Patricia O'Connor, Program Director
(518) 244-2221 phone
oconnp@sage.edu e-mail
(518) 244-4545 fax

Our Masters in Community Psychology has a special appeal to students for several reasons. Most important is probably the pairing of the community perspective and requisite skills in our Community Core with six different areas of specialization (Chemical Dependency, Child Care and Children's Services, Community Counseling, Community Health Education, General, and Visual Art Therapy). We have carefully identified social problems or contexts that blend well with our Core focus on systems interventions and evaluations. Thus, in our program, we encourage students to develop an expertise based on their interests, in the context of the appropriate community orientation.

Another appeal to students is our emphasis on building students' competencies, specifically providing students with the frameworks and contexts for strengthening the variety of skills critical to success in the workplace. In the most generic sense, these include the capacity for critical thinking, excellence in communication (writing and speaking), and confidence and flexibility in their problem-solving skills.

A third appeal to students is the flexibility in program presentation. Most of our students attend on a part time basis and courses are offered with sufficient regularity and convenience (evening and weekend classes) to meet the needs of those students. Based on the premise that the master's is the entry level degree for the practice of community psychology, we emphasize that the part time acquisition of our master's degree in the context of on-going community-based work (part or full-time) provides the student with the optimal conditions for the integration of research and practice.

Our diversity issues are probably similar to those in most other graduate psychology programs: most of our students and faculty are Caucasian and female. As a master's program in a small private college, we have focused our energies primarily on providing academic and social supports for students of color and males who choose our program. To that end we are currently enlisting the aid of a diverse group of current students and program graduates in helping us develop strategies for the recruitment of students of color and males. Our community connections are more reflective of our commitment to diversity. Our faculty have affiliations with and supervise placements of students in a variety of settings, representing a diversity of populations, available in our region: inner city, suburban, rural, people with disabilities, specific interest groups, economically varied groups.