Psychology
You would be hard pressed to find a major at Rollins with more breadth of applications than psychology. It has relevance in every personal relationship and every career. That’s why students with degrees in the major understand the world in a whole new light—the “world” being people in the same room or across the globe.
The emphasis is on experiential learning, which includes work with preschool children, practice of therapeutic skills, and doing experimental labs. These hands-on experiences are rare for undergraduates, let alone first- and second-year students. With them, determine which specific application of psychology you want to further explore, be it education, business, or psychological practice.
Why Study Psychology at Rollins
Invaluable Life Skills
Clinical and behavioral psychology are just two career paths for which you’re prepared. Grads excel in health care, hospitality, marketing … but also as spouses, parents, and friends.
Individual Mentoring
Our small class sizes allow for an intimate learning environment in which professors serve as advisors and mentors. They know you as a person with unique skill sets and goals.
Tailoring Your Degree
Even students who think they know what they want to do beyond college should gain as much firsthand experience as possible. Try it all first. Then determine what excites you.
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“Small class sizes foster conversation. Professors are also mentors. These things helped me the most in my current role because the way psychology is taught at Rollins prepared me to understand and connect ideas from very different perspectives. Trust me, this is a huge skill to have in the workplace: to be able to merge opinions from different stakeholders into a successful outcome.”
Rollins Psychology Careers
Rollins psychology grads are making tomorrow happen at some of the world’s most innovative organizations. Learn more about careers in psychology.
Aaron Bevacqua ’07
Curriculum and Instruction Specialist, ABA Technologies
Cara Guthrie ’14
Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Washington
Jasmine Cohen ’14
Licensed Master Social Worker/Mental Health Counselor, Augusta (GA) State Prison
Ashley Bencan ’07
Co-Founder, ConnectED Workforce
Mai-Han Nguyen Harrington ’10 ’15MBA
Chief Financial and Administrative Officer, Kobe Japanese Steakhouse
Elizabeth Berry ’19
Bilingual Legal & Medical Advocate, Resilience
Real World Experience
From community engagement courses to internships and research, Rollins psychology students hone their skills in the real world.
Experience #RollinsLife
There’s no better way to get a feel for life at Rollins than by scheduling a campus tour.
Popular Courses
Our psychology courses emphasize experiential learning, scientific rigor, quantitative literacy, and verbal and written communication skills.
PSY 319 The Psychology of Work
Become a better leader by examining group dynamics in organizations. This type of relational thinking has become a valuable skill for today’s most progressive businesses.
PSY 320 Psychotherapy with Lab
In this creatively collaborative class, theater students improvise as clients for students working as psychologists. It’s as close to real clinical situations as possible without compromising the privacy of patients.
PSY 341 Learning with Lab
Analyze behavioral patterns and witness the phenomena of learning by carrying out your own labs using live rats in operant chambers.
PSY 328 Developmental Psychology with Lab
Observe young children and personally work with them and their families at the Hume House, an actual preschool built on the Rollins campus. It’s the most authentic developmental lab you can imagine.
PSY 324 Neuropsychology
Discover the ways our brains are wired differently and similarly, learning why people have different outlooks on life and why we interact with the world the way we do.
PSY 329 Environmental Psychology
Why do you feel a certain way on a sunny day? What about in the confines of a dark, cluttered room? You’ll explore how natural and built environments affect thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
A Day in the Life of a Rollins Psychology Major
“I have been able to engage in research specific to my interests in education, on both a local and global scale while at Rollins.”
Beyond the Classroom
Internship Opportunities Rollins partners with prominent health-care organizations to show our students how real-life solutions arise from collaboration among leaders in business, health, and education. Alexis Meeks ’16 turned her internship at the AdventHealth Innovation Lab into a full-time career as a project liaison.
Research for Publication Students can do research alongside instructors through the Student-Faculty Collaborative Scholarship Program and conduct independent studies. As a result, Rollins undergrads are often published in scholarly journals as you would expect only from graduate students at other universities.
International Studies The world itself is the ultimate psychology lab. So there’s no better way to examine how cultures influence behaviors than to study in countries like Spain, Australia, and England. Your psychology advisor will help you create a plan tailored to your personal interest.
Dive Into Psychology at Rollins
Explore more about what it will be like to major in psychology at Rollins.
Facilities
Rollins’ Department of Psychology laboratories are located in the newly renovated Bush Science Center, and the Child Development and Student Research Center is located nearby on campus.
What You Will Learn
To fulfill its mission, the Department has designed a curriculum that uses the methods and content of psychological science to help students understand behavior, respect human diversity, and much more.
Keep Exploring
Take a deeper dive into psychology at Rollins by meeting your future professors, seeing our grads in action, and sitting in on a class.
December 19, 2023
Leading with Humanity
An embodiment of one of Rollins’ most treasured tenets—life is for service—Bryce Pittenger ’87 has dedicated her career to improving lives.
December 08, 2022
Rollins Announces 2023 Alumni Award Winners
Meet the recipients of the 2023 Fred Rogers Global Citizenship Award, Distinguished Alumni Award, Recent Alumni Achievement Award, and Alumni Service Award.
February 14, 2022
My Rollins Life: Defining Leadership
Carley Matthews ’22 isn’t trying to fit a certain mold of leadership—she’s using her own voice and style to redefine the role.
Expert Faculty
Once students identify a specific interest in psychology, they find a professor who can guide and work with them. The faculty members represent the diversity of subfields in psychology, making their classes and career mentoring all the more valuable.
Department of Psychology
Telephone: 407.646.2227
Sharon Carnahan, PhD
Professor of Psychology, Executive Director of the Child Development and Student Research Center
Research interests: Application of developmental principles to the problems of children and families
Alice Davidson, PhD
Professor of Psychology
Research interests: Peer relations in childhood and adolescence; the ways in which children make meaning out of conflict experiences through personal stories; quantitative and narrative methodologies
Stacey Tantleff Dunn, PhD
Professor of Psychology
Research interests: Body image and eating behavior, with a focus on the effects of media and gender differences; positive psychology and mindfulness-based therapies
Juan Guevara Pinto, PhD
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Research interests: How attention and memory interact with one another, sometimes resulting in unintended, new memories.
Paul Harris, PhD
Professor of Psychology
Research interests: How design and decoration of place reflects identity, the links between personality and pro-environmental behavior, and the use of social media to cope with environmental stressors like natural disasters
John Houston, PhD
Professor of Psychology
Research interests: Competitiveness, aggressive driving, and neighborhood attachment
Andrew Luchner, PsyD
Associate Professor of Psychology
Research interests: Narcissism, self-criticism, affect regulation, and psychotherapy processes
Jennifer Queen, PhD
Professor of Psychology
Research interests: Cognitive science of learning in college students; how the mind/brain receives, stores, and uses information; the memory for spoken language
Steven St. John, PhD
Professor of Psychology
Research interests: Behavioral and neural regulation of feeding and drinking behavior; the plasticity of the nervous system to change with age and experience
Rachelle Yankelevitz, PhD
Associate Professor of Psychology
Research interests: Experimental analysis of decision making, impulsivity, and risk taking