Psychology | Westmont College

Gain a thorough grounding in the scientific discipline of psychology.

Discover how psychological knowledge informs your faith—and how your faith informs your understanding of psychology. Apply your knowledge through research with professors and present your work at academic conferences. Participate in local internships to investigate possible careers. Psychology alumni attend nationally known graduate schools, and local employers recruit them. Graduates have received honors such as a clinical post-doctoral internship at Harvard Medical School and a Ford Foundation Pre-doctoral Minority Fellowship. In 2015, Best Psychology Degrees named our program one of the top 10 Up-and-Coming Undergraduate Psychology Programs in the West.

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Psychology at Westmont

Flourishing

Meet the four professors involved with the Global Flourishing Study, a landmark, five-year research initiative by Harvard and Baylor Universities focused on happiness and life satisfaction, physical and mental health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, close and positive social relationships and financial and material stability: Smaranda Lawrie (psychology), Steve Porter (Martin Institute), Carmel Saad (psychology and diversity leadership), and Blake Kent (sociology), left to right.

Read the Fall 2025 Magazine Cover Story

Alumni Stories

Valerie Swisher ’22 graduated from Westmont with a B.S. in Psychology. She completed a year long Fulbright Fellowship in Hungary, where she conducted research on mental health literacy and help-seeking behavior among Hungarian primary care providers and patients. She also received a prestigious 5-year National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to support her in the Clinical Psychology PhD program at Penn State University.

Kaitlin Kinney ’17 graduated from Westmont with a B.S. degree in Psychology on the behavioral neuroscience track. She earned a Master of Science degree from the University of Southern California in neuroimaging and informatics and worked at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience at UCLA. She is currently completing the Neuroscience PhD program at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.

Lydia Grenko ’18 earned a B.S. in Psychology with a concentration in Behavioral Neuroscience. After graduation, she worked in social services at the Samarkand while also serving as the Psychology Department Laboratory Coordinator. Lydia is currently pursuing a doctorate in Clinical Psychology on the geropsychology track at the University of Colorado. Her professional interests include working with family caregivers of those with dementia, and conducting research on sleep interventions in skilled nursing facilities.