Hi, I am Professor June Madsen Clausen, Chair of the Department of Psychology.  My colleague, Professor J. Walker, and I are going to go over some basic information about the psychology major curriculum and help you select your classes for the upcoming semester.

As you already know, in order to graduate from USF with a bachelor's degree, you must complete at least 128 credits. Within these 128 credits, you must also complete the CORE requirements, 3 semesters of foreign language, a cultural diversity course, a service learning course and the courses required for your major field of study.  Psychology majors complete a minimum of 12 courses, 48 credits, towards their major.

The first 20 credits in the Psychology major are the five foundational courses. If you enter USF as a freshman student, these foundational courses are designed to be taken in your first two years at USF, alongside your CORE courses. If you are a transfer student, you are expected to complete whatever foundational courses you have not taken before coming to USF before enrolling in other psychology courses.

The five foundational courses are:
General Psychology
Psychological Statistics
Biological Psychology
Writing in Psychology, and,
Research Design

After the five foundational courses are completed, psychology majors are required to take seven additional major courses: one diversity course, three breadth courses, one advanced experimental course, and two electives.

I also want to point out an important policy that applies to the psychology major. You must earn a minimum grade of C in all of your psychology courses. Students who earn less than a C grade in Psychology will be encouraged to consider changing to a different major that is a better fit for their skills and interests.


Hi, I am Professor Walker and I am going to talk about the schedule you should have for your first semester. Students at USF typically register for 16-18 credits per semester - four, 4 credit courses and perhaps 1 or 2 credits of extracurricular activities or specialized shorter courses.
If you are an incoming freshman, the first class you should register for in the psychology major is PSYC 101, General Psychology. This course is a prerequisite for all but one of the remaining courses in psychology. General Psychology will also be applied to your Core E requirement (Social Science).

If you are an incoming freshman and have an AP Psychology score of 4 or 5, you should enroll in PSYC 260, Psychological Statistics. Psychological Statistics will also be applied to your Core B1 Math requirement.  Likewise, if you are a transfer student and have already completed General Psychology at another 2- or 4-year institution, you should also enroll in PSYC 260 during your first semester at USF.  If you are a transfer student and you believe that you have taken a psychological statistics course at another institution that is comparable to our course, you must submit that syllabus to the Chair of Psychology for review.

If you have already completed General Psychology, another course you should consider registering for is PSYC 270, Biological Psychology.

The next class you should register for is a Rhetoric and Composition course. You should know which Rhetoric and Composition course to register for.  

Transfer students who have completed and passed at least one college-level writing course should enroll in RHET 203 in their first semester at USF.

Ok, let us continue.   Here are some additional course options:

As a Psychology major, you are required to reach 3rd semester proficiency in a foreign language.  You may elect to begin a language at USF or continue a language with which you already have prior experience.

You can consider registering for a Public Speaking course which will fulfill your Core A1 requirement.

If possible, consider enrolling in a First Year Seminar or a Transfer Year seminar.  These courses meet at least one CORE requirement.
I would also like to tell you about our Honors in Psychology program at USF. Although you are a new student and, especially if you are an entering freshman, you have many courses to take in Psychology before you are eligible to enroll in the Honors Program.  Therefore, it is important that you know about the program now so that you can build towards it if you are interested.

Students apply for Honors in Psychology during the fall of their junior year at USF. To be accepted to the Honors Program, students must have completed the five foundational courses in the major as well as the Advanced Research Methods course, and must have a minimum 3.50 GPA at USF. If accepted into the program, students enroll in Honors in Psychology, a 4 credit course, in the spring of their junior year and the fall of their senior year. In this program, students complete an original research project, under faculty supervision, and present their work at one or more research conferences on and/or off campus. The Honors in Psychology program is an excellent preparation for graduate work in psychology.

Once you have selected your courses, your schedule should resemble something like this, for freshman:


or this, if you are a transfer student:


If you are a transfer student, you may have completed some of the courses required for the CORE and/or for the Psychology Major. The University Evaluator will determine whether or not courses you have completed elsewhere meet a USF CORE requirement and, if so, this will be indicated on your Degree Evaluation. Except for General Psychology, psychology courses completed elsewhere must be evaluated by the faculty in psychology. So, if you have taken a psychology course somewhere else besides General Psychology, it is important that you submit the syllabus for that course to the Chair of Psychology to be reviewed.

Spend some time navigating the Schedule of Classes to familiarize yourself with the layout.  Look for courses that you would like to register for, including specific sections. Spend some time doing this to find a schedule that works for you.  You should also keep a back up list in case some classes are closed.  

If you have any questions, please contact us.

We look forward to meeting you during New Student Orientation. During Orientation, we will review the psychology major requirements and you will have the opportunity to meet faculty and fellow students.

Welcome to USF!