I love people.
I love helping people.
And I love just being able to be an ear, a listening ear,
and being that it's psychology, you're dealing with people,
and experiences and how they get to where they are.
I think that the psychology program at Biola
really focuses on understanding human beings
as human beings
and not anything less than that.
When you come in as a psych major at Biola,
you get a broad, general psychology education.
And then you can individualize
based on what your interests are.
You can really go anywhere
from the clinical side of psychology
to the research side of psychology.
Most people,
if they want a long career in psychology,
really need to go to a graduate program,
so our degree is designed to allow you to get into
a good graduate school.
But we've also had students go into things like
occupational therapy,
or they go into business,
they work in non-profit agencies,
they do all kinds of things,
so I feel like psychology's a really flexible degree.
Every single one of my psych professors
has been incredible.
They are extremely passionate about what they know
and what they teach.
I come from a clinical psych background,
but we've got experimental psychologists,
social psychologists,
developmental psychologists,
pediatric neuropsychologists,
so we all represent different sub-fields in psychology,
which can be really nice.
I would say that, while we have quite a diversity
in the interests of our faculty,
I think the one thing
that we all have
is we all have an interest in our students.
We do have smaller classes,
and so the faculty do get to know you.
Just the fact that professors were so open and willing
to go up to you and pour into you,
which is so welcoming and inviting,
and I think made my experience in the psych department
that much better.
Learning from the experience of professors has felt like
it's really aided me in thinking about,
when I get a job, what is it going to look like?
How am I going to look like as a therapist one day?
One of the unique things about
our psychology program
is we do have the Rosemead School of Psychology,
our graduate program, in the same building.
A lot of us faculty teach also in the graduate program.
Some of the advanced courses are modeled similarly
to graduate school courses,
which is really helpful in applying to graduate school
to show that I had some research experience.
They just prepare you to think on a deeper level
and engage on a more professional level too.
We have a faculty that splits duties between the
undergraduate side as well as the graduate side.
And there's a lot of opportunities for cross-pollination.
You'll have plenty of opportunities
to get involved in research.
Not only student research and dissertations,
but also faculty research.
Dr. Kim, one of the professors here, allowed me
to actually be her research assistant this summer,
and she allowed me to pretty much take on my own projects,
where I got to interview a bunch of people and collect data.
It's just something that
you don't get to come by very often.
That was a really, really valuable experience for me.
Another advantage of Biola's approach to
teaching psychology is that we take an integrative approach.
This is the first time I got to learn about psychology
integrated with Christianity,
and as soon as I learned about that,
I just couldn't see myself studying it in separation.
So it's really going to push the boundaries,
not only in terms of what people typically learn
from psychology,
but also what people typically learn from theology.
The psych department here at Biola really nourished that
and really grew that within me,
not just to be focused on
just who we were as biological beings,
but also as spiritual beings.
The program at Biola really draws it back to
And this is how our Creator made us
and this is why it's important
and this is why this theory
leads us to know more about ourselves
as well as understanding others and God.
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