It is with the greatest pleasure that I welcome you to our department web site. Located in Arcata, 270 miles north of San Francisco and 95 miles south of the Oregon border, on 144 acres of land, Humboldt State University (HSU) is one of 23 campuses in the California State University system. It is situated against a stunning backdrop of redwood forests, rivers, ocean beaches and mountain ranges. HSU is well known for its excellence in teaching and relatively small classes and is recognized as one of the best small universities that is consistently ranked in the top 10% of regional colleges and universities by a number of national publications, including U.S. News & World Report, Money, and Making A Difference College Guide.

Psychology is the most popular major in the United States in 2005 and has many different fields of study. The Psychology Department at HSU is the second largest department in the College of Natural Resources and Sciences at HSU and is known for academic excellence in its undergraduate and graduate programs. The Psychology Department has maintained an excellent curriculum, student oriented teaching methods, and outstanding undergraduate and graduate programs. We are proud of our excellent learning environment. It is our goal to provide our students with the knowledge necessary to understand human behavior and to put psychological knowledge and skills into action in daily life. Students in our undergraduate program study a wide range of psychology and learn skills in psychological services. With this strong training, students start working in human service related jobs after graduation or continue their education in graduate school. Our graduates have maintained an excellent record of going on to master’s and doctoral programs around the country. Many of them have completed their graduate degrees successfully and are now working as psychologist-practitioners, university professors and research scientists. Due to the success of our program in providing outstanding training in psychology, every year an increasingly large number of students select psychology as their HSU major or switch to the psychology major. Of course, such success is realized through the hard work of our students and faculty in the Psychology Department.

Our department has counseling, school psychology, and academic research MA programs for qualified students to continue their education after obtaining a bachelor’s degree in psychology. The graduate students in the counseling and school psychology programs learn and develop necessary skills and competencies for employment as marriage, family, and child counselors in a human service agency or as school counselors. Graduate students in the Academic Research program study advanced knowledge and research skills and engage in scientific research. The training can lead to careers such as community college instructors or research technicians. Furthermore, our programs prepare many of our MA graduates to continue their study in prestigious Ph.D. programs in major research universities after obtaining the MA degree.

I wish to express my sincere thanks to you for your interest in the Psychology Department at HSU. You are welcome to contact me or Val Arizzi, the Department Coordinator, if you have any questions. I hope you can visit our department during the process of selecting a school at which to study. I wish success in your academic pursuits and in your subsequent career.

Gregg Gold, Ph.D.
Professor and Department Chair

Students transferring to the department from other colleges are advised to take their lower division course requirements in psychology prior to beginning at HSU. This will help to advance your progress through the major requirements. Below are several points to keep in mind.

If you take a similar introductory course in statistics, you do not need to take PSYC 241 for your psychology major at HSU. If your statistics course is from a psychology department, you may also count the course units toward the 45 units in psychology required in the major. If your statistics course is not from a psychology department, the course units will not count toward 45 units of psychology course work in your major, but you may substitute any 4 units of psychology coursework in place of PSYC 241.

Because all courses taken in Junior College are lower division, the transfer of units for classes that would normally meet our Upper Division requirements is a complex issue. If the course syllabus and/or catalog description from the Junior College appear to meet criteria similar to those in one of our existing required courses, the Junior College course shall be accepted as fulfilling the requirement for our major. However, the student must take an additional elective in psychology in order to meet the current 34 units for the upper division major. This may not be the case if you are transferring from another university, as structures between lower and upper division courses do differ across schools.