You can volunteer or intern alongside adults living with mental illness, working with members on daily tasks, job and school support and social programs while gaining hands-on experience in a recovery-based model of care.
Bachelor of Arts
Psychology
Major | Minor
Study People, and Find Your Place
Explore the science of mind and behavior.
The psychology major at Goshen College is a four-year bachelors degree that helps you understand human thought, emotion and behavior. At GC, you’ll put that understanding to work through original research and internships.
Classes are small and the faculty are close at hand. You can design and run your own research project and present it at the Goshen College Academic Symposium. You’ll join regular psychology gatherings to meet guest speakers, share research and build ties across the Goshen community. This is a place where you will be able to ask hard questions and still feel known.
Is psychology right for you?
If you are drawn to counseling, education, mental health, social work or research, psychology gives you the skills and perspective to do well in any field built on understanding people. You can shape the degree around what you care about, either as a major or as a minor that pairs with another path.
You also will not be doing it alone. Goshen students come from both nearby Indiana counties and from around the world, and the same advising, mentorship and community that helps students settle in is here for you, whether you are an hour from home or a hemisphere away.
What you’ll study
The psychology department offers both a major and a minor in psychology, with a flexible program of study you build from a wide range of courses. You might explore learning, memory and intelligence in Cognitive Psychology, Abnormal Psychology and Personality Theory.
Every psychology student designs and carries out a real research project and writes a final research report presented at a student conference. A senior internship places you off campus, from community mental health work to working with a school psychologist. View the complete program requirements in our catalog.
Where you’ll get hands-on
Your senior internship and research put you in real settings. A few of the named sites psychology students have worked in:
Cora Dale House
School Psychology
Shadow a school psychologist in local schools to witness testing and assessment, team meetings, and practice gathering data in educational settings.
Ryan's Place
Co-lead groups for children, teens and families facing grief, and learn how to walk with people of all ages through the process of loss.
During my four years at GC, I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to explore many different aspects of psychology and take advantage of the experiences this department offers its students. This program provided me with a strong foundation of psychology, while also allowing me to dive deeper into my own personal interests within the field. GC’s psychology program has prepared me well for graduate school, and has equipped me with the knowledge and skills to succeed in my future endeavors.
Mackenzie Mast '26
Graduate Student at Ball State University
Paying for it
For psychology majors, scholarships make up a large part of Goshen financial aid packages, which average almost $26,000 per student, not counting work-study or loans.
To see your own price after aid, run the net price calculator, or explore your options at the financial aid and scholarships pages.
Common Questions About the Psychology Major
Yes. A three-course research sequence anchors the major. Statistics in Research covers descriptive, parametric and nonparametric analysis. In Psychology Research I you and a small team design a study and write a full Human Subjects Institutional Review Board proposal — the same review process professional researchers submit to. Psychology Research II is where you collect the data, analyze it, and defend a written thesis in an oral presentation. The finished work goes to the Goshen College Academic Symposium.
Every major also completes a supervised internship in the field, plus a student-led senior seminar on psychology, science and faith. You write in APA style throughout. 100% of Goshen psychology alumni who applied to graduate programs were accepted. Alumni have attended Notre Dame, the University of Michigan, Miami University and Indiana University, among others.
Psychology alumni work as clinical psychologists, neuropsychologists and industrial-organizational psychologists. Others are school and college administrators, parole officers, agency caseworkers, human resource managers, vocational rehabilitation counselors, pastors, lawyers and physician assistants.
Start your application at the Goshen College apply page, or request information first if you’d like to talk through fit, the field placement or careers in social work before committing. You can also schedule a visit to meet the faculty.
Julie Reese
Professor of Psychology
Department ChairAmanda Sensenig
Associate Professor of Psychology
