The nice thing about rats is they're
great for behavioral subjects. They're
fun, they're honestly really cute, they're
so smart — they pick up a lot of things
very easily, so in psychology, it's great
to have a subject that you can actually
study the behavior of. We're trying to
identify this receptor in the brain that
modulates sleep and it's called adenosine,
and we're doing this by looking at
different strains of rats to see how
sensitive some strains are to sleep
deprivation compared to other strains.
The primary goal of the master's program in
Psychological Sciences is to prepare
students for top-notch Ph.D. programs.
However, many of them get jobs as master's-level researchers as well. Since there are
four concentrations, there's a wide
variety of research, from Quantitative
Psychology, where they might be measuring
educational outcomes in higher education,
and then some of the students in the
Applied Research concentration might be
looking at sports psychology and how
mental toughness increases athletic
performance. You're not a number here,
you're actually a person. You get to know
the faculty in your program. You get to
know the other students in your cohort
very well. In addition to encouraging
student-guided research, JMU values
the importance of teaching and in the
classroom. So, JMU has this nice balance
of research and teaching, and you don't
find that everywhere.
