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Graduate Studies in Psychology

The University of Mississippi

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The Department of Psychology at The University of Mississippi offers programs of study that lead to the Doctor of Philosophy in two separate areas: clinical psychology and experimental psychology. The Clinical Program ordinarily requires a minimum of five years beyond the baccalaureate degree to complete. The Experimental Program is designed to be completed within four years. This time is devoted to a combination of course work, research, and, for clinical students, practice. Clinical students also spend their final year of training in a full-time clinical internship at a program accredited by the American Psychological Association.

The Clinical Program has been fully accredited by the American Psychological Association since 1974. It is a scientist-practitioner model program that emphasizes an empirical approach to clinical practice. Clinical training is generally conducted with a social learning or cognitive behavioral approach. Specific programs of study in the Experimental Program include behavioral neuroscience, cognitive psychology (including cognitive developmental), and social psychology. Students are accepted to work in one of these specific areas. Both programs are described in greater detail below.

Neither program accepts students seeking a terminal Masters degree. Students in the Ph.D. programs do earn the Master of Arts and complete a Master's thesis as part of their degree requirements. Students entering with a Masters degree involving a data based thesis are not typically asked to complete another thesis. All students must take and pass comprehensive examinations before full admission to Ph.D. candidacy is granted and the dissertation can be started. Clinical students cannot apply to internship programs before the dissertation proposal has been approved.

Doctoral Areas of Concentration

Clinical Ph.D. Program
The first two years of graduate study in the clinical area entail completion of a basic curriculum of academic scientific psychology covering such areas as statistics, learning, physiological, psychometrics, psychopathology, cognitive-intellectual assessment, personality assessment, social, developmental, systems of psycho-therapy, and behavior modification. Structured clinical and research activities are also scheduled during the initial two years of training. The third and fourth years are devoted primarily to elective courses, practica, and research. The practicum experiences are provided on the campus and in a variety of community settings at increasing levels of independence, under the supervision of staff professionals. The fifth year is devoted to an internship at an APA-approved facility. The department assumes responsibility for assisting the student in selection of an appropriate internship and for maintaining liaison with the student and the immediate supervisor during the internship.

Research training also begins in the first year. During the first semester, students attend weekly research meetings during which one faculty member discusses her or his research activities and interests. Thus, by the end of the first term, all students know what research is occurring in the department and can make an informed decision about which faculty member is the best match with their research interests. Students are encouraged to attend meetings of any research teams that interest them, and most students decide on an area and a primary team by the end of the first semester. Many students sit on more than one team and participate in research projects sponsored by more than one faculty member.

Clinical work begins in the Psychological Services Center or PSC, which is the department's in-house clinic. Students participate on practicum teams that are led by licensed members of the clinical faculty. Each team consists of students from the second-, third-, and fourth-year classes, and students serve as the direct providers of mental health services to clients. A specialty team staffs the Psychological Assessment Clinic, providing students with intensive supervised training in clinical assessment.

Supervisors use a variety of observational methods. The PSC is equipped with one-way mirrors for direct observation of clinic sessions and has the capacity for both digital video transmission on a LAN. As students gain skills and confidence, they often serve as direct supervisors for beginning therapists and, in turn, receive supervision from the clinical faculty on their supervision of less experienced students.

Once students have become proficient in their clinical work in the PSC, they are placed in a variety of community settings at increasing levels of independence under the supervision of agency professional staff members. During the past two years, students have been placed at North Mississippi Regional Center in Oxford, Behavioral Health Center in Tupelo, Baptist Children's Village in Water Valley, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, the DeSoto County School System, Oxford City Schools, and the University Counseling Center.

Clinical training culminates in the internship, which is taken after students complete course work and master's degree requirements, pass comprehensive examinations, and have their dissertation proposals accepted. The program requires that the one-year, full-time internship occurs in a program that is fully accredited by the American Psychological Association. The clinical faculty assumes responsibility for assisting students in selection of appropriate internship programs and throughout the application process. Over the past 10 years, the vast majority of our students have been accepted at their first-choice internship. In past years, our students have taken internships at Brown University; Baylor College of Medicine; Kennedy Krieger Institute/Johns Hopkins School of Medicine; the University of Alabama at Birmingham Psychology Training Consortium; the University of Chicago Medical Center Department of Psychiatry; VA Medical Centers at Baltimore, Maryland, Memphis, Tennessee Little Rock, Arkansas, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Bay Pines, Florida, Kansas City, Missouri, Gainesville, Florida, Durham, North Carolina, Augusta, Maine, New Orleans, Louisiana, and San Antonio, Texas; Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas; Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veteran's Hospital Division, South Texas Veterans Healthcare System; Jefferson County Internship Consortium; the Medical College of Georgia/VA Medical Center Consortium; the Medical University of South Carolina-DVA Consortium; West Virginia University Health Sciences Center; Spokane Mental Health; the University of California at San Diego Internship Training Consortium; the University of Virginia Health Sciences Center; the University of Florida Health Science Center in Gainesville; Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Los Angeles; Cook County Hospital in Chicago; San Fernando Valley Child Guidance Clinic; William S. Hall Institute in Columbia, South Carolina; Broughton Hospital in Morgantown, North Carolina, the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, Counseling Center; East Kentucky Rural Psych/KRCC; the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Duke University School of Medicine, UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, University of North Carolina, and DuPont Hospital for Children, Cherokee Health Systems, Knoxville, Tennessee; Arkansas division of Behavioral Health Services, Little Rock, Arkansas; Kansas State University, Manhattan Kansas; Southern Mississippi Psychology Consortium, Hattiesburg, Mississippi; Fulton State Hospital, Fulton, Missouri; Southwest Consortium/NMVAHC, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Warm Springs Counseling Center, Boise, ID, Mississippi State Hospital, Whitfield Mississippi, University of Colorado Medical Center

Overall, the Clinical Program is designed to provide a sequence of research and practical experiences that requires students to function at increasing levels of autonomy and independence. We provide the grounding for these experiences in a rigorous sequence of courses that are taken early in the program. While the program is designed to be completed in five years, students often take longer to complete all requirements. Over the past seven years the average time to completion for the group of students who earned their Ph.D. was 6.8 years.

Of the last 20 graduates, 13 became post doctoral fellows at VA, University medical centers, and counseling centers, 3 are staff psychologist in a state hospitals, 2 are staff psychologists at Autism/MR residential treatment centers, 1 is in private practice, and 1 is employed at a community mental health Center. Graduates of the clinical program are now on university faculties at West Virginia University, Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Georgia, the University of Nebraska, the University of Pittsburgh, Nova Southwestern University, Harvard School of Medicine, the University of Wyoming, Northern Iowa University, Eastern Washington University, The University of Mississippi, Stephen F. Austin University, Brown University, University of Miami, North Texas State University, Suffolk University, the University of Mississippi's School of Medicine, the University of South Carolina, Aiken, and the Duke University School of Medicine.

Experimental Ph.D. Program
The Graduate Program in Experimental Psychology provides the rigorous and supportive scientific training that prepares graduates for outstanding careers in a broad spectrum of established and emerging fields from corporate careers in health sciences, research/medical administration, or drug development to academic careers in teaching and research. Specific programs of study leading to the doctoral degree include behavioral neuroscience, cognitive psychology (including cognitive developmental), and social psychology. Admission to the program is limited to approximately four to six new students each year to ensure every student a close apprentice relationship with a major professor for mentorship in research, teaching, and career development. The core curriculum of study is coupled with an individualized plan of elective courses, research experiences, which include the thesis and dissertation projects, and teaching assignments that the student and major professor select as appropriate to the student's objectives. Faculty mentors involve students in research activity early in their training and guide their development in the classroom both as students and as instructors. Thus, breadth of knowledge within the discipline, broad-based methodological, statistical, and technical expertise, and pedagogical training and mentorship in classroom and laboratory settings are the fundamental elements of the training program in experimental psychology.

With such training, doctoral graduates obtain positions in academia, industry, or government service. Recent graduates of the Experimental Program have secured initial appointments as assistant professors at institutions such as Hobart and William Smith Colleges and William Penn University, as postdoctoral fellows at universities such as Boston University School of Medicine and Roskamp Institute for Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases (Tampa, Florida), and as business/industry analysts at corporations such as American Express.

Behavioral Neuroscience
Students in this area of concentration can take courses and seminars in neuroscience methods, neurobiology, psychopharmacology, pharmacology, toxicology, and biostatistics. State-of-the-art research experiences are offered in the study of the behavioral effects of psychotherapeutic and abused drugs, neurochemical analysis of monoamines using in vivo dialysis, striatal and hippocampal behavioral function using stereotaxic techniques, and evaluation of neural tissue through histological techniques.

Cognitive Psychology
Students in this area of concentration can take courses and seminars covering topics in cognitive science. Students will also be trained in psychophysical and statistical methods. Research experiences are offered in three primary areas. One of these involves early visual processing including motion perception, visual texture perception, and the perception of color. Another involves research in human memory with an emphasis on the manner in which processing information in a social context affects subsequent recollections. Research experiences in cognitive development are offered in the area of preschoolers' and school-aged children's understanding of mental states and mental processes. In collaboration with their mentors, students are encouraged to pursue their own research interests within these areas of focus.

Social Psychology
Social psychologists study behavior that occurs in the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. The social psychology area of study offers an experimental emphasis. Students take courses and seminars in social psychological theory, emotion theory, and advanced statistical methods, and they are trained to use experimental methods in the laboratory. Research experiences are offered in the areas of emotional expression (e.g., facial and verbal expression of emotion), cognitive consequences of emotion, self-regulation of emotion, individual differences in the experience of emotion, and emotional intelligence.

Admissions

Admission to any graduate program at the University requires that a student be accepted by both the graduate school and an academic department. Therefore, separate applications must be filed with the graduate school and with the Department of Psychology. Because this can be confusing, we have included a checklist at the end of this document to help you submit all materials correctly and on time. All materials, including GRE scores, transcripts, and letters of recommendation MUST be received by January 15 for the Clinical Program and for the Experimental Program in order for an application to be considered for admission.

Admission decisions are initially made by the department faculty and forwarded to the dean of the graduate school for final approval. Only applicants for full-time enrollment toward the Ph.D. are considered for admission. Students wishing part-time enrollment or a terminal master's degree are not eligible for admission. We review applications only once each year for admission the following August.

Admission Information Specific to the Clinical Program
Admission to the Clinical Program at The University of Mississippi, as at other APA-approved programs across the country, is extremely competitive. All information submitted by applicants is considered by the clinical faculty in making admissions decisions. However, while we do not have absolute cutoffs for GRE scores and grade-point averages, the applicants with the highest scores on these two dimensions do tend to be the ones offered admission. Research shows that GRE scores are important as an indication of a student's potential for completing a Ph.D. program. Previous academic performance as indicated by grade-point average and the rigor of the course work the student has undertaken are important indicators of the likelihood a student will be able to do well in course work here.

Because we are a scientist-practitioner program, applications from students who have been involved in empirical research usually are rated more highly than those from students with no such involvement. Similarly, we prefer letters of recommendation from academic psychologists who can better assess a student's potential for success in an academic environment. Those applicants with expressed interests in the research areas supported by our faculty are more likely to receive offers of admission.
In general, we encourage applications from students who have an overall undergraduate GPA of 3.0 or higher (on a 4-point scale), a GPA in psychology of 3.2 or higher, a combined verbal + quantitative GRE score of 1100 or higher, and a score of 600 or above on the GRE subject test in psychology. Students with lower scores on these measures who have strong backgrounds in research, particularly those with publications, also will receive favorable consideration. We also encourage applications from members of ethnic minority and other underrepresented groups.

We receive approximately 100 applications each year for the clinical program. From this group, the clinical faculty approximately 30 of the top applicants to invite to campus for interviews. These interviews usually occur in late February or early March, and we typically extend interview invitations to these applicants by early February. We consider these on-campus interviews to be an important source of information for applicants in making more informed decisions about where and how they will spend the next several years of their lives. While on campus, applicants have the opportunity to observe firsthand what graduate training at The University of Mississippi is really like. Applicants usually are informed of admission decisions before April 1, and those offered admission are required to notify us of their acceptance of our offers by April 15.

Approximately 105 students applied to begin the clinical program in August 2009. Students offered admission to this program had a mean verbal GRE score of 578, a mean quantitative GRE score of 648, and a mean Psychology GRE of 688, and a mean overall undergraduate GPA of 3.71. The two females and six males who make up the 2009-10 class range in age from 21-26.

Admission Information Specific to the Experimental Program
Admission to the Experimental Program requires submission of all application materials by January 15. The experimental faculty reviews applications in February for enrollment the following fall semester. Applications for this program received after January 15 are considered for fall enrollment only if slots have not been filled. Typically, the Experimental Program accepts four to six new students each year. Each accepted student must have identified a faculty mentor whose research interests match the student's training goals. This faculty member will serve as the student's major professor.

For Admission to All Graduate Programs
The application procedure for all applicants consists of the following steps:

1. Complete and submit the Application for Admission to the Graduate School, along with official transcripts from all undergraduate and graduate institutions attended and official GRE scores to:

Graduate School, The University of Mississippi
P.O. Box 1848, University, MS 38677-1848

2. Complete and submit the Application for Graduate Study in Psychology, along with the requested supporting materials: three letters of recommendation, copies of your transcripts from all undergraduate and graduate institutions attended, and GRE scores (these can be photocopies as long as the Graduate School has the official documents) to:

Departmental Admissions Committee
Department of Psychology
The University of Mississippi
P.O. Box 1848
University, MS 38677-1848

Please provide ample details regarding your interests, research activities, career goals, and relevant applied or clinical experiences. Copies of research papers (publications, convention presentations, senior thesis) are welcome. Make certain all materials are received before January 15 if you are applying to the Clinical Program or to the Experimental Program. Start the application process early because GRE scores and transcripts often take much longer than you expect to reach us.

Graduate Psychology Courses
505. Conditioning and Learning (3)
506. Human Learning and Cognition (3)
510. Human Physiological Recording in Research and Practice (3)
511. Neural Basis of Learning and Memory (3)
519. Group Dynamics (3)
530. Single Subject and Small Group Research Design (3)
531. Sensation and Perception (3)
532. Attention and Consciousness (3)
541, 543. Mental Retardation and Developmental Disorders I, II (3, 3)
553. Theories of Learning (3)
561. Cross-Cultural Training (3)
599. Clinical Staffing (1)
601. Seminar (3)
603, 604 Quantitative Methods in Psychology (3, 3)
605. Advanced Statistics (3)
606. Method and Theory in Program Evaluation (3)
607. Cognitive Psychology
609. Behavior Modification (3)
610, 611. Psychological Assessment (3, 3)
612. Social Psychology (3)
614. Behavior Therapy (3)
615. Physiological Psychology (3)
616. Psychopharmacology (3)
617. Individual Experimental Research (1-3)
618. Advanced Developmental Psychology (3)
619. Tests and Measurements (3)
621. Seminar (1-3)
622, 623. Clinical Practicum (3, 3)
624, 625. Clinical Practicum (3, 3)
626, 628. Clinical Practicum (3, 3)
627. Theories of Personality (3)
629. Advanced Abnormal Psychology (3)
631. Theories of Psychotherapy (3)
633. Behavior Problems in Children (3)
637. Seminar in Clinical Psychology (3-6)
641. Issues and Ethics in Human Research and Professional Psychology (3)
647. Problems in Psychology (1-3)
648. Research Methods
651. History and Systems of Psychology (3)
655. Psychology Colloquium (1)
697. Thesis (1-12)
797. Dissertation (1-18)
798. Clinical Psychology Internship (1-3)

In recent years, seminars (621) have been offered in behavioral marital therapy, child assessment and intervention, clinical and experimental research design, emotion theory, group therapy, mental health administration, neuropsychological assessment, neuropsychology, neuroscience methods, psychology and law, psychology of aging, service delivery to rural/minority populations, and teaching of psychology; clinical behavior analysis, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Logotherapy.

Faculty and Their Research Interests

Michael T. Allen, Ph.D., University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1982. Cardiovascular reactivity and stress, electrophysiology. (Experimental)
Elizabeth A. Boerger, Ph. D., The University of Texas, 2005. Children's understanding of mind, including beliefs about control of mental states and emotions, understanding of the relation between evidence and belief, and attributions of responsibility for mental states. (Experimental)
Karen A. Christoff, Ph.D., West Virginia University, 1982. Social skills/social competence, particularly in children, and violence prevention. (Clinical)
Carol L. Gohm, Ph.D., University of Illinois, 1998. Cognitive consequences of emotion, individual differences in the experience and cognitive effects of emotion, emotional intelligence. (Experimental)
Alan M. Gross, Ph.D., Washington State University, 1979. Internalizing and externalizing disorders in children, dating violence. (Clinical)
Laura R. Johnson, Ph.D., University of Louisville, 2003. Cross-cultural psychology and program evaluation (environmental education and service learning programs for youth). (Clinical)
Thomas W. Lombardo, Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh, 1983. Post-traumatic stress disorder, and smoking and other addictive behaviors. (Clinical)
Marilyn Mendolia, Ph.D., Dartmouth College, 1990. Experimental social psychology, verbal and facial expression of emotion, and self-regulation of emotion. (Experimental)
Nicolaas Prins, Ph.D., University of Kansas, 1999. Early visual processing and psychophysical methods. (Experimental)
Matthew B. Reysen, Ph.D., Purdue University, 2004, Human memory, particularly recall and recognition performance within a social context. Application of evolutionary theory to the study of human memory. (Experimental)
Karen E. Sabol, Ph.D., Emory University, 1988. Behavioral neuroscience, acute and chronic effects of methamphetamine on behavior and neurochemistry, and behavioral functions of the striatum. (Experimental)
Stefan E. Schulenberg, Ph.D., University of South Dakota, 2001. Computer use in psychological assessment and psychotherapy, psychological test construction, adolescent psychopathology and assessment, empirical validation of meaning-related constructs, and clinical/disaster psychology. (Clinical)
Todd A. Smitherman, Ph.D., Auburn University, 2006. Adult anxiety disorders, headache and chronic pain, behavioral medicine and health psychology. (Clinical)
Kenneth J. Sufka, Ph.D., Iowa State University, 1990. Behavioral neuroscience, pain and analgesia, animal modeling in psychopharmacology, drug discovery, and philosophy of mind. (Experimental)
Kelly G. Wilson, Ph.D., University of Nevada, 1998. New Wave Behavior Therapy (especially Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), the role of verbal processes in emotion and cognition, contextual-behavioral analyses of existential issues, treatment development and dissemination, integration of basic and applied research, and philosophy of science. (Clinical)
John Young, Ph.D., University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2008. Evidence-based services for children and adolescents, treatment dissemination, mental health care systems, clinical supervision. (Clinical)

If you have access to the World Wide Web, you can get more information about the University, the Psychology Department, and our faculty from our home page at www.olemiss.edu/depts/psychology.

Facilities

The Department of Psychology is housed in the George Peabody Building. Classrooms, research laboratories, office space, and other facilities occupy 215,000 square feet of floor space. Graduate student offices, the clinical suite, student-faculty lounge, faculty offices, and research space are located on the third floor. The departmental administrative and academic offices, the Psychological Assessment Laboratory, seminar rooms, and classrooms are located on the second floor. The ground floor contains several experimental psychology laboratories, vivaria, an instructional laboratory, computer lab, and offices.

The Psychological Services Center (PSC), located in Kinnard Hall, is a 3,500 square foot independent community mental health facility operated by the Clinical Program of the department. The clinic houses a front office/waiting area, directors office, file room, two graduate assistant offices, a large room suitable for conferences or for family or group therapy, and three rooms suitable for individual or couples therapy, one of which is set up for child treatment. All therapy rooms are set up for both video recording and direct viewing through two-way mirrors. The purpose of the PSC is twofold: to provide psychological services to the community and the University, and to serve as a training facility for graduate students in the Clinical Program.

In addition to the approximately 130 different tests and measurement instruments housed in our clinical test library, the Psychological Assessment Laboratory maintains computer equipment used to administer, score, and interpret a number of psychological tests for both clinical and research applications, including: the MMPI-2, MMPI-A, SCL-90, MCMI-III, CBCL, CPT, and HRNTB. This facility also provides word processing and printing support for students who serve as examiners for the Psychological Assessment Clinic; students in the Psychological Assessment Laboratory analyze their research data with SPSS.

In addition to the usual array of projectors and tape recorders, the department has video cameras, and video recorders and monitors for digital recording.

The Psychophysiology Laboratory is equipped with a Coulbourn Instruments polygraph which allows for the collection of a number of physiological signals. Signals are digitized and displayed on computer monitors using a Dataq 12-bit analogue-to-digital board and Windaq data acquisition and analysis software. Other instruments in the lab include a Suntech Tango exercise blood pressure monitor and Body Media body activity monitors.

The Behavioral Neuroscience Laboratory, located in the Thad Cochran Research Center, is equipped to study drug effects on behavior and to examine brain-behavior relationships. This equipment includes place preference chambers, mechanical and thermal analgesiometers, plethysmometer, rodent observation chambers, avian observation chambers, an HPLC apparatus set up for in vivo dialysis, a four-track motorized treadmill, four operant chambers for the study of reaction times, and a number of rodent mazes. For small-animal surgery and histological examination of neural tissue, this laboratory is equipped with a stereotaxic instrument, various surgical instruments, an infusion pump, a freezing stage microtome, a temperature-controlled fluid bath, and high- and low-power microscopes. The Psychology Department maintains a rodent colony room for teaching.

The Cognitive Psychology Vision Laboratory is equipped with a state-of-the-art graphics card (including an autonomous processor, separate from the host PC's CPU) providing high-resolution luminance and color control. This graphics card can be used to drive either a high-resolution chromatic monitor or a high-resolution, fast-phosphor (DP104) monitor, which in conjunction with ferroelectric liquid crystal shutters allows presentation of high-quality, alternating-frame stereoscopic images. A colorimeter allows precise calibration of the colors and luminances of the visual display. The Memory Laboratory consists of three personal computers situated in adjacent cubicles. The computers are used primarily to present stimuli and record participant responses - often with intent to deceive participants into thinking that they are working with others when they are actually working alone. Students doing research in cognitive development have access to several comfortable observation rooms in which to conduct one-on-one interviews and observations with children.

The Personality and Social Psychology Laboratory is equipment with 8 computers, and with programming software with which to design experiments to be conducted on computer and to assist in administering questionnaires. Each computer is equipped with headphones, which can be used to present emotional sounds, stories, or instructions. The computer stations can be separated by screens and curtains because researchers investigating emotion often need to give the participant some privacy, or may wish to control social context variables. The lab is also equipped with a digital video camera for recording sessions or participants, or for creating experimental stimuli.

Research in the area of human emotion sometimes requires that emotional responses be measured in a variety of ways. In the well-equipped Experimental Social Psychology Laboratory, students can record physiological activity, facial and verbal expression of emotion, self-report measures, and cognitive responses to computer-generated stimuli. Each of two observation rooms is equipped with video equipment, which unobtrusively monitors participants' facial activity and verbal reactions to emotion-eliciting stimuli. The control room contains computer-networked physiological instrumentation to monitor participants' cardiovascular responses (electrocardiography, impedance cardiography, phonocardiography, and photoplethysmography), skin conductance, and muscle activity (raw or rectified electromyography). Analog and digital video instrumentation and software (recorder/players, mixer, editing controller, and professional quality video/audio capture card) are used to collect and edit participant-generated recordings and stimulus materials.

The University Computer Center provides users with two supercomputers, Amdahl 470 V/8 and 470 V/6 mainframes; a microcomputer laboratory; a graphics laboratory; and an extensive WIDJET system for instructional use. One of the mainframes runs time-sharing under CMS and provides the research community with the usual array of applications software packages (SPSS, BMDP, SAS). SAS Graph enables students to produce high quality graphics for manuscripts and poster presentations.

Other facilities both on and off campus are available for research support. The new physical education complex contains metabolic and exercise labs that are available for collaborative use. The physicians at the student health service and the pharmacology faculty have provided consultation for several recent Psychology Department projects. Staff at Baptist Memorial Hospital-North Mississippi have supplied computerized pulmonary function testing, and several recent research projects have been conducted at the following locations: Oxford Elementary School, North Mississippi Regional Center, Parkwood Hospital, Lafayette Elementary School, Lafayette High School, Bramlett Elementary School, and DeSoto County School System.

Financial Assistance

Tuition and fee information is available in the Fees and Expenses section of the Graduate School Catalog for the current year. You should request a copy of this directly from the Graduate School if you have not received one. According to the 2004 catalog, costs are $2552 per semester for Mississippi residents and about $6232 per semester for students who are residents of other states or countries. Exact amounts will vary with the number of credit hours enrolled. These numbers are provided here only to give students a general sense of the cost of graduate education at The University of Mississippi. Check the current catalog for specific amounts and the current charges.

Financial aid is available from several sources. The department has a number of research and teaching assistantships that are awarded to graduate students on a competitive basis. Awards are made early each summer for the upcoming academic year. Students receiving these assistantships are required to work 10 hours each week and are limited to a course load of 15 hours per semester. The work may involve assisting faculty members in teaching or research, or assuming full responsibility for an undergraduate course. Clinical students beyond the first year are eligible for applied placements at: North Mississippi Regional Center; Baptist Children's Villages; the DeSoto County School System, Oxford City Schools,; Behavioral Health; and the regional community mental health center, Communicare, in Oxford. These positions require 10-20 hours each week.

Many of our third- and fourth-year clinical students have paid clinical practice or part-time professional positions at a variety of mental health and health care facilities in the area. For the past several years, some students have been awarded assistantships for work in the Office of Research, the Computer Center, and the office of Student Development.

The Graduate School awards several honors fellowships to new psychology students each year and provides minority fellowships to students who are members of ethnic minority groups. Awards are made on the basis of departmental recommendations, and the Psychology Department automatically recommends all eligible students for these awards when making recommendations regarding admissions.

Out-of-state students holding fellowships and/or assistantships that total at least $600 per semester will be charged tuition and fees at the in-state rates. Any student who receives at least $1,800 in assistantship and/or fellowship support will be eligible for a partial tuition scholarship.

Other forms of financial aid such as student loans and college work-study are handled by the Office of Financial Aid. If you have questions about these other sources of funding, you are encouraged to contact that office for further information and the required application forms (662-915-7175 or 800-OLE MISS, toll-free in Mississippi).
For the past several years, the department has been able to provide funding for all students who applied and who were in their first three years of training at a level that would qualify them for tuition scholarships. Although funding is not secure enough to guarantee this will continue, no changes are expected in the immediate future.

For Further Information
Departmental Admissions Coordinator
Department of Psychology
The University of Mississippi
P.O. Box 1848
University, MS 38677-1848
Telephone: (662) 915-7383

Or check out our home page on the World Wide Web at www.olemiss.edu/depts/psychology/. Applications can be downloaded from our Web site.

The Clinical Program at The University of Mississippi is fully accredited by the American Psychological Association (750 First Street, NE, Washington, DC 20002-4242; 202-336-5979).

Checklist

The checklist below is included to help you in completing your application before the deadline for the program you wish to enter. Only applications that are completed by the deadline can be assured of consideration (see section on admission). Deadline for receipt of all materials is January 15 for applications to the Clinical Program and to the Experimental Program.

Submit the following to the Graduate School:
o Application for Admission to the Graduate School
o $25 application fee
o Official transcripts from all undergraduate and graduate institutions attended
o Graduate Record Examination (GRE) official score reports for both general and psychology subject tests (note: the psychology subject test is required only for applicants who did not receive a bachelor's degree in psychology)

Submit the following to the Department of Psychology:
o Application for Graduate Study in Psychology
o List of psychology courses taken and grades received for them
o Background and goal statement
o Photocopies of your GRE general and psychology subject test scores
o Photocopies of all transcripts
o At least three letters of recommendation, forwarded directly from the recommenders