Psychology

Hands-on learning is central to the Muhlenberg psychology experience. Here are the many forms experiential learning takes:

Research Collaboration

Learning how to conduct empirical research is central to the education of the psychology major. Students often continue such work in graduate programs and/or business settings that depend on their employees to understand people and to know how to learn about them in systematic ways.

Students build skills throughout their four years:

• Introductory Psychology students engage with research by participating in research studies being conducted by our faculty and upper-level students.
• Students learn to conduct research through other courses in the major, including Psychological Statistics and Research Methods.
• The 400-level Advanced Research courses serve as capstone courses, where students develop and conduct their own high-quality, novel, and sophisticated research studies.
• All psychology students have the opportunity to present at Psychology Day, a professional-level conference for students to defend their findings to peers and faculty and build valuable communication skills.

Beyond the classroom, dozens of students each semester work directly with faculty on their research, and develop independent projects in collaboration with faculty, whose research interests include:

• sleep as a fundamental aspect of health (Erika Bagley)
• psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, the representation of conceptual knowledge, memory, attention and language use in society and by the media (Alexandra Frazer)
• how status and inequality can result in judgments of other individuals and groups, particularly with a focus on gender and sexual identities (Kenneth Michniewicz)
• the systemic barriers that trans and nonbinary individuals experience (Lex Pulice-Farrow)
• how social identity factors, such as gender or race, influence mental health outcomes (Kate Richmond)
• what constitutes irrational thinking and how such thinking can result in misguided or actually beneficial outcomes (Jeff Rudski)
• the experiences of people who have ADHD and are thriving (Mark Sciutto)
• social and moral development, with a focus on youth social reasoning in everyday contexts (Stefanie Sinno)
• understanding the experiences of students of color at Muhlenberg (Connie Wolfe)

Experiential Learning

Psychology has been one of the top three most popular majors at Muhlenberg for the last decade. Some of the reasons students love to study psychology at Muhlenberg include:

• Small class sizes: Introductory Psychology typically has about 35 students per section, but the remainder of our courses average between 15 to 25 students each. Working with a smaller group of students allows professors to tailor their instruction to individual students, employ innovative pedagogy, and engage in meaningful class discussions, experiments, and demonstrations. For example, in the Clinical Case Studies seminar, students study actual clinical cases, learning how to conceptualize a case to understand the complexities a client brings to a practitioner. 
• Innovative teaching: Stop by any day and you will see a wide range of approaches in the classroom. You may see a traditional lecture, a student-led discussion, student presentations, group collaboration, role-playing exercises, or laboratory research.
• Hands-on experiences: In some cases, you may not see students in the classroom at all because they are out “in the field” getting hands-on experience that complements and enriches their classroom learning. For example, the college’s Inside-Out courses bring together Muhlenberg students and incarcerated students to learn at the Lehigh County Jail.

Community-Engaged Learning and Internships

Community-engaged learning (or service-learning) combines lessons within the classroom and the community to reinforce students’ knowledge and address community needs and desires. Some examples include:

• Developmental Psychopathology students have served as co-facilitators of a social-emotional learning curriculum ("Strong Start") at a local therapeutic charter school.
• Advanced Developmental Research students have partnered with local schools to aid in increasing family engagement and community connectedness.
• Health Psychology students have done many projects, including designing, implementing and evaluating community interventions to address childhood obesity in collaboration with the Allentown Health Bureau and St Luke's Community Health Program.

On average, approximately 10 students per semester complete internships and receive academic credit for their work. To receive credit for an internship, the student must assume a responsible role in an organization and actively reflect on what they are observing or learning. Psychology students have interned at locations including:

• The Autism Resource and Community Hub of the Lehigh Valley (ARCH)
• Boston Children's Hospital
• The National Institute of Mental Health
• The Lehigh Valley Hospital: Adolescent Transitions program
• The Summer ADHD Treatment program at New York University