Gaining Real World Experience
Having off-campus experience working with populations in the community prior to graduating can help students gain admission to graduate school or obtain a job after graduation. Students can gain real world experience before graduating from Quinnipiac with a psychology major in many different ways:
1. You can complete one of the optional concentrations within the psychology major. Both concentrations (the Industrial Organizational Psychology Concentration and the Human Services Concentration) have fieldwork built directly into their curriculum. You can find information about the concentrations by going to the “Majors” link within any Psychology Blackboard Page or you can click here: http://mywebspace.quinnipiac.edu/walbaum/overview.html.
2. You can volunteer some of your time. Try going to the National United Way website: www.unitedway.org and from there search for your local United Way chapter’s website. You can access the chapter close to where you will live in the summer, or if you want to volunteer close to Quinnipiac you can access the Greater New Haven United Way chapter’s website here: http://www.uwgnh.org/. Once on a local chapter’s website, you can access a list of volunteer opportunities. You can also contact personnel at other agencies not listed with the United Way to see if they are accepting volunteers. Try searching on the internet for agencies that interest you. Agencies that are unable to pay their staff high salaries often have frequent staff turnover and are often looking for volunteers. Some types of agencies that may accept volunteers include: homeless shelters, food pantries/soup kitchens, group homes/residential facilities, literacy programs, domestic violence shelters, sexual assault crisis centers, and substance abuse treatment facilities.
3. You can look for paid employment that is relevant to your career goals. This can often be hard to find, but some students have been successful at finding paid employment as research assistants or as employees at human services agencies (e.g. substance abuse facilities) while they were still undergraduates. Look at job ads on the internet and/or contact Annalisa Zinn (Annalisa.Zinn@quinnipiac.edu) who is our Assistant Dean for Career Services for the College of Arts and Sciences. Also, take a very close look at emails which are periodically sent to all psychology majors regarding job openings.
4. You can contact Annalisa Zinn about her internship course. You can intern and get non-psychology credit (ie. career services credit) for the internship. Note though that you would not be provided with a Quinnipiac psychology faculty mentor for the internship as part of the career services internship course.
5. Some students have been able to arrange an independent study for psychology course credit with a psychology faculty member. Independent studies are designed to allow students to achieve learning goals that cannot be accomplished in another course. You can approach faculty members to discuss this possibility. Some students have completed internships as part of their requirements for an independent study.
6. You can gain research experience in multiple ways. You will conduct research studies in PS 307 and PS 308. You can gain additional research experience by volunteering to help a faculty member with his/her research. You can see the research interests of the psychology department faculty members here: http://mywebspace.quinnipiac.edu/walbaum/resint.html. You can approach faculty about doing your own independent research under their supervision. You can also seek out research experience by volunteering or getting a paid position with researchers outside of Quinnipiac (e.g. at Yale or at the West Haven Veterans’ Hospital.)