General Information
Graduate study in psychology at Penn State is characterized by highly flexible, individualized programs leading to the Ph.D. in psychology. Each student is associated with one of the five program areas offered in the department. These programs are: Clinical (including Adult and Child-Clinical); Cognitive; Developmental; Industrial/ Organizational; and Social. Each of these areas is described more fully in the attached material. The program descriptions include listings of the relevant graduate faculty at the University Park campus. Penn State faculty at locations other than University Park are also members of the Department of Psychology and are available to supervise graduate students’ work. Their research interests are described in the Synopsis of Faculty Research Interests. Faculty with emeritus, joint, adjunct, and affiliate appointments provide additional resources.
To be considered for admission, applicants must select one of the five program areas. Once a student is admitted to a program area, it is possible to change areas only with faculty approval of the involved areas. The details of a student’s program are formulated on an individual basis with a faculty adviser. Each student organizes his or her work into one major and one minor area. The major is selected from among the five specialty areas of the department listed above. The minor may be fulfilled within the department by work in the four remaining areas of psychology or by satisfying minor requirements of any other division of the University entirely outside the department (e.g., statistics, computer science, special education, sociology, biology).
Financial Support
Many graduate students in psychology are supported by half-time departmental assistantships that include a stipend and remission of tuition, permit 9–12 credits of course work each semester, and require twenty hours of work per week. Support is also provided by a variety of training grants, individual faculty members’ research grants, and various University-wide funds.
Application Deadline and Additional Information
Additional information may be obtained from:
Ms. Christine Andrus, Graduate Program Coordinator (uppsygrad@psu.edu)
Department of Psychology
Penn State
136 Moore Building
University Park, PA 16802.
Ph: 814-863-1721
Completed applications must be received by December 1st each year for consideration for the Fall semester of the following year.
Program Area Descriptions
Clinical (Adult and Child)
Our PCSAS1 and APA2 accredited Clinical Science program is designed to train graduate students to produce and disseminate cutting edge knowledge that moves the field of clinical science forward. The program simultaneously provides outstanding applied training in assessment and intervention, which prepares students with the educational background needed to pursue subsequent professional licensure3.
The overall goal of the training program is to provide a seamless integration of clinical science and practice. We provide students with the highest quality science-centered education and training in both research and application. Our graduates demonstrate competence: (a) to conduct research relevant to the promotion of mental health, and the assessment, prevention, treatment, and understanding of psychopathology; and (b) to apply clinical science to design, develop, select, evaluate, deliver, supervise, and disseminate empirically based assessments, interventions, and prevention strategies.
The structure of tomorrow’s health care system should be determined based on the best scientific evidence available. Penn State’s graduates are playing leading roles in this future — designing, building, overseeing, delivering, and evaluating the science-driven health-care system of tomorrow.
In addition to course work, students are expected to engage in both research and practice throughout their graduate training. Students generally complete course work during their first three to four years, and complete their dissertation in the fifth year. Most students complete their predoctoral internship in the sixth year. The program includes courses in clinical psychology, neuroscience, personality, research design, psychopathology, psychotherapy, clinical assessment, and statistics. Students must also meet APA Discipline Specific Knowledge requirements covering biological bases of behavior, cognitive bases of behavior, affective bases of behavior, social bases of behavior, and developmental lifespan psychology. The main clinical training practica occur in the departmental Psychological Clinic and its community and school based services, as well as occasional externship placements. Several specialized clinical courses and seminars, focused on the interest areas of the faculty, are offered regularly
Peter Arnett, Ph.D. 1992, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Karen Bierman, Ph.D., 1981, University of Denver
Katie Burkhouse, Ph.D., 2016, State University of New York at Binghamton
Louis Castonguay, Ph.D., 1992, The State University of New York at Stony Brook
Pamela Cole, Ph.D., 1980, The Pennsylvania State University
Chardée Galán, Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh (Joint Clinical-Developmental Program)
Frank Hillary, Ph.D., 2000, Drexel University
Cynthia Huang-Pollock, Ph.D., 1995, The University Of Alabama
Yo Jackson, Ph.D., 2003, Michigan State University
Kenneth Levy, Ph.D., 1999, City University of New York
Michelle Newman, Ph.D., 1992, The State University of New York at Stony Brook
José Soto, Ph.D., 2004, University of California, Berkeley
Martha Wadsworth, Ph.D., 2001, University of Vermont
Stephen Wilson, Ph. D., 2008, University of Pittsburgh
Cognitive Psychology
The Cognitive Psychology program at Penn State emphasizes research and theory in a variety of areas of cognitive psychology and human performance. All cognitive students’ programs emphasize basic theoretical issues and research methodologies in cognitive psychology, but individual programs vary widely depending upon the student’s substantive interest. As in the other programs in the department, the student works with his or her faculty adviser to develop an individualized program of major and minor areas. Faculty and students in the cognitive area participate in a weekly “bag lunch” that provides opportunities to discuss ongoing research projects and issues. Graduates of the program are prepared to enter research and teaching positions in university or college settings, or to work in applied research organizations.
Students in the Cognitive Psychology program may choose elective courses from, or minor in, areas such as linguistics, computer science, kinesiology (motor control), and neuroscience (SCAN). Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, PA, the School of Information Sciences and Technology and the Center for Language Acquisition at Penn State University Park provide additional resources for students interested in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. More than fifty faculty members in other departments of the University also have interests in cognitive research that complement those of the cognitive faculty and students, providing a broad range of interdisciplinary perspectives.
Roger Beaty, Ph.D. 2015, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Research seeks to understand how people think creatively using brain imaging and behavioral experiments to examine neural and cognitive systems that support creative thinking.
Nancy Dennis, Ph.D., 2004, The Catholic University of America
Research focuses on elucidating the cognitive and neural mechanisms that support learning and memory in young and older adults.
Rick O. Gilmore, Ph.D., 1997, Carnegie-Mellon University
Developmental cognitive neuroscience; neural processes of spatial perception, action, and memory; computational models of perceptual, cognitive, and motor development.
Michele Diaz, Ph. D., Duke University, 2005
Research focuses on the relations between the brain and behavior. Most recently examining age-related differences in language.
Janet G. van Hell, Ph. D., 1998, University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands)
Second language and bilingualism, language development in children with typical or atypical lan-guage development, code-switching, bimodal bilingualism, cognitive neuroscience of language processing.
Other Faculty and Programs Affiliated with Cognitive:
Other faculty at University Park (in psychology, except as noted) who are affiliated with the cognitive pro-gram include:; Paola Dussias (Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese; psycholinguistics, eye movements in reading); Karen Gasper (social; affect and information processing); Rick Jacobs (industrial/organizational; models of information processing/decision making); Lynn Liben (developmental; spatial cognition, graphic representation); Mark Latash (kinesiology; neurophysiology of movement); Karl Newell (kinesiology; motor learning and development); William Ray (clinical; psychophysiological relationship of emotional and cognitive behavior); Frank Ritter (School of Information Sciences and Technology; cognitive modeling within a unified theory of cognition); Robert Sainburg (kinesiology; neural mechanisms of motor control); Dagmar Sternad (kinesiology; dynamical systems analysis of movement); and Janet Swim (social; cogni-tive biases in information processing). Psychology faculty at other Penn State campuses with interests in cognitive psychology include: William R. Balch (Altoona; perception of melody, modality-specific memory codes); Mark Casteel (York; reading and inference in children); and Valerie Stratton (Altoona; effects of music on mood and behavior).
Developmental Psychology
The doctoral program in Developmental Psychology at Penn State offers a flexible program designed to provide students with a broad theoretical and empirical background in developmental psychology coupled with expertise in one or more areas of specialization. Specialty areas may concern basic research questions in cognitive or social development, and/or issues related to the application of developmental psychology to various settings. These goals are met through course work, research projects, and practicum experiences. Depending upon the individual student’s particular program of study, graduates may be employed in academic departments, research institutes, governmental agencies, or various service-delivery settings. The program faculty includes both a core developmental faculty group as well as a larger Developmental Program Network (DPN) that involves faculty affiliated with other areas of the Psychology Department who are interested in developmental phenomena. DPN faculty are involved in Developmental Proseminar, research supervision, and the developmental graduate curriculum.
Kristin A. Buss, Ph.D., 2000, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Social and emotional development, temperament, emotion regulation, the role of physiology in indi-vidual differences in emotions and temperament, fearful temperament and adjustment.
Rina D. Eiden, Ph.D., 1992, University of Maryland
Developmental trajectories among children at risk for maladjustment; parental substance use; prenatal substance exposure;
early childhood interventions.
Rick O. Gilmore, Ph.D., 1997, Carnegie-Mellon University
Developmental cognitive neuroscience; neural processes of spatial perception, action, and memory; computational models of perceptual, cognitive, and motor development.
Lynn S. Liben, Ph.D., 1972, The University of Michigan
Representational development, including spatial and graphic representations and their role in science and art education; development of social stereotypes and prejudice, with a particular emphasis on gender stereotyping and its consequences.
Erika Lunkenheimer, Ph.D., 2006, University of Michigan
Regulatory processes in the family; parent-child interaction; parent-child coregulation patterns; child maltreatment; risk and protective processes.
Jenae Neiderhiser, Ph.D., 1994, The Pennsylvania State University
Understanding the interplay between genes and environment throughout the lifespan.
Koraly Perez-Edgar, Ph.D., 2001, Harvard University
Temperament: Attention mechanisms that shape social and emotional development, Psychophysiological and neural correlates of emotion and attention (EEG, ERP, fMRI).
Suzy Scherf, Ph.D., 2003, University of Pittsburgh
Developmental psychology, developmental cognitive neuroscience, developmental neuroimaging (fMRI, DTI), face processing, autism, vision science, role of pubertal development in reorganizing neural circuitry supporting social-information processing in adolescence.
Janet G. van Hell, Ph.D., 1998, University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands)
Second language learning and bilingualism, language development in children with typical or atypical language development, code-switching, bimodal bilingualism, cognitive neuroscience of language processing.
Dawn P. Witherspoon, Ph.D., 2008, New York University
Focuses on neighborhood, school, and family factors that affect adolescents’ socioemotional and academic adjustment.
Other Faculty and Programs Affiliated with Developmental:
Other members of the psychology department at University Park who participate in the Developmental Program Network include: Karen Linn Bierman (social-emotional development); Pamela Cole (developmental psychopathology, development of expressive control, cross-cultural differences in emotion-context and reality-appearance distinction understanding); Janet Swim (gender stereotyping, ra-cial identity); Theresa Vescio (stereotyping and prejudice). Students in the program also work with developmental psychologists whose primary affiliations are in other divisions of the University such as the College of Health and Human Development and the College of Education.
The Child Study Center (CSC) at Penn State is dedicated to promoting children’s development through research and practice. The CSC is a research and training center whose focus is to gain knowledge about children’s typical and atypical development. It currently houses several NIH- and NSF-funded research projects, an NIH training program, and the Child and Adolescent Service of the Psychological Clinic. The CSC provides interview rooms, video labs, and other facilities related to research and clinical work with infants, children, and families. In addition, connections with the Department of Human Development and Family Studies (in the College of Health and Human Development) and the Prevention Research Center provide additional opportunities for collaborative work. Infant, toddler, and preschool programs on campus as well as local school districts also provide practicum and research settings.
Industrial/Organizational Psychology
The program in Industrial and Organizational Psychology at Penn State combines course work, research, and supervised practical experience to prepare students for positions in a variety of industrial, governmental, consulting, and academic settings. Students participate in seminar topics such as personnel selection, industrial training, and social-industrial psychology. In addition to conducting research for their master’s theses and doctoral dissertations, students participate in practica that provide the opportunity to work on real-world problems in industrial and government organizations. Teams of I/O graduate students, under faculty supervision, plan and conduct research requested by firms and governmental agencies. In addition to providing practicum opportunities, these organizations contribute to the graduate program financially, helping to support convention travel, thesis and dissertation research, summer employment, etc. Students are encouraged to combine their work in the I/O program with training in other areas of psychology and related disciplines, including social psychology, organizational behavior, and statistics and methodology.
Ricardo Brooks, Ph.D., 2024, State University of New York at Albany
Alicia A. Grandey, Ph.D., 1999, Colorado State University
Stress and well-being of employees, work-family conflict and family-friendly policies, and the emo-tional labor of customer service employees.
James M. LeBreton, Ph.D., 2002, University of Tennessee
Research program examines the relationships between personality, specifically the implicit or unconscious side of personality and behavior in organizations. Also, interested in the development and application of new statistics designed to improve the decisions made by organization-al scholars.
Susan J. Simkins (formerly Mohammed), Ph.D., 1995, The Ohio State University
Team cognition, team composition/diversity, temporal issues in teams, group decision making.
Other Faculty and Programs Affiliated with I/O:
Other members of the psychology department faculty at University Park with interests in industrial/organizational psychology include: Michelle Newman (cost-benefit models of therapeutic interventions for anxiety); Janet Swim (biases in performance evaluations); and Teresa Vescio (stereotyping, leadership, and diversity in organizations). In addition, there is close interaction with industrial psychologists and other organizational scientists in The Mary Jean and Frank P. Smeal College of Business Administration and the School of Information Sciences and Technology.
Social Psychology
The Social Psychology program at Penn State is designed to train our students to conduct theoretically-grounded, methodologically sound social psychology research that promotes positive social change. Strengths of our program are our focus on advancing research in a socially conscious manner and our promotion of cross-disciplinary collaboration. Our research emphases are (1) stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination and (2) affect and emotion, with research on gender and the self overlapping both of these areas. Students obtain research experience through collaboration with faculty and through the development of their own empirical research. Each student selects a program of study in consultation with an advisory committee of her or his own choosing. Faculty and students in social psychology meet weekly to discuss on-going research projects. Graduates are trained to teach and to conduct research in academic and applied settings. Core course work is designed to introduce students to significant topic areas within social psychology, to provide training in a range of research methods and statistical techniques, and to promote acquisition of advanced research and writing skills. Additional courses provide in-depth coverage of specialty areas within social psychology. See https://psych.la.psu.edu/graduate/program-areas/social/ for further information.
Reginald B. Adams, Jr., Ph.D., 2002, Dartmouth College
Detection of mental and emotional states through nonverbal cues (e.g. eye gaze), social group memberships (e.g., gender and race), and facial appearance; application of visual cognition and af-fective neuroscience to address social perception.
Daryl Cameron, Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 2013
Research investigates the psychological processes involved in empathy and moral decision-making, using an interdisciplinary approach drawing on affective science, social cognition, and moral philosophy.
Jonathan Cook, Ph.D., University of Oregon, 2007
Research focuses on social identity processes and how threat from important social categories, like race, gender, sexual orientation, or chronic illness, can affect cognitive, affective, and physiological processes over time.
Karen Gasper, Ph.D., 1999, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Affect and social cognition, affect regulation, motivation and goals, individual and situational differ-ences in emotional understanding and experience.
Sean Laurent,Ph.D., 2010, University of Oregon
Research on understanding how people think and feel about other people, particularly as this relates to how people form and revise their moral judgments.
Jes Mastick,Ph.D., 2016, University of Michigan
Research examines how marginalized groups experience stigma and how stigma contributes to psychosocial well-being (e.g., belonging, safety and threat, pride, stress) with a focus on sexual and gender diversity.
Janet K. Swim, Ph.D., 1988, University of Minnesota
Sexism and heterosexism, perceptions and meta-perceptions of prejudice, interpersonal and in-trapersonal goals and coping with discrimination, race/ethnic socialization, race/ethnic identity.
Theresa K. Vescio, Ph.D., 1996, University of Kansas
Stereotyping, prejudice, power, intergroup attribution, self-categorization, coping with discrimination.
Other Faculty and Programs Affiliated with Social:
Other members of the psychology department at University Park with interests in social psychology include, but are not limited to: Sheri Berenbaum (social and cognitive development, primarily from a neuroscience perspective), Pamela Cole (emotion regulation), Alicia A. Grandey (stress and emotions), Ken Levy (social, personality, and developmental psycholo-gy), Lynn Liben (cognitive and social development including development of gender and racial stereotypes); Susan Simkins (group/team dynamics and decision making,). In addition, faculty in other departments at University Park have interest in social psychological research including Michael Hecht, Department of Communication Arts and Sciences (communication), Phyllis Mansfield (women’s studies and health education), Wayne Osgood and Barry Ruback (crime, law and justice); and Marylee Taylor (sociology). Psychology faculty at other PSU locations whose core area is social psychology include: Peter Crabb (technology and social behavior); Mary Gergen (social constructionism, gender issues); John Johnson (personality); and Margaret Signorella (gender schemata, sex differences in cognitive ability).
Specialization in Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
The specialization in cognitive and affective neuroscience is a department-wide effort to integrate the study of brain and behavior by infusing neuroscience throughout the traditional areas of psychology. This approach recognizes the rapidly growing connections between psychology and neuroscience. Students will be admitted to one of the traditional substantive areas of the psychology department—clinical (child or adult), cognitive, developmental, industrial-organizational, or social psychology—and augment their work in that area with coursework and research using a variety of physiological methods.
Modern approaches to brain-behavior research are interdisciplinary, and the specialization in cognitive and affective neuroscience offers training that reflects this vibrant dynamic. Students taking part in the specialization will have the opportunity to pursue cross-disciplinary work with faculty in other areas of the psychology department and in other departments of the university, including biology, kinesiology, biobehavioral health, and human development. In addition, students can take advantage of university-wide neuroscience activities, both here in Penn State University Park and at the College of Medicine in Hershey.
As with the other programs in the department, students will work with one or more faculty advisors to develop an individualized program of study. Faculty and students taking part in the specialization will also participate in a bi-weekly seminar that provides opportunities to discuss ongoing research. Graduates of the program will be prepared to enter research and teaching positions in university or college settings, or to work in applied research organizations.
Reginald B. Adams, Jr., Ph.D., 2002, Dartmouth College
Detection of mental and emotional states through nonverbal cues (e.g. eye gaze), social group memberships (e.g., gender and race), and facial appearance; application of visual cognition and affective neuroscience to address social perception.
Peter A. Arnett, Ph.D., 1992, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Clinical neuropsychology, neuropsychological dysfunction in multiple sclerosis (MS) and sports- related mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI); neuropsychological correlates of secondary factors (e.g., depression, anxiety, motivation, etc.) in these neurological conditions; contributors to and consequences of depression and other forms of psychopathology in MS.
Sheri A. Berenbaum, Ph.D., 1977, University of California, Berkeley
Social and cognitive development, primarily from a neuroscience perspective. Prenatal sex hormone effects on gender development, genetic influences on pubertal development and on the association between pubertal timing and behavior, and the neural substrates of individual differences in cognitive abilities.
Frederick M. Brown, Ph.D., 1971, University of Virginia
Health psychology, influence of cyclic environment and internal organismic rhythms on behavior.
Kristin A. Buss, Ph.D., 2000, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Social and emotional development, temperament, emotion regulation, the role of physiology in individual differences in emotions and temperament, fearful temperament and adjustment.
Theresa K. Vescio, Ph.D., 1996, University of Kansas
Stereotyping, prejudice, intergroup attribution, and self-categorization.
Stephen Wilson, Ph.D., 2008, University of Pittsburgh
Addictive behavior, with a specific focus on cigarette smoking. Interdisciplinary approach that integrates theory and methods from traditional behavioral addiction research with those derived from the affective, cognitive and social neurosciences.
Richard A. Carlson, Ph.D., 1984, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Consciousness, cognitive skill, working memory in reasoning and skill acquisition, spatial cognition.
Pamela M. Cole, Ph.D., 1980, The Pennsylvania State University
Child clinical psychology, early childhood predictors of psychopathology, development of emotion regulation, cross-cultural differences in emotional development psychopathology.
Nancy Dennis, Ph.D., 2004, The Catholic University of America
Research focuses on elucidating the cognitive and neural mechanisms that support learning and memory in young and older adults.
Karen Gasper, Ph.D., 1999, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Affect and social cognition, affect regulation, motivation and goals, individual and situational differences in emotional understanding and experience.
Rick O. Gilmore, Ph.D., 1997, Carnegie-Mellon University
Developmental cognitive neuroscience; neural processes of spatial perception, action, and memory; computational models of perceptual, cognitive, and motor development.
Frank G. Hillary, Ph.D., 2000, Drexel University
Adult neuropsychology. Mechanisms of neural plasticity following brain injury and disease.
Cynthia L. Huang-Pollock, Ph.D., 2003, Michigan State University
Child clinical psychology; neurocognitive deficits associated with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Neuropsychological performance as affected by motivation, reward, and timing deficits in children with and without ADHD.
Judith F. Kroll, Ph.D., 1977, Brandeis University
Language and memory, bilingualism, second language acquisition, visual cognition.
Ping Li, Ph.D., 1990, Leiden University
Research is aimed to understanding the relationships among language, brain, and culture.
Keith E. Nelson, Ph.D., 1970, Yale University
Language development, art, plans, and memory and their interrelations across the lifespan.
William J. Ray, Ph.D., 1971, Vanderbilt University
Psychophysiological indicants of emotional and cognitive behavior with emphasis on EEG and individual differences, anxiety, dissociation, chaos models.
David A. Rosenbaum, Ph.D., 1977, Stanford University
Cognitive substrates of skilled performance, human motor control, computer modeling.