During the fall of 2017, the Department of Psychology launched a new Master of Science program (MSPS). The program has three major aims: to offer emerging scholars an opportunity to pursue and develop their research interests in collaboration with our renowned faculty; to strengthen the students’ knowledge of specialized topics in psychology and bolster their analytical skills through advanced quantitative coursework; and to scaffold the students’ future success by providing academic professional development.
We began with eight brave, pioneering individuals who have worked tirelessly to establish themselves as new, promising scholars. Collectively, our inaugural class has explored an impressive range of topics in psychological science, which include but are not limited to:
• Perception of dominance among men and women in positions of leadership
• Spatial-attention mechanisms
• Mothers' neural responsiveness to their infant’s positive emotion and its protective factor against mood problems
• Influence of multicultural education on police recruits' racial attitudes
• Development of career aspirations and career choice
• Amount of time it takes people to find a target in a visual scene by varying the number of distractors
• Impact of a target's wealth on perceptions of moral transgressions and prosocial behavior
These and other research projects have resulted in students giving talks to academic audiences, presenting posters at conferences, and submitting manuscripts for publication. We commend our Master’s scholars for producing new research while excelling in their scholarship.
The success of our program is made possible largely because of the mentorship provided by our devoted faculty and the program’s professional development training. Each cohort meets weekly to tackle the essential skills that research psychologists must master in order to succeed. Deepening awareness of topics such as research ethics, current issues in measurement, academic writing, data visualization, public speaking, and diversity sensitivity increases our students potential to become contributors of science. However, something even more important emerges from our weekly meetings—as we integrate these topics and practices to our work, we grow to deeply care for and invest in each other. The spirit of collaboration at Illinois means more than designing a study or co-authoring a paper—it means we come together as a multidisciplinary community to inspire excellence. In the words of Helen Keller, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”