Student Research

The Psychology Department provides students with various opportunities to participate in supervised internships and faculty research. These include fieldwork internships, the research experience program, specialized research courses, research intensive courses and working as research assistants in professors’ laboratories. Students can also participate in their own original research by taking an independent study research experience course under the guidance of a full-time faculty member. 

The Psychology faculty researchers are at the leading edge of research, with programs of scholarship and publication that are visible and influential at the national and international levels.  For example, Dr. Salfati's Investigative Psychology Research Unit provides students with an opportunity to engage in research and publish.  In Dr. Allwood's lab undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students work together on Youth Experiences and College Transition Projects with an emphasis on trauma. Dr. Widom's Forensic Psychology Research Institute brings together multi-discipline scholars and funds original research.  

More than half of full-time faculty members are or have been funded by external grants from such agencies as the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Justice, Department of Education, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Donaghue Foundation. For example, Dr. Goff recently received a monster grant from Google to continue his research on racial disparities in the criminal justice system (see article here). The Misdemeanor Justice project led by Dr. Chauhan received a $3.2 million grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation to launch a network which will use analytics to inform policy conversations and reform regarding the enforcement of low-level offenses (see article here).

The Psychology faculty have established or are heavily engaged in the leadership of various research centers where our undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students are offered various research and publication opportunities.  Some of the centers include:

Center on Terrorism
Research Network on Misdemeanor Justice
Center for Policing Equity
Forensic Psychology Research Institute

To review all faculty profiles, please visit the faculty page.