About Us

From the Chair

Welcome to the USF Department of Psychology WEBSITE!

The USF Psychology Department is home to more than 2,500 undergraduate and 100 graduate students. Our community also includes administrative staff and academic advisors and around 90 core, affiliated, and emeritus faculty members across three campuses. You can read about us by clicking on the People header on our home page.

The field of psychology is a major backbone of science, encompassing extraordinarily diverse topics. At USF, we provide training and conduct research on psychopathology, psychological assessment and interventions, health psychology, addictive behaviors, clinical child psychology, behavioral neuroscience, cognition, emotion processes, judgment and decision making, development, memory, perception, language, stereotyping & discrimination, health, relationships, gender, self, personality, staffing, measurement & personnel testing, learning, training & development, motivation & job attitudes, teams & multilevel organizational systems, leadership, career development, work-family, occupational health psychology, and the future of work.

Our undergraduate program offers a well-rounded education by requiring a strong foundation of core psychology courses, as well as electives that allow one to pursue in depth a particular aspect of the field. Since our department was founded in 1961, we have awarded B.A. degrees to well over 20,000 undergraduate students.

For those interested in pursuing a Ph.D. in psychology at USF, our three program concentrations are Clinical; Industrial-Organizational; and Cognition, Neuroscience, and Social Psychology. In all three concentrations, our mission is to train graduate students as independent scholars who will dedicate themselves to the pursuit of knowledge. Research is a fundamental aspect of doctoral study. Our doctoral program was established in 1971. Through the years, we have successfully produced over 750 doctoral scholars. 

We also offer a separate and self-contained M.A. degree in Psychological Sciences. It focuses on the study of biological, social, developmental, and cognitive bases of health and human behavior and provides training in research methods and statistics.   

Please explore our website. You will see how we are providing our students with an understanding of the importance of the scientific approach in tackling many issues of human behavior. These issues include important, serious, and difficult societal challenges. In our program, you will certainly learn that they can also be fascinating, exciting, and rewarding challenges.