There are categories of courses required for all graduate students in Psychology and specific course requirements for the I/O Program. The required courses follow sequentially, arranged by the semester in which the course is typically offered/taken. For some courses, students are required to enroll in sections specifically designated for the I/O program.

Fall: First Semester

• PSY 570-Introduction to I/O Psychology: This course provides an introduction to job analysis, job evaluation, compensation and benefits.  The course acquaints the students with different methods and techniques of job analysis used in a variety of personnel applications.  Compensation and benefits are topics many of our graduates have found to be relevant to their human resource management jobs.

• PSY 505- Statistical Software for Behavioral Scientists (Statpack): The research tool introduces the student to the main frame and the personal computer as instruments for facilitating the statistical analyses of data.  Skills in using the major statistical analyses software (SPSS, SAS, and/or BMDP) are developed. This course fulfills the research tool requirement of the WKU Graduate College.

• PSY 512- Experimental Design: Experimental Design is a graduate-level statistics and design course.

• PSY 541- Professional Psychology: Professional Psychology covers ethics, legal issues, current professional issues (e.g., confidentiality, areas of competency), and some methodology issues including organizational assessment and feedback techniques.

• PSY 571- Personnel Psychology: Personnel Psychology focuses on employee selection procedures with an emphasis on performance appraisal, testing, criterion development, and validation. There is direct involvement in data analysis and typically in the collection of data as well.

• PSY 572- Organizational Psychology: Organizational Psychology covers theories of motivation, leadership, job satisfaction, organization theory, OD, and TQM. There is an emphasis on organizational skills that employers/graduates may find useful, e.g., behavioral improvement programs utilizing goal setting and feedback, application of group decision-making techniques.

• PSY 513- Advanced Statistical Analysis: The focus of advanced statistics is regression analysis. Time permitting, related multi-variate procedures including factor analysis, cluster analysis, and multiple dimensional scaling are reviewed.

• PSY 563- Statistics and Psychometric Theory: Psychometrics covers topics such as assessment or reliability and validity, test construction, measurement theory, and scaling.

Typically students take this time to gain practical experience with an internship. An internship is not required, but does allow the student to earn three to six hours of internship course credit, as well as experience in the real world . Those students who do not participate in an internship and those students who earn only three credit hours for their internship must complete additional course work to meet the hours required for completion of the program. One option for doing this is to take a class or classes during the summer sessions. However, there typically are very few appropriate graduate level courses offered at Western during the summer term.

• PSY 673- Advanced Training in Business and Industry: Training focuses on conducting training needs analysis; designing, developing, and implementing training programs (technical and managerial); and evaluating the effectiveness of training programs in relation to productivity and satisfaction criteria.

• PSYCHOLOGY 552- Advanced Social Psychology: Advanced Social Psychology covers interpersonal perception, group dynamics, intergroup relations, attitude formation and change, social influence, gender issues, and other topics relevant for industrial/organizational psychologists.

• PSYCHOLOGY 599- Thesis: The I/O-Social faculty and students meet weekly for colloquium presentations of individual research. First-year and second-year students are required to attend. Typically faculty will present first followed by second-year student presentations of the thesis proposal. Students work with their thesis chair and committee in preparing the proposal. Any student that does not have his/her thesis proposal ready to go to committee by the end of the Fall semester (as confirmed by the committee chair) may have his/her assistantship terminated for the Spring semester.

• PSY 670- EEOC, the Law, and Ethical Considerations: EEO covers issues relevant to providing equal employment opportunity, the Uniform Guidelines regarding selection practices, a review of the relevant major court decisions and their implications for the personnel specialist, and professional and ethical considerations in the practice of I/O psychology.

• PSY 520- Psychology of Individual Differences: The focus of this course is a review of areas of individual differences (e.g., abilities, skills, interests, values, and personality), with an emphasis on measurement techniques and the implications of gender and race differences in the employment context.

• The other three hours of thesis credit (Psychology 599) are usually taken during this semester. The additional three hours required for graduation will be met by taking either practicum (Psychology 662) or additional course work.