University courses




  • University of Victoria offers general and advanced undergraduate courses in environmental psychology, and graduate courses in Psychology and Nature, as well as Environmental Psychology of the Built Environment. The psychology graduate department also offers individualized masters and PhD programs in Environmental Psychology under the supervision of Dr. Robert Gifford.
  • Antioch University New England Graduate School offers graduate programs involving environmental education through a planning approach. With environmental psychology being such a diverse field with many different approaches, students have a variety of programs to choose from.
  • Arizona State University offers a master's in Environmental Resources, which takes more of a planning approach to the field.
  • The Environmental Psychology Ph.D program at the CUNY Graduate Center takes a multidisciplinary approach to examining and changing "the serious problems associated with the urban environment with a view towards affecting public policy" using social science theory and research methods. The GC-CUNY was the first academic institution in the U.S. to grant a PhD in Environmental Psychology. As discussed in detail on the program website, "recent research has addressed the experiences of recently housed homeless people, the privatization of public space, socio-spatial conflicts, children's safety in the public environment, relocation, community based approaches to housing, the design of specialized environments such as museums, zoos, gardens and hospitals, the changing relationships between home, family and work, the environmental experiences of gay men and lesbians, and access to parks and other urban 'green spaces'." See also The Center for Human Environments.
  • Cornell University's department of Design and Environmental Analysis offers undergraduate and graduate (Master of Science in Human Environment Relations, Master of Arts in Design, and Ph.D in Human Behavior and Design) studies in environmental psychology, interior design, sustainable design studies, human factors and ergonomics, and facility planning and management.
  • Drexel University offers a Master of Science degree in Design Research. Of two degree paths, the Environmental Design and Health path includes study with community practitioners and researchers in design and related fields, including health, community design, and public policy. Research typically includes data collection and engaged research practices of design thinking and participatory design. This area of investigation has potential to create innovative health and educational partnerships, economic opportunities and neighborhood initiatives and relates to the strategic mission of the university to be highly engaged in civic sustainability.
  • Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences offers a Master in Environmental psychology. The focus is on how people are affected by both physical and virtual environments, as well as how people affect nature. The program offers courses on environmental behaviour, environment and neuroscience, human factors, virtual environments and cognitive design, change management and greening organizations and architecture and estetics.
  • The Ohio State University City & Regional Planning Program, in the School of Architecture, offers a specialization in environmental psychology (urban design/physical planning and behavior) at both the master's and PhD level. Dissertations have examined such topics as environmental aesthetics, spatial cognition, ethnic enclaves, neighborhood decline, neighborhood satisfaction, restorative and livable places, and behavior change.
  • Prescott College offers a master's program that incorporates a number of the foundations of environmental psychology as well. The sub-fields in which the program provides includes environmental education, environmental studies, ecology, botany, resource policy, and planning. Another description about the program is as follows: "(The program) Includes instruction in contextual theory; statistics; physiological, social, and psychological responses to natural and technological hazards and disease; environmental perception and cognition; loneliness and stress; and psychological aspects of environmental design and planning."This quote needs a citation
  • University of California, Irvine offers a doctoral specialization in Design & Behavior Research within the Department of Planning, Policy, and Design in the School of Social Ecology, and undergraduate coursework in Environmental Psychology offered jointly by the Departments of Psychology and Social Behavior, Planning, Policy, and Design, and the Program in Public Health.
  • The University of Michigan offers Master of Science and Master of Arts degrees in its new School for Sustainability and Environment (SEAS). The focus is on how people affect and are affected by environments, and includes a pragmatic approach to promoting environmental stewardship behavior, as well as a focus on how "nearby nature" affects people's mental vitality, physical health and well-being. An emerging theme is helping people to remain optimistic while learning to respond well to increasingly difficult biophysical circumstances.
  • Another strain of environmental psychology developed out of ergonomics in the 1960s. The beginning of this movement can be traced back to David Canter's work and the founding of the "Performance Research Unit" at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1966, which expanded traditional ergonomics to study broader issues relating to the environment and the extent to which human beings were "situated" within it (cf situated cognition). Canter led the field in the UK for years and was the editor of the Journal of Environmental Psychology for over 20 years, but has recently turned his attention to criminology.
  • The University of Surrey was the first institution that offered an architectural psychology course in the UK starting in 1973. Since then, there have been over 250 graduates from over 25 countries. The Environmental Psychology Research Group (EPRG) within the University of Surrey, of which students on the M.Sc in Environmental Psychology are automatically members, has been undertaking research for more than thirty years. EPRG's mission is to gain a better understanding of the environmental and psychological effects of space, no matter the size, with help from social sciences, psychology, and methodologies. There are four categories under which the research projects fall: sustainable development, environmental risk, architectural assessment and environmental design, and environmental education and interpretation. Other universities in the UK now offer courses on the subject, which is an expanding field.

See the APA's list of additional environmental psychology graduate programs here: http://www.apadivisions.org/division-34/about/resources/graduate-programs.aspx

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Orientations

clarification needed Problem oriented edit Environmental psychology is a direct study of the relationship between an environment and how that environment affects its inhabitants. Specific aspects of this field work by identifying a problem and through the identification of said problem, discovering a solution. Therefore, it is necessary for environmental psychology to be problem oriented. One important aspect of a problem-oriented field is that by identifying problems, solutions arise from the research acquired. The solutions can aid in making society function better as a whole and create a wealth of knowledge about the inner workings of societies. Environmental psychologist Harold Proshansky discusses how the field is also "value oriented" because of the field's commitment to bettering society through problem identification. Panyang discusses the importance of not only understanding the problem but also the necessity of a solution. Proshansky also points out some of the
Read more

Challenges

The field saw significant research findings and a fair surge of interest in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but has seen challenges of nomenclature, obtaining objective and repeatable results, scope, and the fact that some research rests on underlying assumptions about human perception, which is not fully understood. Being an interdisciplinary field is difficult because it lacks a solid definition and purpose. It is hard for the field to fit into organizational structures. In the words of Guido Francescato, speaking in 2000, environmental psychology encompasses a "somewhat bewildering array of disparate methodologies, conceptual orientations, and interpretations... making it difficult to delineate, with any degree of precision, just what the field is all about and what might it contribute to the construction of society and the unfolding of history." Environmental psychology has not received nearly enough supporters to be considered an interdisciplinary field within psychology
Read more

Concepts

Place identity edit For many years Harold Proshansky and his colleagues at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York, explored the concept of place identity. Place identity has been traditionally defined as a 'sub-structure of the self-identity of the person consisting of broadly conceived cognitions about the physical world in which the individual lives'. These cognitions define the daily experiences of every human being. Through one's attitudes, feelings, ideas, memories, personal values and preferences toward the range and type of physical settings, they can then understand the environment they live in and their overall experience. As a person interacts with various places and spaces, they are able to evaluate which properties in different environments fulfill his/her various needs. When a place contains components that satisfy a person biologically, socially, psychologically and/or culturally, it creates the environmental past of a per
Read more