About the Department

The Psychology Department at UC Santa Cruz is a center of excellence for the study of psychological processes in the everyday world. Our three academic and research subfields of cognitive, developmental, and social psychology are distinctive in embedding all aspects of human functioning-–thinking, communicating, learning, social relations, and empowerment—in the social ecologies and rapidly changing technologies that people encounter in their daily lives.

Our department’s commitment to understanding the integral connection between psychological processes and engagement in physical, social, and cultural environments has led us to pursue interdisciplinary research that transcends traditional boundaries between the social and natural sciences, arts, and humanities. We recognize the need for researchers to become skilled in the use of multiple methodologies and to fit their methods to the question at hand. Many of our faculty employ a combination of quantitative and qualitative analytic approaches.  

Another strength of our department is our success at promoting diversity and social justice. This is strongly reflected in our curriculum and research programs. Issues of diversity and social justice are explicitly addressed in many faculty’s research as well as in our graduate and undergraduate curricula.  Moreover, it is demonstrated through faculty and staff hires, student admissions, and educational outreach. 

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Our history

Psychology is one of the founding disciplines at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Reflecting on the campus’s original mission, our early faculty, which included M. Brewster Smith, Ted Sarbin, Bill Domhoff, and Bert Kaplan, emphasized the importance of situating psychological processes in real-world contexts and developing a socially relevant discipline. This real-world vision is even stronger among our faculty today.

The early faculty comprised two graduate areas—experimental and social/personality psychology—and began admitting students in 1969. In 1989, a third graduate program in developmental psychology brought in eight faculty members who studied cognitive, social, and personality development. Concurrently, the social psychology area began strengthening its emphasis on social justice issues. In 1999, the experimental area changed its name to cognitive psychology to better reflect its emphasis on the study of perception, language, and memory. Our first Ph.D. was awarded in 1972, and we quickly grew to awarding 8 Ph.D.s by 1982. Since then, our annual yield of Ph.D.s has remained fairly steady.

In 1995, we consolidated in a new building, Social Sciences 2, and organized the three graduate areas into an integrated program. This cohesive integration was partly achieved by recruiting faculty who built on existing research strengths, rather than filling gaps across a broad range of areas. We developed a single Ph.D. program with a consistent set of requirements. 

We also strengthened the undergraduate program by introducing a pre-calculus requirement and requiring ladder faculty to teach almost all of the required courses in the major, including our large basic courses in introductory psychology, research methods, and statistics. This pedagogical practice is highly unusual in major research universities and on other campuses of the UC system. It helps to account for our department being a center of excellence, not only in faculty research, but also in teaching and research mentoring.

More alumni stories

Are you one of our alumni? If so, we’d love to stay in touch. Be sure to update your contact and employment information with the campus, so that we can celebrate your successes and keep you in the loop on opportunities. You can also follow the Psychology Department on social media at the links on the bottom of this page.

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Support Psychology

Our work is grounded in both basic science and real-world issues, with practical applications for individuals, families, schools, institutions, technological innovation, and public policy. With your support, students can find their place in the field of psychology, and we can continue to pursue ground-breaking research.