Environmental Psychology - University Courses

University Courses

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 MSc 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.

The University of Michigan offers a Master of Sciences degree in Natural Resources and Environment, with one concentration called "Behavior, Education, and Communication". The focus is on how people form their relationships with the natural world, including how they make environmentally related consumer decisions, as well as a focus on how "nearby nature" affects people's mental and physical health.

Arizona State University offers a Masters in Environmental Resources, which takes more of a planning approach to the field. Antoich New England Graduate School also 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.

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. https://eee.uci.edu/11s/54150/index.html

Prescott College offers a Masters 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.”

The Environmental Psychology PhD program at The 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.

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.

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