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August 2008 issue | Volume 2, Issue 1 Latest Information | Issue Archives | Unsubscribe
Welcome Back!

Shrink Rap is a monthly newsletter for psychology majors, students enrolled in psychology classes, and friends of the department. In this first issue of the 08-09 academic year, we'd like to welcome our continuing students back to campus, and to introduce our new students to the department. The Rollins Psychology department consists of 11 full-time faculty members, including our newest member, Alice Davidson, and a dedicated staff, including administrative assistant Vicki Long and laboratory assistant Kevin Miraglia. The geographical home of our department is in the Johnson Center annex of the Bush Science Center, and the majority of our classes are taught on the first and second floors of Bush. Our department has a reputation for putting students first. If you have any questions about the major or the coming year, Vicki, Kevin, and our entire faculty are more than happy to meet with you.
FACULTY BLOG SPOT
Your Audience
by Dr. St. John
In: Writing and Presentation Tips
Great Course, Open Seats
Sensation and Perception is as a broad survey course designed to introduce you to the mechanisms involved in perceiving the world, and shows you how your knowledge and action upon the world influences these perceptions. College students often are beginning to learn how people influence their own view of the world, both metaphorically and physically. This course explores this idea in depth for very low-level processes such as vision and hearing. We cover real life topics that demonstrate how bottom-up and top-down processes interact to give us our perceived reality. Take, for example, simply viewing the world around you as you walk through it. You experience things like trees and buildings as standing still, despite their being images moving across your retina. When tracking a bird flying in the sky, you perceive it as moving, despite the image remaining static on your retina. It is certainly beneficial to us as organisms to be able to navigate through our environment differentiating between moving and stationary objects, but there are several theories for why this occurs. In Sensation and Perception, you will be introduced to these theories in moderate detail and will be able to compare the merits and drawbacks of the evidence for each.
So, You Wanna Major In Psych?
Psychology is a great choice for a major, for a number of reasons. First, it is a flexible major in terms of future career options. Psychology majors can be competitive for law school, business school, and medical school, and offers great careers in social work, clinical psychology, and counseling. Second, it is a flexible major in terms of creating a stimulating curriculum. In house, we offer courses centered on topics as varied as child development, mental illness, neuroscience, and business organization. Our major requirements are designed to give students a great deal of choice over both their psychology curriculum and the freedom to take a number of classes outside the department. Third, the subject matter in psychology, by definition, can help you to better understand yourself and give you tools to succeed in college and beyond college. If you are considering a psychology major, it is imperative that you meet with a faculty member in psychology and, as soon as possible, find a psychologist to serve as your academic advisor.
Courses With Open Seats
Looking to add a psychology class? There are a number of excellent courses available with open seats. The following classes have more than 5 seats avaiable as of this writing and are listed in order of number of seats open.
  • PSY 315D Sensation & Perception MW 2-3:15 Queen
  • PSY 315E Feminist Psych Science MWF 12-12:50 Ruiz
  • PSY 315C Clinical Assessment MWF 11-11:50 Farkash
  • PSY 361-2 Stats II TR 11-12:15 and 2-3:15 St. John
  • PSY 341 Learning MWF 11-11:50 MW 2-3:50 Ruiz
  • PSY 326 Phys. Psych TR 8-9:15 MW 2-3:15 St. John
ABOUT THIS ISSUE
Shrink Rap is an email publication of the Rollins College Department of Psychology. This issue can also be found online. The newsletter is sent monthly during the academic year to Psychology majors and minors in A&S and Holt, students in A&S psychology classes, psychology faculty and staff, and friends of the department.
LINKS
OUR FACULTY
DID YOU KNOW?
Suffers of Capgras Syndrome (sometimes but not always associated with schizophrenia) identify friends and family on one level but fail to recognize them on another. For example, a sufferer will insist that their spouse has been replaced by an exact duplicate. The spouse may be seen as an alien impostor, a robot, or a zombie. One case study described a woman who insisted that neighbors had stolen her cat and replaced it with a duplicate. Capgras is interesting to psychologists because it suggests that there are independent processes for identification (that looks like my cat) and familiarity (that doesn't feel like it's really my cat). Perhaps you've even experienced this phenomenon yourself for a split second?
FACULTY FACT
Dr. Paul Harris not only holds a Ph.D. in Psychology, but also holds a masters degree in Interior Design. It's no wonder he occupies one of the department's more tastefully decorated offices, and, to everyone's benefit, Dr. Harris rolled up his sleeves last year and gave the Johnson Center Lobby a much-needed interior make-over.
•8/25 First day of classes (A&S)
•8/25 - 29 Add/Drop period
•9/1 Labor Day (no classes)
•9/8 Credit/No credit deadline
•9/8 Last day to drop without W penalty