Psychology (Graduate Program)

For information regarding the UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM, click here.  

Program Overview

The department offers training in the following specialty areas: Clinical Psychology, Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Biological, and School Psychology. The program is a doctoral program—it is not appropriate for students seeking to complete their education with a master’s degree. We do not offer degrees in Counseling Psychology or Social Work. Appropriate departments for these programs at LSU are the School of Education and the School of Social Work respectively. If you need help determining the appropriate field of study to pursue, the American Psychological Association (APA) provides useful information.

The Department of Psychology at LSU is committed to the view that psychology is both a science and a profession. Both faculty and students in psychology endorse the model of the psychologist as a scientist-practitioner. The program’s major emphasis is on research training and experience, and the teaching of psychology. All graduate students, regardless of intended area of specialization, receive broad training to develop research capability for scholarly contributions to the discipline of psychology throughout their careers. If you are interested only in the professional application of psychology, without regard for research, you will not be comfortable in the graduate training program in this department. Graduate students in this department are expected to develop a lifelong commitment to science and to the highest social-ethical ideals of the profession of psychology.

The graduate program in psychology follows the mentor model. For this reason, it is recommended that prospective students review our faculty web pages along with this document (http://lsu.edu/hss/psychology/faculty/index.php). Each faculty member has additional information regarding his/her interests and publications listed there. This is an effective way to determine if your goals and interests match those of our faculty and our program, as well as to find examples of the research conducted here at LSU.

Administration

Admission

Applications and supporting materials for all graduate study must be submitted through the online application site for the LSU Graduate School. Official transcripts, official test scores, and other materials that come from third-party sources must be mailed to: LSU Office of Graduate Admissions, 114 West David Boyd Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803. These paper documents are stored electronically and departments have access to all materials submitted by and/or on behalf of a student applying to graduate study.

Applications for admission are received in early December and evaluated by the department within the following two months. Applicants must adhere to the application deadlines established by the Graduate School and the Department of Psychology.

Students seeking admission must submit satisfactory credentials from previous study, acceptable verbal and quantitative GRE scores, and three letters of recommendation. Minimum undergraduate course experience should include an introductory psychology course, a basic statistics course (preferably from a behavioral/social science program), and a research methodology course (preferably from a behavioral/social science program). International students whose native language is not English must also submit an acceptable TOEFL, IELTS, or PTE score.

In-depth information about the department, its faculty, and specialty areas for prospective students is available at http://lsu.edu/hss/psychology/grad/prospective-student/NatureoftheProgram.php.

Financial Assistance

Financial assistance is available to some students. The department makes every effort to obtain financial support for graduate students to the extent that funds are available. Sources of funds include departmental teaching and research assistantships. The department also arranges support from outside agencies, such as mental health centers and community or industry research programs. To ensure consideration for financial aid, all application materials should be submitted in accordance with the psychology department’s December 1 deadline, and in accordance with those established by the LSU Graduate School.

Facilities

• Audubon and Johnston Halls contains numerous rooms and lab facilities.
• The department’s Psychological Services Center (PSC), an on-campus facility located in Johnston Hall, is operated by the department to offer graduate training and research in adult clinical, medical clinical, child clinical, and school psychology. The PSC provides diagnostic and therapeutic services for adults and children in the Baton Rouge community, including students enrolled at LSU and children of LSU students.
• Other sources of clinical populations are local clinics and schools, the Emerge Center, and the Center for Autism and Related Disorders. Clinical doctoral students work with children with a variety of disorders (e.g., autism, intellectual disabilities, and visually impairments), as well as preschoolers described as non-categorical (children who have some disability, but are too young for well-delineated symptoms) for both practicum and research purposes.
• Additional research is conducted at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Our Lady of the Lake hospital, LSU-Health Sciences hospital, inpatient and outpatient therapy clinics, East Baton Rouge public school system, and various other facilities and institutions both in and outside of Louisiana.

Graduate Faculty

(check current faculty listings by department here)

Claire D. Advokat (EM) • Biological—Psychopharmacology, drugs used to treat mental illness and neurological disorders, ethics of clinical research, drugs of abuse
Alan A. Baumeister (M) • Biological—History of biological psychiatry, neuropharmacology
Melissa R. Beck (M) • Cognitive and Brain Sciences—Visual memory and attention; the roles of encoding, retrieval, decision making and metacognition in the perception of a continuous and stable visual world
Phillip J. Brantley (M) • Adjunct Faculty—behavioral medicine, emphasis on the effects of stress and learning on illness
Julia Buckner (M) • Clinical—The  nature and treatment of substance use disorders in adults, with an emphasis on the transactional relations between these disorders and comorbid anxiety
Matthew R. Calamia (6A) • Clinical—Clinical neuropsychology; In particular, in improving the measurement of cognitive and emotional functioning in individuals with neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, and traumatic brain injury
Owen T. Carmichael (3F) • Adjunct Faculty—Development of biomedical imaging techniques; application to brain aging and metabolic disorders.
Katie E. Cherry (M) • Cognitive and Brain Sciences—Cognitive aging, especially memory processes in healthy older adults; memory interventions for cognitively impaired older adults; interdisciplinary studies of healthy aging in the old
Christopher Cox (6A) • Cognitive and Brain Sciences—Concepts, categories, and their neurocognitive representation. Machine learning, computational modeling, and neuroimaging analyses to study how concepts support cognition.
Alex S. Cohen (M) • Clinical—Severe adult psychopathology, leveraging objective computerized technologies to understand symptoms, social dysfunction, emotion, cognition and illness-related risk.
Amy Copeland (M) • Clinical—Role of motivational variables (e.g., outcome expectancies and affect) in the etiology and cessation of stimulant use; smoking cessation; HIV risk and substance abuse
Thompson Davis III (7M) • Clinical—Assessment and treatment of anxiety disorders in children, adolescents, and young adults, in particular, the phenomenology, etiology, assessment, and treatment of specific phobias (i.e., intense, persistent fears of specific animals, situations, environments, and the like)
Jeanne M. Donaldson (6A) • School—Behavior analytic approach to treatments for problematic behavior in young children at both group and individual levels.
Emily M. Elliott (M) • Cognitive and Brain Sciences—Memory and the development of memory in children; attention, and in particular, the interaction of attention and immediate memory
Paul Frick (M) • Clinical-Causal factors of serious emotional and behavioral problems in children and adolescents; develop effective interventions to prevent and treat such problems
Paula Geisleman (EM) • Biological—Biological factors underlying nutritional intake.
Shawn Gilroy (6A) • School— School—Autism and developmental disabilities, Clinical applications of technology, Open source software development, Applied behavioral economics
William Drew Gouvier (EM) • Clinical—Clinical neuropsychology; base rates, post-concussion syndrome, malingering detection, and social implications of disabilities
Steven Greening (6A) • Cognitive and Brain Sciences -neurocognitive mechanisms involved in adapting to and controlling the influence of emotional events on the brain and behavior across the lifespan; promote mental wellbeing in both healthy individuals and those with mental illness
Frank M. Gresham (M) • School—Use of problem solving methods to remediate academic and social behavioral difficulties of children and adolescents; use of a response to intervention approach in the assessment of learning disabilities and emotional and behavioral disorders; social skills assessment and training for children and adolescents
Mike Hawkins (EM) • Biological—Historical developments in animal neuroscience and stress response.
Jason L. Harman (6A) • Industrial/Organizational- judgment and decision making; organizational behavior; cognitive models; behavioral economics; dynamic systems
Jason Hicks (M) • Cognitive and Brain Sciences—Human learning and memory; source memory; prospective memory; recognition memory; control and decision processes in memory retrieval
Glenn N. Jones (3P) • Adjunct Faculty—Behavioral medicine; psychology in medical settings; clinical interviewing and rapid screening for psychopathology; cognitive behavioral assessment and treatment of adult disorders; psychopathology and substance abuse among HIV+ patients.
Mary Lou Kelley (M) • Clinical—Behavioral assessment and treatment of children and adolescents; attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; behavioral pediatrics
Anna C. Long (6A) • School—Treatment integrity of evidence-based practices in schools; teacher effectiveness
Heather Lucas (6A) • Cognitive and Brain Sciences—cognitive neuroscience of memory; psychosocial influences on learning and memory; cognitive and brain aging; interactions among memory, cognitive control, and creativity
Johnny Matson (M) • Clinical—Mental retardation and related developmental disabilities; social skills training; childhood depression; differential diagnosis; behavioral assessment and treatment
Robert Mathews (EM) • Cognitive and Brain Sciences—Cognitive science of learning.
Janet McDonald (M) • Cognitive and Brain Sciences—Language acquisition; age of acquisition and grammatical mastery; bilingualism; language comprehension
George Noell (M) • School—Behavioral consultation, treatment integrity
Megan Papesh (6A) • Cognitive and Brain Sciences—Episodic memory; the role of eye movements in learning and retrieval; face perception and recognition; pupillometry and human cognitive neuroscience
Paul Soto (6A)• Cognitive and Brain Sciences— Laboratory animal models of psychiatric disease symptoms, behavioral and cognitive effects of drugs, identification of potential therapeutic medications.
Jas M. Sullivan (M) • Jointly Appointed Faculty— — Political psychology, racial identity, stereotyping and discrimination Raymond P. Tucker (6A) • Clinical— Clinical—Theoretical models of why adults die by suicide, novel suicide risk assessment strategies, current and historical suicide risk
Rachel W. Smith (6A) • Industrial/Organizational— occupational health, diversity, employee well-being, personality
Don C. Zhang (6A) • Industrial/Organizational—Evidence-based employment assessment; data-driven talent analytics pre-employment job interviews; data visualization and communication

Degree Programs

LSU’s doctoral program in psychology only admits students interested in working toward a doctoral degree. The MA may be earned along the way, as explained below, but is not a terminal master’s degree program. Students desiring only a master’s degree should not apply. Training is offered in the following specialty areas: Clinical, Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Industrial/Organizational, Biological, and School Psychology.

Programs

• Psychology, Ph.D.

• Psychology, M.A.