes it a little bit further a little more applied than say the in general intro course, those two courses should put you give you a lot of ideas about what you might want to do. I told my personal story in the beginning, because I've changed paths a few times. And that's because, as I mentioned earlier, after you do the take intro to psych and psych as a major, then I'm going to suggest in the courses suggest that you get involved in some extracurricular activities. And that will further shape your interests. I've seen students think they wanted one thing, they did some research, they changed their mind. And that's a good thing, because you want students to pick and there's so many different options in psychology to pick something that resonates with them something that they feel they ultimately might be passionate about working in. Another thing I do want to say is we have a psychology Advising Center, very proud of that. That's in our social behavioral sciences building on our psychology website that will give you the website address. We have x links to the psychology Advising Center where any student can make an appointment with a peer advisor. They're all psychology majors, they've all been through it, and can at least start by giving you some good information. Also, you could reach out to any of the faculty. So especially if you're interested in a particular area of psychology, and you can look on our website and all our faculty have descriptions of who they are, what their area of expertise is, whether they have labs where they work with research students, and you can set up an appointment with them to meet and discuss your career path with them. So between the end I gotta say, Matt, ASUA as well as advisors, so the sewer meeting the maybe you can help me with the acronym, but the general student advising that all of you I think are going to be assigned the individual advisor. So certainly that person can be of help. But we have some specialty advisors within psychology in our psychology advising office.

24:10  
Yeah, so I would think of it like like a kind of a team effort and a way for any students listening. So ASUA being the academic success and undergraduate advising previously, for students. I've been here a few years might have known us as the Undergraduate Studies Division. But yeah, we have more of our general advising that you can get from our office and then we can definitely make that connection with the Psychology Department and the faculty there as well.

24:36  
Yeah, I think we have a nice different tiers of advising, you know, you know, the supervisors I think are generalists and specialists also very, I sometimes reach out to them with questions about general education requirements. The psychology advising centers can help you with general ed but also are tuned or trained to be able to help you with the psychology careers, and the psychology major. And then our faculty, our faculty, I think, are best for advising about specific areas of expertise. And I want to encourage people to reach out and set up appointments network, especially if you're thinking about going to graduate school, you will eventually need real letters of reference or recommendation. And so if you're doing having a good experience in a class, you know, reach out to the professor, go to their office hours, speak with them about what you're learning in class, any questions you might have with them, for them about your career. And, quite frankly, I would just ask, you know, Dr. Students talk to Lewin, I'm really interested in abnormal psychology and clinical psychology. And I know that if I apply to grad school and the three letters of recommendation, what is it that you require in order to write a student a good letter of recommendation? And then the faculty member can answer that question for you. I remember when I was doing that as an undergraduate when I was very nervous about asking faculty, but we know that students need letters. And that is the process. So you're not imposing on us by asking us, what would we require in order to write a good letter for graduate school? So don't let those opportunities slip by? I have, I talk with a lot of students who have regrets that they should or would or could talk to faculty members. And I say to them, it's never too late. But if you're in the moment, that's the ideal time, even if you're not applying to graduate school for another two, three years, it's a good idea to start that sort of relationship, and talk to the faculty member about grad school. We like to talk to students about careers, and graduate school.

26:56  
Yes, absolutely. Now, I'm assuming too, that there's misconceptions that people might have about different majors, including psychology, you kind of referenced a little bit earlier about the misconception about it being an easy major, common sense major. So anything you want to add to any misconceptions that, that you might have heard about the major?

27:18  
Those those, that's a big one, because you know, about four or five, when we switched to semesters, we took it as an opportunity to reexamine our major. And one of the issues that came up were students were taking all the different courses they were interested in, without taking the basic science of psychology courses. So they while they were taking those upper division classes, they were not getting as much out of it because they didn't appreciate the science behind it. So now our major sort of as the pre major, which has the core courses that you must take, prior to taking some of the what I call the sexier courses, like abnormal psychology, social psychology, the neuroscience courses for some of the Industrial Organizational courses, you have to take the basic courses in Intro to Psychology, Introduction to research methods, brain and behavior, a 200 level brain and behavior course, statistics, there's a lot in order to understand human behavior and not be fooled by common sense. Because sometimes common sense is wrong. A good example of this is meant a lot of people will remember the DARE program, it was a program that was established to reduce the incidence of drug use in high school and junior high school youth. And a lot of money was spent on there. And when they did the research to look how effective it was, it wasn't effective, it didn't make a dent. Now, the DARE program still exists. But what they did was they took the research that was done and found where the program was lacking and made changes to the DARE program. And hopefully, they're more successful this time around based on the evidence, and so we teach you the how to do research, how to be a producer of research, but also consumer, how to make sense of scientific information that we're presented with every day. Many of you might identify with you watch the news, and still hear something like Do you drink coffee? And then all of a say, Yeah, I drink coffee. Well, there's a link to cancer story at 11. And so we get alarmed. But often when we dig deeper into these studies, we find that the relationship is so small, that most people won't won't need to change their behavior. So we try to help students learn how to better evaluate the information that they're exposed to. And that's very important in our business information age that we're in. So I think it's a good major also just for critical thinking skills. That's why I think our graduates are hired in a variety of different fields because of those critical thinking skills.

30:25  
And with your major. You know, you've talked about like the psychology Advising Center, the website, are there any other resources that you want to highlight from your department? Yeah, I

30:36  
do. So one thing I want students to be aware of is our website. I'll state it, but it'll be hopefully published somewhere else as well. It's a there's a couple of ways to access but the best way is psychology.csusb.edu. You type that into your web browser, you'll see our web page, we have on this web page for students information about internships. So we have a list of over 100 different agencies, where they were looking for volunteers, where students can gain valuable experience in various applied aspects of psychology things on that website that include domestic violence shelters, crisis hotlines, Boys and Girls Clubs. The American Cancer Society, House of Ruth domestic violence, hotline, San Bernardino sexual assault service, I'm naming a few of my favorites. But there are literally over 100 If you search, and what I recommend students do is just read each one go to we have a link to the website. And you can see what what which of those experiences you find most interesting. Those are mostly volunteer, although we do have people that are lucky enough to get a job that gives them good experience. Like as applied behavioral analysts, ABA technician working with kids on the spectrum, the autism spectrum they pay. There's a organization that just reached out to us that hires psychology majors to work in group homes where folks are getting mental health treatment or foster youth who are living in let's say, a group home, they need counselors to help manage the group home while the kids are living there. Those some of those jobs are paid. So we try to list those either on the website or a bulletin board outside of the psychology office, which is located in SBS social behavioral sciences, for 25, our pure psychology advising centers right across the hall for 26. We're working on our monitor to stream all kinds of useful information that Matt and I are talking about today. So yeah, I think, internships, we also have lists of our will our faculty and their research interests. And we have a listing of our research laboratories, where they're looking for research assistants. And that's an excellent way to gain experience that if it wasn't for that I would not be a clinical psychologist today I did research got really fascinated by the puzzle, figuring out human behavior, got encouraged by some nice faculty and mentoring from that experience. And the rest was history. I ended up going to graduate school.

33:36  
And let's say student has a question. You've referenced the website, the faculty portion of it as well. Is there a way that you prefer students reach out to your department?

33:48  
So I think that if they have a general question, we have to, we have an email for Psychadvising@csusb.edu. You can email psych advising. That's one way to set up an appointment with one of our psychology advisors. You could send an email to psychology@csusb.edu. And that'll come to me as the chair at my one of my sport assistants. We usually forward those emails to the appropriate person if you're not sure who to email, or you can email the faculty member directly mentioning that you read about them online. And you have some questions about research or the research that we're doing. We have some faculty doing amazing, interesting research. You know, we have a new faculty member, Dr. Brene. I shouldn't mention anybody specifically because there's plenty, but he's doing research on concussion, which is in the news lately, and looking at alternative ways of measuring concussion with eye tracking, EEG, lots of fancy neurological equipment. We also have people do doing research in neuroscience with animals, animal models of different antidepressant medication, substance of abuse and how that affects the brain development and behavior. That's just mentioning some of the neuroscience folks. And then of course, we have a bunch of different areas. So I'm really excited about our major, I think, you know, for students studying psychology at Cal State San Bernardino. We're a large group of psychologists with a variety of different expert areas of expertise. So a student should be able to find a faculty member doing some kind of work that they find interesting.

35:40  
Well, such great information that you've given over this time for this podcast. But Dr. Lewin, thank you so much for joining us on this podcast episode today.

35:48  
You're welcome, Matt. I thank you for inviting me.

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