Background: Limited research exists on the prevalence of undergraduate research participant pools (URPs) in psychology departments or guidelines surrounding their use. Objective: The aim of the current study was to replicate older studies on the prevalence of URPs in the United States and the procedures and guidelines related to those…

Intelligence is a well-studied construct in psychology that has correlational relationships with many educational, employment, and health outcomes. However, prior research indicates that incorrect beliefs about intelligence are widespread. In an effort to discern the degree to which the psychology curriculum is responsible for these inaccuracies,…

Two controversial topics related to the teaching of statistics to psychology students are (a) when to introduce statistical software and (b) which statistical software package to use. The current research looked at the use of statistical software in statistics classes from every university with a psychology program in Canada. Researchers collected…

This article describes how my psychology department utilizes our alumni to educate current and prospective students about careers in psychology. I explain how we developed an alumni careers website and on-campus alumni careers sessions for students. High school students and our psychology majors reported that they found this information valuable,…

Historically, psychology education about disability focused narrowly on psychiatric and cognitive disabilities. Furthermore, disability tends to be viewed from the medical model, rather than the social model endorsed by disability scholars, which describes disability as primarily socially constructed. Course offerings for the psychology…

Despite the popularity of the psychology major, complaints regularly arise about the value of majoring in psychology. This article reviews the workforce advantages that accrue to successful psychology students and encourages new strategies for emphasizing the professional development goal in the American Psychological Association's…

Many psychology departments do not have industrial-organizational (IO) or human factors (HF) faculty members. As such, potential IO and HF graduate students may miss career opportunities because faculty advisors are unfamiliar with the disciplines and their graduate programs. To assist advisors, this article highlights the content of IO and HF…

The pedagogical value of capstones has been regularly discussed within psychology. This study presents results from an examination of a national random sample of department webpages and an online survey that characterized the typical capstone course in terms of classroom activities and course administration. The department webpages provide an…

Graduate students in psychology frequently receive training to prepare them for teaching responsibilities. However, little is known about the different types of teaching courses that exist or what leads graduate programs to offer such courses. This study explores archival data to determine the prevalence and predictors of formal teaching…

Maintaining contact with alumni can result in a number of benefits for psychology departments. For example, alumni may give feedback useful for curriculum assessment and departmental planning, assist with recruiting, and provide current students with information about jobs and graduate school. The authors describe a Facebook group they created for…

One hundred and forty-four undergraduates enrolled in a careers in psychology course participated in a group-oriented scavenger hunt activity. The purpose of this activity was to increase students' awareness of the types of resources, available to them within the psychology department and within the larger campus community, related to psychology…

This article reports on a systematic revision of our psychology department's advising system. Assessment results indicate a change from 38% to 70% of our seniors endorsing advising as "good" or "high quality" from 1993 to 2003. We present the individual components of our advising plan and recommendations for improving advising.

Transcripts of 784 psychology alumni from 4 universities revealed that students' timing of first enrollments in a statistics or methodology course was the result of an interaction between personal preferences and differences in program requirements. Where only a single methodological course was mandatory, first enrollments were especially late in…

The survey focuses on the availability of human sexuality courses from psychology departments. Findings are compared with an earlier survey and are illustrated with charts. (Author/JR)

Believes that university departments should use a business model in developing a strategic plan. Describes how to create this type of strategic plan that includes three steps: (1) developing the vision and goals; (2) marketing and evaluating the competition; and (3) using feedback and revising. (CMK)