Psychology Department

Our mission as a Psychology Department is --through our teaching, research and service-- to challenge ourselves and our students to pursue excellence, understand and utilize sound psychological principles and skills, and integrate Christian faith with psychology.

• We are committed to integrate with the theory and practice of our discipline the perspectives of our Christian world views.
• A number of the faculty in the department are engaged in research and scholarship with a cross-cultural emphasis. Their interests range from qualitative research with immigrant populations in the Twin Cities, to multicultural counseling, to experimental research involving Japanese and U.S. students.
• Over the past 15 years our alumni have gone on to become counselors, psychology professors, psychologists in organizational settings, physicians, dentists, social workers, school psychologists, psychologists working in prisons, physical therapists, and administrators in public schools.
• A number of our majors choose to study abroad for a semester, taking advantage of Bethel's international studies programs.
• Some of our majors --in addition to their studies in psychology--double major in communications, philosophy, spanish, biblical studies, and other fields.
• Our students gain hands-on experience through a required internship. Internship experiences have taken place in settings such as a forensic psychologist's practice, the sleep lab at Hennepin County Medical Center, the psychiatric ward at Fairview Southdale, the human resources department at Medtronic, and many more.
• Students are encouraged to work with faculty members on research projects. Students have researched topics such as sleep habits of college students, gender differences in leadership at Bethel, assessment of moral sensitivity, and cultural and gender differences in physiological and nonverbal responses to pictures, and presented their results at the Minnesota Undergraduate Psychology Conference.

• Our major prepares students well for graduate school. Some of our alumni study in programs like:

  • Clinical/Neuropsychology at St. Louis University
  • Counseling Psychology at Boston College
  • Educational Psychology & School Psychology at the University of Minnesota
  • Clinical Psychology at Rutgers University
  • Student Personnel at Ball State University