So, the School of Psychology is an exciting and interesting development for the University of Derby.
We have had Psychology at the university for decades in various forms,
but the School of Psychology has brought together all of the ways that Psychology is taught, across the institution
into one area.
The School of Psychology is a big department. We have more than 100 academics.
And about 2000 students. And this includes students that come to campus and also online students.
The unique thing about our foundation year is that the modules that students will do are Psychology focussed.
We've also had students thoroughly enjoy our 3 year programme but also our 4 year programmes
with industrial placement year as well.
We then have various masters programmes that students can then step onto from doing their undergraduate study.
And then for some students, they can also go onto doctorate programmes as well.
So that can take somebody from the beginning of their university career, right through
all of the training that they may need, depending on the career that they're interested in going into.
So we've now got Psychology, we've got Forensic Psychology, we've got Counselling and Psychotherapy,
We've got Health Psychology, Ergonomics, Behavioural Change,
All of these different areas have come together in one school and the benefits of that, really are
the size we are now, we're one of the biggest schools of Psychology, actually in the UK.
Our staff are highly qualified teachers and researchers.
and we have some of the world-leading experts in their professional fields.
The staff are such a big help. When I went to different unis,
The staff maybe weren't as, I didn't connect with them as much.
Whereas here, I really connected with the staff because they have the passion for what they research
and that gives me passion for Psychology even more.
Our staff really care about the students and they create a very supportive environment.
What we do is, we really focus in on those students with personal academic tutors,
who offer that pastoral care as well as giving them academic support,
we focus in on skills for our students, so academic skills but also employability skills.
The students are at the heart of everything that we do.
When I studied here, I loved it, it felt really inclusive,
the way the course was structured, the way that the team and the academics supported me was incredible.
and I loved the experience. So when the opportunity came up to teach here,
I took it, I was really excited about it. We treat it like a family here.
The smaller class sizes than you'd find at, maybe, some of the larger institutions
allows you to have a more one to one relationship with your academic staff.
So we've got a number of facilities at the university that allow us to do controlled experiments in quiet environments,
in lab-based settings, we've got
eye-tracking equipment to trace people's attention when they're engaging in a variety of tasks.
We have fun pieces of kit like the cold pressor which is a safe way to induce pain
onto participants to look how you might mitigate painful symptoms.
We also have equipment that allows us to look at people's heart rate variability and blood pressure
to work out how stressed they are.
We've got a child observation suite so we can bring children in and conduct studies looking at
attachment and see how the children interact with their carers and their environment.
Whatever your interest is, there's an opportunity to conduct that research here at Derby.
We tend to find that a lot of our graduates will go on to a wide variety of different jobs,
because they're able to use Psychology in a really constructive way,
in all kinds of different disciplines.
The world's your oyster really, you can go into human resources, you can go into occupational psychology,
they go into social work, they go into nursing,
Psychology is working with people, in lots of different circumstances.
Jobs are going to need people that can deal with data and deal with people.
That's Psychology. We deal with data and we deal with people.
So having those skills under your belt in virtually any other career
that you can go into, not only Psychology, is gonna stand you in good stead.