PSYCHOLOGY, PH.D. at University of Wisconsin

Psychology offers six areas of concentration (known as area groups): biological, clinical, cognitive and cognitive neuroscience, developmental, perception, and social and personality. Although there is a good deal of collaboration and interaction across groups, each area of concentration has its own requirements for graduate study and students are typically admitted into one of these areas of concentration.

Although most incoming graduate students' interests fall within these six areas of concentration, some do not. That some students' interests cut across disciplinary area groups and/or interface with other programs on campus is to be expected in a top-notch department because the boundaries of psychology itself are in flux. An innovative feature of the program is the Individualized Graduate Major designed for those graduate students who do not find a niche in the current area group structure and, instead, wish to cross area group lines and/or incorporate substantial training from other programs in their psychology graduate work. It is important to emphasize that the Individualized Graduate Major leads to a psychology Ph.D. and is not appropriate for students whose graduate study does not emphasize psychological science. Such students are advised to pursue a Ph.D. in another program or a committee degree.

Faculty members and graduate students have many affiliations with other departments, institutes, and training programs: Institute on Aging, Waisman Center, Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center, Health Emotions Center, Neuroscience Training Program, Keck Neuroimaging Center, Hearing Training Program, Center for Research on Gender and Women, Institute for Research on Poverty, NSF National Consortium on Violence Research, Mass Communications Research Center, and Survey Research Laboratory. There are strong ties to the departments of Anatomy, Anthropology, Communicative Disorders, Educational Psychology, Entomology, Forest and Wildlife Ecology, Medical Microbiology and Immunology, Industrial Engineering, Ophthalmology, Psychiatry, Sociology, and Zoology.