Hello everyone, and
welcome to the School
of Psychology information session.
My name is Adrian North, and I'm the Head
of the School of Psychology.
Let's begin just by
telling you a little bit
about the university itself.
We're an innovative, global
university, well-known
for career-ready graduates
who generally aspire
to make tomorrow better.
We're also a prestigious
university, we're ranked in the top
1% of institutions globally.
And we're global, we've
got campuses in Singapore,
Mauritius, Dubai, and also Malaysia.
Crucially as well, the university achieved
five-star ratings in the
Good University Guide
across several categories in
just most recently as 2020.
So these five-star ratings
came to us for the overall
student experience, the starting
salary of our graduates,
the quality of the teaching
that we offer to our students,
the extent to which we engage our learners
in what they're actually studying
while they're here with
us, and also the resources
that we provide to our students.
We're also large in
terms of our alumni now.
We have almost a quarter of
a million alumni scattered
all around the world, providing
a rich network of contacts
for our students.
What about the School
of Psychology itself?
We're a large school, we have
around about 1500 students
and around about 80 staff.
And of course, as well as
our undergraduate courses
in psychology, we also
offer professional courses
in psychology at postgraduate level too.
In terms of our research,
we're extremely productive.
Every year we publish
around about 200 papers
and around about three
quarters of those are published
in journals that are ranked in
the top 25% for their field.
We also attract a significant
amount of research funding
every year too, normally
about $2 - 3 million,
every single year.
So why study psychology?
Well, I think we can make
the case that psychology
is almost uniquely positioned
amongst the disciplines
to address three of the key challenges
that are going to be facing society
for at least the next 20 or 30 years.
The first of these, of course,
is the ageing population
will live longer.
That's great news, but it's
interesting that the media
often portrays it differently.
It often portrays an ageing
population as a problem,
for example, a draw on pension
funds or something else
that's very negative.
Psychology though, tells
a very different story
about an ageing population.
For the last 50 years,
or maybe even more now,
psychologists have been
producing research showing
that an elderly population
or an ageing population
just brings with it a whole
range of different skills
that themselves can be
extremely valuable to society.
And that brings with it a
second issue that psychology
is almost uniquely positioned to address,
namely, quality of life.
Of course, as people live
longer, we become less concerned
with simply survival
and much more concerned
with making our lives
the best they can be.
Of course, you won't need me
to tell you at the moment,
one of the great
contributions that psychology
is making is towards encouraging people
to act in healthy ways.
So, for example, as of right
now, encouraging people,
how to keep a safe physical
distance from one another.
But more generally,
psychologists, for a long time,
have been interested in how to
encourage healthy behaviours
from people that maximise their
chances of remaining well.
In addition to that, some of
the core aspects of psychology
for almost a hundred years
now, have been concerned
more generally with quality of life.
Psychologists have long
had an interesting topic
such as happiness, self-fulfillment,
and achieving your potential.
That then brings us to a
third area of great concern
to society where psychology can again,
make a fantastic contribution,
and that concern is economic success.
Of course, we're living
in challenging times,
it's difficult for a lot
of people at the moment.
And it's not a surprise that
given the kind of skills
you learn, that you tend to see
so many psychology graduates
themselves contributing
to the economy directly.
A very large number of
psychology graduates
find themselves working
in management positions.
And that's because of the
kind of skills you learn
during a psychology degree,
you learn about principles
of motivation about how to reward people
for behaving in ways
you want them to behave.
You learn about the kind
of skills of persuasion
that are useful in marketing,
and also in the way
in which you can persuade
staff to follow your example
and follow your lead.
So that's why I think it's
good to study psychology.
What about, why should
you study psychology,
specifically, at Curtin?
And as you can see from the
slide here, there's a number
of good reasons why.
Perhaps, the best one or
the single greatest one
concerns something called
ERA, which is an exercise
that's run, every four years or so,
by the Australian Research Council.
So ERA stands for Excellence
in Research for Australia.
And what that is, is essentially,
it's a compulsory exercise
undertaken by all academic
disciplines at all universities
around the country every four years or so.
And what happens there is
we submit our publications,
our research, and they are
then graded independently,
relative to all the other publications
of all the other
universities in the world.
I'm delighted to say that
in the most recent exercise,
just in 2018, for the third time in a row,
Curtin Psychology got a grading
of four out of five on ERA.
And that equates to formerly
being above world ranking
on our research.
That's mirrored by a
separate exercise called
the QS World Ranking by Subject,
which takes place every year,
and again, compares
every academic discipline
at every institution globally.
Once again, Curtin Psychology
was placed in the top 200
globally, for schools of psychology,
in the most recent exercise,
which was just in 2019.
A lot of this comes about because we're,
for a long time now,
we've prided ourselves
on the kind of professional relationships
that we have with
practitioners of psychology,
not just in the community,
but in business.
And again, not just in
Perth, but around Australia
and around the world.
Our teaching and our
research align very closely
with the practise of
psychology as it's used
in the workplace, day in,
day out, around the world.
As you might expect as part
of that, we have a very strong
applied focus to our curriculum,
not just in the topics
we cover, but also in how we assess them.
We make a lot of use of what gets
called authentic assessments.
Authentic assessments are
where we ask our students
to directly practise applying
what they've learned,
the theoretical principles,
to the kind of problems,
the kind of tasks that they
are themselves going to face
on graduation, when they're
out there in the workplace.
Another important feature of
our undergraduate programme
here at Curtin is that we
guarantee a place in our fourth
year to any of our students
who meet the grade requirement
resulting from accreditation.
That's important because
completing a fourth year
in psychology is an essential
requirement, if you're going
to go on to professional
training in psychology.
Another interesting
feature of our curriculum
is that we have an
award-winning interprofessional
first year, that all our students take.
Why?
Well, it's because like a lot
of disciplines these days,
psychologists don't work only
with other psychologists,
they work with people and a
whole range of other disciplines
and a whole range of other backgrounds.
So right from the very
beginning of our undergraduate
course, our students get used to seeing
what the concerns of
those other disciplines
are, what they're interested
in, and, of course,
how they work with psychologists too.
It's also worthwhile
pointing out that, of course,
our undergraduate courses available
here from the Perth campus,
but crucially as well,
particularly at the moment,
it's also available online.
And it's also available
from the university's
Malaysia campus and also
from the Mauritius campus
where we're currently
rolling out the entirety
of years one to three
of our undergraduate psychology programme.
And, of course, students
are able to transfer
between those campuses.
Finally, the aspect to the course
that we're, arguably,
proudest about is our annual
careers night, which
runs around about March
every single year, and that's
almost like a careers fair
where we just invite
in all local employers
of psychology graduates,
and we give our students
a chance to talk with them directly
about what are they looking
for, for then graduates?
What skills should students have?
And that's crucial, of course,
in giving students time
to prepare their own CVs, time to prepare
their own extracurricular activities,
and, of course, the best
opportunity possible to start
preparing for that
all-important job interview.
>> Hi everyone, my name is
Natalie, and I'm the Courses
and Majors Coordinator for
Undergraduate Psychology
here at Curtin.
Today, I'm going to talk to
you about two main things.
Firstly, I'm going to talk to you about
our undergraduate degrees
and the structure of those.
And then also, talk to you
a little bit about career
pathways that doing an
undergraduate psychology degree
can offer you.
Here at Curtin, we have
five fully accredited
undergraduate psychology degrees.
Our first degree, the
Bachelor of Psychology
is a four-year accredited
sequence of psychology.
The other degrees are all
double major or double degrees,
which include a three-year
accredited sequence of psychology.
So I'll tell you a little bit
about each of the structures
of these courses.
Our first degree, the
Bachelor of Psychology,
which is the four-year accredited sequence
of psychology, will lead you to the point
to which you can make
a decision about going
on to professional psychology
or heading out into the workforce.
What you'll notice is that
at the end of third year,
there are two fourth year streams
that are available to you.
The first is the regular
fourth year stream,
and the second is our honours stream.
When you get to third year,
as long as you achieve
a 60% grade average
across the required units,
you can enter our fourth year stream,
and that position is guaranteed.
This grade requirement is set
out by our accrediting body.
Students who achieve high
grades, who get distinction
grades, will be offered
a place in honours.
These offers are guaranteed,
if you meet those grades requirements.
You'll also notice
though that you can exit
at the end of third year,
with a Bachelor of Science in psychology,
which is a three-year
accredited stream of psychology.
You may decide to do this
if you don't meet the grade
requirements for fourth
year, but also if you decide
that there are other opportunities
you would like to pursue
using a three-year sequence of psychology.
The next degree is our double major.
This is a degree with psychology
and human resource management.
At the end of this four-year
degree, you will graduate
from the university, you will
have a Bachelor of Science
with psychology and human
resource management.
At this point, you can make some decisions
about where you want
to go with your future.
You might decide to go out and work,
you might decide that you
want to pursue postgraduate
studies in human resource
management or other areas
of commerce, or you may like
to come on back into psychology
and pursue the fourth year,
and continue on potentially
to professional psychology.
Again, those grade
requirements are standard.
If you meet them, you
are guaranteed a place
in the fourth year, and
if you achieve the grades
required for honours,
you'll be offered a place
in the honours programme.
The first of our double degrees
is with human Resource management
and industrial relations.
This is a five-year degree, and at the end
of the five years, you'll
graduate with two degrees,
a Bachelor of Science in psychology,
and also a Bachelor of
Commerce with a double major
in human resource management
and industrial relations.
And again, you can make
those same decisions
about where you want
to go with your career.
Do you want to go out and work?
Do you want to pursue
further studies in commerce
and other business-related areas?
Or would you like to continue
on the psychology pathway
by coming back in and doing the
fourth year of our programme?
And again, as long as
you achieve the grades
that I've mentioned,
you're guaranteed a place
in the fourth year stream
or the honours stream,
if you achieve a distinction average.
Our second double degree is with marketing
and the structure is the same.
At the end of five years, you
graduate with two degrees,
a Bachelor of Science in psychology
and a Bachelor of Commerce in marketing.
And you make those same
decisions at that point.
Do you want to work?
Would you like to do postgraduate study
and pursue the marketing
side of your degree?
Or would you like to
continue on in psychology?
Our final double degree
is a Bachelor of Laws
and Bachelor of Science, Psychology.
This degree is a little bit
different because it lives
in the Faculty of Business Law.
However, the structure is very similar.
This degree is six years long,
well, five years and a third,
really, you do have one extra trimester
at the end of your, in your sixth year.
And you graduate at that
point with a Bachelor of Laws
and a Bachelor of Science in psychology.
And again, the same
opportunities and decisions
are there for you to make.
Do you want to go out and
work with that degree?
Or would you like to continue
on your law career pathway
or come back and continue
on with psychology?
Again, those grade averages
that are required apply,
and if you meet them,
you're guaranteed a place
in the fourth year of psychology.
So what do you study when you come
into psychology at Curtin?
Curtin is known for having a
very applied psychology course.
And so you'll find a really good balance
between applied skill development
and theoretical underpinnings
in research skill development.
In your first year, you'll
study in the interprofessional
first year programme, which is
a development made by Curtin,
and in response to the government's desire
to see health professionals
work in multidisciplinary teams.
And so you'll study
alongside students from OT,
from physio, nursing, and
a variety of other courses
in the Faculty of Health Sciences.
You'll also do introductory
psychology units as well.
In second and third
year, you'll study units
in much more depth around
specific areas of psychology.
So for example, child
development, personality,
abnormal psychology, and
this is designed to give
you a really broad overview of
the discipline of psychology.
So we have a lot more
psychology units in our course
than you may see elsewhere.
We often find that students
come into psychology
with a very set idea of
where they want to end up.
However, by exposing you
to all the different areas
of psychology, you may find
that it opens your mind
to areas you hadn't even
thought of as a possibility
in terms of your career development.
And so you have this opportunity to study
all of the different fields in psychology.
In fourth year, you start to study
very skill-based units.
And so in fourth year, you
do a major research project
and you also start to develop skills
in the areas of psychological
assessment, counselling,
and capstone skills in
programme evaluation,
which would lead, nicely,
into community work
that a lot of our graduates go into.
The study of psychology at
Curtin is fairly flexible.
And there are some
different options available
depending on your own circumstances.
So you can, definitely,
study full or part time,
and we can modify that as you go through.
You may find that you can
cope with a large study load
one semester, but not the other.
And so it's possible to tailor your study
to suit your own requirements.
And one of the things I like
to do with our part time
students is touch base at
the end of every semester
and talk about which units
to take in the following
semester, depending on what
you might be able to handle.
And you can also study
online or on-campus.
And so the first three years of our course
are available fully online.
So you can make the choice to
study your units on-campus,
where you can interact with your peers
and start developing your networks
or you can study in a fully
online asynchronous manner.
And the beauty of that is you can choose
on a unit by unit basis.
So you might find that
the timetable for one unit
doesn't suit you, so you
can do one unit face-to-face
and one unit online, and still
get the best of both worlds.
In fourth year, our studies
are all face-to-face on-campus
because it is that skill
development year where you start
to learn things around
psychological assessment
and counselling skills
where you need to practise
these in person.
However, you can still
study that year part time.
So where can you study?
Normally at this point, I'd
be talking to you about study
abroad opportunities, but
in the current climate,
that's not happening.
However, it's something
maybe to keep in mind,
because if it does start again
in a couple of years time,
you may still have an
opportunity to take advantage
of doing a semester of
your study somewhere else.
So becoming a registered
psychologist in Australia,
this is not a simple process,
but I'll try to explain
it as best I can.
So in order to become a
registered psychologist
in Australia, you have to
complete six years of training.
The first four years are the
accredited four-year sequence
of psychology that we've been talking
about in our courses so far.
The second two years of
training can take place
in a number of different ways,
through postgraduate studies
coupled with an internship,
or by doing two years
of postgraduate studies.
And during the course, we'll
provide plenty of information
on the pathways available to
you to achieve registration
as a psychologist.
To become an endorsed
psychologist, so if you're thinking
that you might like to be
a clinical psychologist
or a forensic psychologist,
you need to do another
two years of training.
So a total of eight all up,
these are the nine endorsed
areas of psychology in Australia.
And these are the ones where
you can complete the relevant
master's programme, and then
go on and do the internship
or the supervised work in order to achieve
your endorsement as a psychologist,
specialising in one of
these particular areas.
Here at Curtin, we offer
clinical psychology
and the other programmes are
offered in a variety of different
places around the country.
But a lot of our students don't
go on to become registered
psychologists, and don't go on to work
in professional psychology fields.
And there are so many
different opportunities
that you have available to you at the end
of a psychology degree.
So the first option is
to do further study.
And so a lot of our graduates
of our four-year degree
or even our three-year degree
will go off into other areas
of specialisation where they
can couple their psychology
degree with another area of knowledge.
So for example, there
are a number of graduate
entry master's programmes available
such as, with occupational
therapy and a new one
just launched at Curtin
is with midwifery.
And so coupling psychology
education with education in OT
or education in midwifery can
offer you additional value
when applying for jobs and
looking for career opportunities.
There are a number of graduate
certificates available
that you can take after completing
the undergraduate degree.
Here at Curtin, we offer three,
one in health psychology,
one in forensic psychology,
and one in business psychology.
These are not accredited,
however, they give you that
specialist knowledge that
might, that coupled together
with your undergraduate degree can lead
into particular areas of work.
You may also want to go
into postgraduate studies
in other areas.
So a number of our graduates
will go and do postgraduate
studies in teaching, or in public health,
or in business and marketing.
So lots of different
opportunities after you finish
your undergraduate psychology degree,
in terms of postgraduate study.
However, lots of our graduates go and work
after their four-year degree.
And again, there are so
many different opportunities
for working with a four-year degree,
for example, a lot of departments of local
and state government hire
our four-year graduates.
So Department of Health,
Department of Child Protection,
the justice department,
are typical employers
of our four-year graduates.
Alongside these, there's
lots of opportunities
in the not-for-profit sector,
as well as in business
around things like staff
recruitment and areas like that.
And a lot of our graduates, in
recent times, have been going
into careers in policing
or in police-related work,
in the prisons, in the justice department.
So lots and lots of
different opportunities
that you can take after completing
an undergraduate psychology degree.
So normally at this
stage, we would break away
for a cup of tea and a bickie,
and we'd be able to answer
lots of questions that you may have.
So instead of that, you'll find
details, on the slide behind
me now, of where you can find information
about how to apply to
Curtin, what requirements
there are to do a degree at
Curtin, and with the previous
qualifications you have, we'll
assist you with this process.
However, if you've got questions
about the degree of
psychology, in particular,
or about whether you've done some units
that I might be able to give
you some credit for, please
do search for me on the Curtin
website and send me an email.
I'm very happy to hear from anybody
with questions about psychology.
Thank you.
(air whooshing)
