In April 2007, the College of Psychology at the School of Human Sciences was inaugurated. There are a number of universities in Japan where psychology study courses are available, but there are none comparable to the the College of Psychology at University of Tsukuba, where one department has psychologists from a wide field of this discipline. Some 30 teachers specializing in different areas of psychology are engaged in student education at the College of Psychology. It is unlikely, therefore, that you would find, after coming to the university that are no teachers in the field of your interest.

Psychology is a branch of study aimed at researching the human mind and behavior scientifically and empirically. It seeks to make a scientific study of various mental activities in our daily lives, such as seeing, remembering, thinking, worrying and enjoying. We cannot directly measure these mental activities, so we have to make indirect measurements in whatever ways are possible. Here lies the difficulty of psychology and the joy of displaying your creativity. Since psychology targets everything concerned with human mind and behavior as its subject of research, it is an extremely wide field of study that encompasses physiological psychology, comparative psychology, sensation and perception psychology, cognitive psychology, learning psychology, educational psychology, developmental psychology from infants to the aged, social psychology, organizational psychology, clinical psychology, and health psychology.Thus, psychology is a fascinating field of study that will enable you to gain a deep understanding of humanity.

After your enrollment, you will study the basics of psychology in the first and second years. You will also simultaneously study scientific research methods such as statistics and experiments. Starting from the third year, you will attend seminars to study the latest research trends, while taking lectures on the specialized fields of your choice. Concurrently, you will take part in a series of research courses, such as making experiments based on your research plans, collecting and analyzing data, and releasing summaries of such research activities. Based on your experience in research training, you will start writing a graduation thesis on the area of your interest in the fourth year.

In our society, there are a lot of niches in which you can make the most of your knowledge of psychology and your research results. Many graduates find jobs at business organizations, but some also obtain employment at workplaces where they can utilize their expertise (as a technical officer at a juvenile classification office, an examiner at a family court, a psychological judge at a children’s welfare office, etc). A fairly large number of students also go on to graduate schools to become researchers. Why not explore the mysteries of the mind with us at the College of Psychology of the University of Tsukuba?

Miki Toyama, Ph.D.
Dean of the College of Psychology