The Psychology program provides psychology courses to meet a variety of student goals such as earning an AS or AA degree by completing the psychology program, preparing to transfer to bachelors degree programs (and beyond), meeting general education requirements, and just generally learning about ourselves and others.
What is Psychology?
"I find that new students come to this class with preconceived notions about what psychology is all about. They tell me that psychology means lying down on a couch while a person in a white coat takes notes, or it’s about mind reading and mind control, or it has to do with the stress attending alien abduction. They tell me in varying and imaginative terms that psychology represents an otherworldly domain accessible only to clever initiates with an impassioned desire to cure or subvert. My job is to persuade you that nothing could be farther from the truth. Simply put, psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental events, which includes what a person perceives, feels, dreams, thinks about and acts out. Animal behavior also is of interest to psychologists." - Dr. Harry Hughes
"Everyday, psychologists go to work with questions....
They ask themselves: How might I get Mr. Johnson to stop hearing voices in his head? What cues does a chimpanzee use to distinguish members of its own troop? What areas of the human brain control rage? Was Sigmund Freud correct in proposing an unconscious domain in the mind? What does it mean to be motivated? Do youngsters who watch a lot of violent television grow up to be violent themselves? Is the human mind a blank slate at birth, or are we born with highly developed mental capabilities? How might I arrange the dashboard of a car so that the driver attends to the road most efficiently? Why do we forget important things yet remember trivia? How does a physical object like a vase get represented as a visual image in the brain? Are people less likely to assist others in an emergency when there are many bystanders present? What might be some of the evolutionary pressures that shaped the human mind? How can brain damage result in a patient feeling that his left arm and leg belong to someone else? Are there genes that regulate the tendency for some people to become alcoholics? What is the meaning of dreams? Is there any meaning to them at all? Are only adverse life occurrences stressful or can we be stressed by joyful events as well? Is human consciousness really so special or is it just an emergent property of brain function?" - Dr. Harry Hughes.