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THE MISSION, PURPOSES, AND GOALS OF THE SWEET
BRIAR COLLEGE PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT
As a part of Sweet Briar College, the Department of Psychology has as its mission the
promotion of intellectual development and a liberal education. The Department directly
supports the College’s mission in the education of women:
· to be active, responsible members of a world community
· to develop critical and creative abilities
· to develop the ability to synthesize disparate information
· to be prepared for graduate and professional education
· to engage in lifelong learning
As a department of psychology our goal is to promote a knowledge of psychology, its
research methods and findings, its major problems, its theoretical integration and its
contributions. Because psychology is "an evolving subject matter best understood from
an array of differing perspectives," our overriding goals are to teach the student
how "to struggle with ambiguity, how to reflect on this experience, and how to ask
more sophisticated questions about behavior and experience" (Furumoto et al., 1991,
p. 55). This corresponds to a main goal of liberal arts education: preparation for
lifelong learning, thinking, and action, emphasizing specialized and general knowledge and
skills.
Courses in the Psychology Department most frequently address the
following objectives:
· Providing the student a general understanding of the methods and major theories of
psychology.
· Providing the student an understanding of the conceptual complexities of human
behavior.
· Developing critical thinking abilities.
· Developing skill in written and oral communication.
· Developing skill in using mathematics as a basis to analyze and solve problems, and
understanding how mathematics is used to support the arguments of others.
· Understanding the conduct of scientific investigation, including constructing and
testing hypotheses and designing and
constructing experiments.
· Locating information through libraries and computerized databases; selecting proper
sources of information for an inquiry.
· Understanding and using the computer’s capacity for word processing,
presentations, and analysis of data.
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