The Department of Psychology encourages students to broaden their educational experience through participation in the UC Education Abroad Program. This program provides students with the opportunity to understand psychology from an international perspective while broadening their academic horizons. With careful planning, students may spend up to one year of study in a foreign university, with no loss of time in completing their degrees.
EAP provides students the opportunity to develop a global understanding of the
field of psychology. Students abroad are able to take classes in subfields that are not offered at UCSB, such as Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Applied Psychology, and the Psychology of Communication. If you are interested in going to graduate school in a field other than Experimental Psychology,
EAP offers you valuable experience. If Experimental Psychology is your passion,
you will have the opportunity to see how other countries approach this field. You
will also find that many of the courses abroad are smaller in class size, more
intimate, and more interactive than courses at UCSB.
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Most of the universities available through EAP have psychology programs in which you can takes classes for your major. Some countries, such as Spain, take a more humanistic or applied approach to psychology than we do at UCSB. If you are hoping to take psychology classes different from those you will take at
UCSB, this may be a good choice for you. On the other hand, countries such
as England and France take an empirical approach to psychology and offer
courses very similar to those at UCSB. This makes it easier for you to find
equivalent courses. The Psychology Department website features a list of EAP courses taken by previous students. This list will help you determine which universities offer the most choices to fulfill your major requirements: http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/undergraduate/eap/eap.php.
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The best time for psychology majors to study abroad is in their junior year. By this time, you should be a full major and be in the process of completing your upper-division classes. It is very important that you complete the premajor
before you study abroad. If you go abroad as a pre-major, you will most
likely exceed the department’s 144 unit cap for declaring the major. It will then be impossible for you to continue in the Psychology or Biopsychology major.
Psychology majors will find it very easy to go abroad for one semester to take
only general education classes. The major has very few upper-division units
required and one or two quarters away from UCSB will not usually put students
behind in completing their degrees. However, be sure to verify your progress
with the undergraduate advisor before applying to study abroad.
For Biopsychology majors, careful planning is required if you wish to study
abroad. Since this major has many required courses that must be taken in a
particular sequence, you need to be sure that your time away from UCSB will not
put you behind in your degree progress. Students who prefer not to miss time
during the regular academic year might consider studying abroad during the
summer through one of the shortterm EAP programs. The programs at
Cambridge and Sussex in England allow you to take psychology courses, an
opportunity which is not usually available in summer programs.
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Psychology majors will most likely take classes that will count for the upper-division portion of the major. Most, but not all, classes taken by
students through EAP will count for the psychology courses numbered 110
and above. The classes do not have be exactly equivalent to courses at UCSB,
but it is imperative that the classes are upper-division psychology courses that
deal with and/or consider an empirical approach to the subject matter. Applied
psychology courses cannot be used to fulfill major requirements. The under- graduate advisor can help you determine whether or not a class will
count for your requirements.
Biopsychology majors will have more difficulty finding courses that fulfill the lecture requirements in Area C of the upper-division major. However, it is possible to fulfill your psychology electives while abroad. Review the list of
previously approved courses to find out which biopsychology classes students
have taken through EAP.
Fulfilling the laboratory class requirement abroad will be difficult for both psychology and biopsychology majors. Therefore, this is a requirement that you should complete at UCSB.
Keep in mind that at least 20 units of upper-division major coursework (or
12 upper-division minor units) must be completed in residence at UCSB along with other residence requirements. Consult an advisor in the College of
Letters & Science for more information.
Psychology majors can apply up to 16 upper-division EAP units to their major. Biopsychology majors can apply 20 to 24 upper-division EAP units to their major. EAP students automatically earn UC credit for the work they complete abroad. However, application of credit to major requirements is subject to the discretion of the student’s major department and approval of the college.
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Consult the EAP web pages to see what program options are available for your major. An excellent resource is Course Finder, an online database
which allows students to search EAP courses taken by UC students during
the last five years by subject, language, and/or location. Find it at http://www.eap.
ucop.edu/coursefinder. More courses may be found by navigating to the host
universities’ websites from the Countries page on the system-wide EAP website
at http://eap.ucop.edu/eap/country. Once you have researched your options,
speak to a student peer advisor at the EAP Campus Office, 2431 South Hall, to
get an application and more information about your future host country. Make an appointment with an advisor in the College of Letters and Science to discuss
general education, residence and other requirements.
Here is a partial list of EAP host countries that offer unique opportunities in
psychology and biopsychology:
Australia -- Canada -- France -- Spain -- Hong Kong -- Ireland -- New Zealand
South Africa -- United Kingdom
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Department of Psychology
Psychology East 1814
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9660
Phone: (805) 893-2844
www.psych.ucsb.edu
