In 1910, the State Normal and Industrial School for Women at Radford opened to students. Later renamed Radford State Teachers College, the first courses in psychology (General Psychology and Educational Psychology) were offered after Dr. Minor Wine Thomas joined the department of Education and Psychology in 1927. Ten years later the Department of Psychology was formed, which offered new courses in Clinical, Abnormal, and Social Psychology. In a little over 70 years the department has grown substantially. We have grown from a department with one faculty member and a handful of majors, to a department of about 27 full-time and adjunct faculty members, and approximately 600 majors and 250 minors. During this time we have developed graduate degrees in School Psychology (Ed.S.) and General Psychology (M.A. and M.S.), which has three areas of concentration: Clinical-Counseling Psychology, Experimental Psychology, and Industrial/Organizational Psychology. In 2008, we opened a new doctoral program in Counseling Psychology. Annually, we have approximately 90 - 100 graduate students enrolled in these programs.
We recently moved to a new home in the Humanities and Behavioral Sciences building. Our new space gives us access to new classrooms with the latest instructional technology, new reserach spaces, and new clinic space. Our new home greatly expands opportunities for faculty and students to colloborate on research, engage in applied training experineces, and provide services to the community. For example, the Center for Assessment and Psychological Services (CAPS) provides applied training experiences for our doctoral and Ed.S. students, who in turn provide services to the public. In our new space, CAPS has its own suite with specialized spaces in which faculty and graduate students can meet with clients to provide assessment, consultation, and counseling/intervention services for children and adults. With this new space, CAPS has the potential to involve more students and to serve more clients with greater frequency. Similarly, the Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience (BACoN) lab is housed in a state-of-the-art facility where students and faculty can collaborate to study a broad range of behavioral and neurological processes, including things such as the effects of drugs on brain development, memory, and anxiety. The new building also features numerous research spaces for conducting observational studies of individuals, dyads, and groups and a computer lab for conducting survey and experimental studies with groups. Our department has always emphasized scholarly collaborations between faculty and students at all levels, and the expanded research facilities will allow us to include more students in these projects and support a broader range of research methodologies.