The Psychology department provides two designations to recognize the major’s highest performers.
High Distinction requires the satisfaction of the following criteria:
- Completion of both PSY 227 (Statistics) and PSY 247 (Research Methods I) with a grade of A- or better.
- A GPA within the Psychology major of 3.5 or higher.
- An overall GPA of 3.5 or higher.
- Completion of one of the following:
- PSY 480 (Independent Study)
- PSY 490 (Teaching Assistantship)
- PSY 491 (Research Assistantship)
- Presentation of (or acceptance to present) a first-author/co-author research project at a State/Regional/National Conference, including CREATE.
Highest Distinction requires satisfaction of the above criteria as well as:
- Scoring at the 80th percentile or higher (compared to national norms) on the pre-graduation Exit Exam.
- Presentation of (or acceptance to present) a first-author/co-author research project at a State/Regional/National Conference, EXCLUDING CREATE.
Note: Because this is a designation conferred upon graduation, students must complete all criteria before the end of the semester in which they graduate to be eligible for this distinction.
Please contact Dr. Fugere (fugerem@easternct.edu) for more information.
Switzerland is the birthplace of Jean Piaget, one of the most well-known developmental psychologists. It has 4 national languages, diverse peoples, and has been ranked as the best place in the world for older adults to live. From approx. May 22 to June 2, 2025, we’ll be staying in Zurich, Bern, and Geneva with excursions to surrounding areas. We plan to visit the Swiss Alps, Lake Geneva, Bern’s Old City, hike the Matterhorn, visit a forest kindergarten and with older adults in intergenerational living facilities, tour the Jean Piaget Center at the University of Geneva and the United Nations & experience the food (and chocolate) that make Switzerland famous. You will learn about physical, cognitive, and social emotional growth across the lifespan. Also, you will practice skills for traveling internationally while cultivating open-mindedness toward & curiosity about other cultures.
This course was designed to enable students to explore the differences between Italian and American food culture and eating behaviors through field observations of meals and visits to an olive farm, a goat farm, a community garden, Dario Cecchini's butcher shop Antica Macelleria Cecchini (pictured above), restaurants, and food markets. Students also took in lectures on Italian cuisine and participated in food tastings and cooking classes. Through these engaging activities, the students learned that Italian food is fresh, seasonal, regional, and meant to be shared.
This seminar course was designed to provide an overview of cross cultural issues related to well-being and relationships. Social, psychological, developmental, and educational aspects of well-being and relationships were examined from Western and native-Hawaiian perspectives including attachment styles, social support, parenting, psychological disorders, personality and emotional expression, physical attraction, romantic relationships, and compassionate love. Students visited sites of cultural significance on Oahu and the island of Hawai'i, including the Kaneohe Fishpond aquaculture site, Pearl Harbor, the Polynesian Cultural Center, and Volcanoes National Park.
This course was designed to expose students to study cross-cultural differences in well-being and relationships through comparisons of western and native-Hawaiian perspectives. Students completed a series of readings and discussions highlighting cultural aspects of relationships, families, attraction, emotional well-being, and mental health and applied these insights during an immersive experience in Hawaiian and native-Hawaiian cultural. Highlights of the course included visits to the home of the Hawaiian royal family, the Byodo-In Temple, Waimea Valley, the Kukaniloko birth site, an ancient aquaculture site, and Pearl Harbor.
This course was designed to help students come to understand, through associated readings and several site visits, the history of Ireland and why psychology was late in arriving there relative to the United States, with modern scientific psychology appearing in the 1950s. Each student in the course wrote a biography of a current Irish psychologist and traced their academic lineage. Through this project, they explored how Irish psychologists were influenced by the original founders and schools of thought in psychology.
This course was designed to allow students to experience the history of psychology first-hand through assigned coursework and course excursions to the Freud Museum, Down House (the home of Charles Darwin), Bethlem Royal Hospital, and the British Science Museum. For their primary research project, students wrote a biography about a British psychologist using archival materials, including handwritten letters and notes, in the Wellcome Library and the British Library.
This course was designed to provide an overview of the field of health psychology. Emphasis was placed on a cross cultural view of health and wellness as well as the effect of the HIV pandemic in Nepal. Social, psychological and educational aspects of health were examined from an East Asian perspective including the health care system, alternative/ complimentary medicine, health education and an understanding of how the HIV pandemic in India impacts Nepal.