About the School

Katy Tangenberg, PhD, Dean

School of Psychology, Family, and Community Faculty

School of Psychology, Family, and Community Website

Faculty, staff, and students in the School of Psychology, Family, and Community strive to become a community of learners who are:

• Guided by faith. Exploring the implications of vital expressions of Christian faith for the human condition, and for fostering emotional and relational healing and health.
• Rooted in academic discipline. Fostering rigorous and creative learning environments, and contributing primary scholarship to the scientific study of psychological and social processes.
• Committed to service. Nurturing creative partnerships with our local community and beyond in order to serve in, and learn from, socially and culturally diverse settings.

Our Mission

We seek to:

• Provide students with solid academic and experiential grounding in the theory, research, and practice of the field of psychology.
• Prepare and inspire motivated and able students to enter and contribute to the field of psychology.
• Nurture students toward valuing themselves and others as persons of worth created in God’s image.
• Empower students to act in this world. That is, actively celebrating God’s human and non-human creation, showing mercy and compassion to the vulnerable, and challenging, and changing aspects of society that deny or denigrate persons.

Majors

Minors

Program Learning Outcomes

The Psychology curriculum follows the American Psychological Guidelines for the undergraduate Psychology major.  These guidelines offer five learning goals summarized below and easily remembered by the acronym: GOALS.

• Grow in knowledge.
• Obtain scientific inquiry and critical thinking skills.
• Adopt ethical and socially responsible values that are sensitive to diversity.
• Learn to communicate effectively.
• Succeed with professional‐level skills that transfer to the workplace.

These learning outcomes map onto a trajectory through the major that grounds students in the science of psychology while adopting guild recommendations that identify psychology as a workforce major in as much as it is a graduate study preparatory major.