Key Allegheny Benefits

• Understanding of oneself and others - of human thought and behavior - from a solid foundation in the methods, findings, and concepts of psychology.
• Excellent preparation for graduate study, as well as excellent focus for a liberal arts program with immediate employment in mind.
• Ability to design and implement research studies.
• Ability to synthesize information from different sub-areas of a field.
• Understanding of psychology's connections to other fields (neuroscience, philosophy, women's studies, others).
• Recognition of the ethical dimensions of psychological research and practice.
• Ability to evaluate current trends in psychology.

Allegheny Distinctions

• Fully-supported Senior Projects that demonstrate to employers and graduate schools the ability to complete a major original assignment.
• Faculty members who are deeply committed to teaching undergraduates.
• A large selection of courses for aliberal arts college.
• Early emphasis on "hands-on" laboratory work, plus superior undergraduate research facilities.
• Opportunities for collaborative research, presentations, and publication of research findings with faculty.
• Key departmental participant in interdisciplinary programs such as the neuroscience major, the women's studies major and the values, ethics and social action minor.

Endorsements

• " After working through the material, we began to pinpoint some exciting conclusions and I began to realize that at this small college in Meadville, my professor and I were blazing new trails, staking out new territories in the realm of social science." - Kay Campbell '93, on the Senior Project
• Since 1920, Allegheny has ranked in the top 3% of all private, under-graduate colleges and universities in students going on to earn Ph.D.s in psychology.
• About 80% of the Allegheny psychology majors who apply to graduate and professional schools are accepted.

Facilities Strengths

Labs

Allegheny's psychology laboratory complex gives students opportunities far advanced over most undergraduate colleges. Recently, over $500,000 was invested in lab renovations to provide the latest equipment and instrumentation. The complex includes a physiological psychology teaching lab, an operant conditioning teaching lab, a psycho-pharmacology research lab for animal work, a human psychophysiology research lab, a human lab for research on learning and memory, and group research rooms and suites for student projects.

Computers

Department members use technology extensively, especially the web, to support teaching and learning. Access to more than 60 proprietary electronic databases, combined with faculty- designed web pages, provide students with information from all corners of the globe. WebCT provides software for asynchronous, off-line discussions, while a fully wired "smart classroom" allows for state of the art computer-assisted presentations with 20 student workstations. In addition, computers are an integral part of several laboratory setups, including those for human electrophysiology and single-cell recordings.

Student Research and Special Projects

Every Alleghenian completes a Senior Project-a significant piece of original work, designed by each student and a faculty advisor in the major field, that demonstrates to employers and graduate schools the ability to complete a major assignment, to work independently, to analyze and synthesize information, and to write and speak persuasively. In psychology, the Junior Seminar is used to explore potential project areas, then the project itself is completed during the senior year. Small groups of students work with a faculty member in a senior seminar, exploring ethical research standards and literature related to their topics. Under faculty supervision, students critique each other's work and present their results orally to the group.

Recent Senior Projects

• "The effects of musical key changes in the frontal lobes of musicians and non-musicians using EEG alpha desynchronization "
• "Emergent patterns in the cycle of poverty: A description of human behavior through complexity theory "
• "Older adults' perceptions of elderspeak in relation to a physician's sex: The influence of gender roles "
• "Judging responsibility: The effects of agent-target relationships and outcome severity "
• "Electrophysiological effects of cocaine or gamma-vinyl-GABA on mesencephalic dopaminergic and GABAergic cells "
• "Behavioral economics: A new approach to drug prevention campaigns"
• "Effects of a therapeutic art group on adolescent females"
• "The role of epidermal growth factor receptor activation in mediating migration in the forebrain "
• "The effect of a sustained silent reading program on elementary students' attitudes toward reading "
• "Personality, family environment, social support and resiliency in children of alcoholics "
• "The effects of Miranda rights and evidence on perceptions of guilt"

Other Student Research

Students also engage in other original research directed by faculty. Principal opportunities are the Internship in Psychological Research and Independent Studies. Moreover, summer projects may be conducted either on or off campus.

Some recent examples:

• " Social support and post-operative recovery" (independent study at a local pain-management clinic)
• "Personal stressors and facial EMG in headache sufferers" (independent study)
• "Effects of separate amygdala and anterior rhinal lesions on memory in rhesus monkeys" (summer project at National Institute of Health in Washington, D.C., supervised by an Allegheny alumnus)
• "Service-learning involvement for at-risk youth: Pilot implementation and curriculm devlopment" (independent study)

Student Publications and Presentations

Allegheny students regularly present their research findings at local, regional, and national professional meetings, and their work is often published in professional journals. Such achievements are unusual for undergraduates and are viewed especially favorably by graduate schools.

Some recent examples:

• " Attributions of responsibility in date rape: Effects of assailant size and victim resistance strategy" (paper presented to the Eastern Psychological Association)
• "Religious beliefs and experience of volunteer service in college students" (presented at the International Congress of Psychology)
• "Heart rate reactivity during the Stroop test better predicted by previous night's sleep than pulse reactivity," published in Psychophysiology
• "The immediate effects of media violence on behavior" published in the Journal of Social Issues
• "Women's use of symbolic objects in prayer" (paper presented at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association)
• "No respite during sleep: Heart-rate hyperreactivity to rapid eye movement sleep in angry men classified as type A," published in Perceptual and Motor Skills
• "Chronic cold stress reduced the spontaneous activity of ventral tegmental dopamine neurons" (presented to the Society for Neuroscience)
• "Kianic acid lesions and reinnervation of the stratium by substantia nigra grafts" (paper presented at International Symposium on Brain Graft Research)
• "The effects of gender, activity level and reasoning ability on body perception in older adults" (paper received the American Psychological Association's 1996 Student Research Award in the field of adult development and aging)
• "Some motivative properties of NMDA in the rat" (poster presented to the Association for Behavioral Analysis)