Psychology, a vital and growing discipline, investigates the
foundations, antecedents, and consequences of people's perceptions,
beliefs, emotions, and behaviors especially as they are influenced by
biological, developmental, cognitive, and social factors. Work in
psychology contributes in important ways to solving a wide range of
problems in contemporary society. For example, many of the most
pressing contemporary social and economic issues such as prejudice and
discrimination, worker productivity, substance abuse, and the rising
medical costs associated with factors ranging from AIDS to the lack of
exercise reflect, to an appreciable extent, modifiable cognitions,
emotions, and behavioral choices. Psychological research on brain
functioning, motivation, emotion, cognition, attitudes, and decision
making is a necessary precursor to arriving at workable solutions to
some of the most critical problems of today and tomorrow. In addition,
many of the most intriguing scientific problemsŠranging from the
neural basis of attention to the sociocultural factors that contribute
to the quality of lifeŠare psychological issues. Faculty in the
Department of Psychology are directly engaged in research on these and
myriad other topics. By virtually every measure, the Department of
Psychology is a central unit of the university and one of the
highest-quality departments at Ohio State. In instruction, the
department's efforts are second to none. The department's faculty
teach more than 16,000 students each year, and the department has the
largest number of undergraduate student majors-1,200 students-of any
department at Ohio State. The department also ranks first in the
number of baccalaureate degrees conferred, and the department's
doctoral program is the largest in the Colleges of the Arts and
Sciences.
The quantity of departmental activity is matched by its quality. For
example, in the most recent National Research Council ratings, the
quality of the psychology faculty was rated at the 11th percentile,
the highest percentile rating of any department at Ohio State.
Overall, the psychology program was ranked 21st, up from 32nd in 1982.
Extramural funding is also strong, having increased more than 600
percent during the past five years.
Graduate students in the department are among the best at the
University and are routinely awarded more University Fellowships and
National Science Foundation Pre-doctoral Fellowships than students in
any other department on campus. Graduates in the past five years have
accepted tenure-track positions at universities such as Yale,
Princeton, Northwestern, and UCLA. With formal connections to a wide
variety of other departments and units in the biological sciences,
social sciences, humanities, and professional schools, the department
has numerous interdisciplinary links. Faculty in the Department of
Psychology hold joint appointments in, or contribute in substantive
ways to, various other units including: the Mershon Center; Department
of Political Science; Survey Research Unit; Center for Cognitive
Science; Department of Computer Science; Music Cognition Program;
Department of Industrial, Welding, and Systems Engineering's
Ergonomics Institute; Biomedical Engineering; Neuroscience Program;
Department of Psychiatry; the Biotechnology Center; Department of
Pediatrics; Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology; School of Public
Health; Department of Pharmacology; Institute for Behavioral Medicine
Research; the College of Nursing; the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital
and Research Institute; and the Max M. Fisher College of Business. The
Department of Psychology currently maintains graduate programs in
psychobiology, as well as cognitive, counseling, developmental,
quantitative, industrial/organizational, and social psychology.
