Psychology (BA) Industrial and Organizational Concentration + Psychology (MS) Industrial and Organizational

​The combined Bachelor's + Master's degree programs allow students to complete 12 graduate credit hours while still undergraduates. These 12 graduate credit hours will count toward both the undergraduate and graduate degree programs.

The Psychology (BA) offers several options:

• The department of psychology offers a combined BA + MS in Industrial and Organizational (I-O) Psychology. Students interested in this option should meet with  an I-O faculty member for advising ideally by their second year.
• Many other combined degree options (BA + MS, BA + MA, BA + MPH, BA + MPA, BA + MSF, etc.) exist for an undergraduate psychology degree and a master's degree in second area of study, including master's degrees offered by other colleges at DePaul. Students should contact the second area of study for advising ideally in their second year. Students may view options in the course catalog.

This program was designed and approved by DePaul University in the late 1980’s as a way to give qualified DePaul undergraduates the opportunity to earn both a BA and an MS degree in the field of Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Only students who are pursuing an undergraduate degree at DePaul are eligible to apply for this program. The program leads to a terminal MS degree, and should not be seen as an intermediate step towards a doctoral degree. Students who are interested in pursuing a PhD should speak to their advisor regarding the best way to prepare for such a program.

The combined program requires completion of 39 four-credit courses (156 credit hours) by the end of the student's junior year. Note that this requirement is three courses higher than the typical 36 that a student would earn by taking four classes per quarter.

The undergraduate component of this program includes the following:

Students should work with their I-O advisor or I-O Program Director beginning as early as possible, ideally no later than their sophomore year. Applications for the combined program are due by June 1 of their junior year, and they can be found on the CSH Office of Advising and Student Services website. At the time of application, the student should have completed the undergraduate requirements with a grade point average of 3.2 or higher; a strong GPA of at least 3.5 is preferred. Supplemental application forms can be obtained from the I-O Program Director, and they must be submitted to the I-O Program Director together with the student’s Unofficial Transcript from DePaul, statement of goals, and General Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores. Applications will be evaluated by DePaul's Office of Graduate Admission and the Department of Psychology's I-O Admissions Committee. Typically, applicants are informed of the admission decision by by mid-June of the same year.

Students accepted into the graduate portion of the program take three courses per quarter during year four and an additional three courses per quarter during year five. The requirement of nine classes during year five cannot be reduced by taking additional classes during year four; and given the demands of graduate-level coursework, students are strongly discouraged from attempting to take more than three classes at a time. The nine courses taken during year four carry 36 credit hours; these 36 credit hours are added to the completed 156 credit hours to produce 192 credit hours, which meets the minimum requirement for conferral of the BA degree.

The MS degree requires an additional 36 credit hours of graduate coursework earned after conferral of the BA. After a student's BA is conferred, they must adhere to the guidelines that appear in the MA/PhD I-O Program Graduate Academic Student Handbook. One exception is students must maintain at least a 3.00 cumulative GPA in MS coursework to remain in good standing, and they must earn at least a 3.00 cumulative GPA by the time of anticipated degree conferral as one of the criteria to be eligible to graduate with their MS. 

The required 18 courses taken during years four and five include the following courses:

Statistics and Methodology

​Psychology Core 

Industrial-Organizational Psychology 

Research

Elective Courses

In addition to enrolling in four credit hours of PSY 597, students are required to complete a master’s thesis to confer the MS degree. The thesis is a project that allows the student to focus on a particular area of interest within the I-O field. There are three options available for the MS thesis:

1. An empirical research project, involving the collection and analysis of data and the writing of the thesis paper in APA style.
2. A library research paper, where the student reviews work already done on a topic, and writes a paper describing and summarizing that work and making recommendations for theory, research or practice.
3. An applied thesis, based on work the student is doing at an internship site.

After choosing one of the above options, the student is required to form a thesis committee consisting of a DePaul I-O faculty member who will serve as the committee chair, and a DePaul Psychology faculty member who will serve as a reader; both faculty must hold doctoral degrees. The thesis committee must approve of the student's thesis proposal, which may also need to be approved by the Institutional Review Board before the student may begin work.

Students in the combined program are not required to have a minor area of graduate study. However, the areas of specialization listed for the MA/PhD program are also available to students in the combined program, should they choose to select one.

Students in this program may apply a maximum of twelve graduate credit hours as three courses in their senior year toward both the undergraduate and graduate psychology requirements. The required application for degree conferral for the MS is separate from the required application for degree conferral for the BA. Students must apply for undergraduate degree conferral in anticipation of completing their fourth year of study.

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