Students

Attending Bishop’s was the single best decision I ever made. The experience and knowledge I gained from this small-town campus has proven to be the foundation on which I have built my professional career, well beyond what a larger university could have offered an undergraduate. Few psychology programs can boast having their students travel to international conferences, receive research grants, work on a thesis, participate in a practicum and publish original research.

Life after the degree: Two years into the “Real World”

Two years after graduation I’m working as a Research Specialist for an education non-profit and live in Honolulu, Hawai’i. My position affords me the opportunity to travel throughout the Pacific region (an area of 5 million square miles) to places I had never heard of before: Federated States of Micronesia (Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei, Kosrae), Marshall Islands, Guam, Palau, Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa. My job varies from delivering workshops on grant writing and health information outreach to conducting literature searches and writing research reports all while working with a rich diversity of people and cultures. I certainly never thought I would be sitting down for a “business meeting” in a thatched hut sipping out of a coconut. When I’m not on the clock I have swam with jellyfish, hiked through jungles to waterfalls and up extinct volcanoes.
...Read more.

I started at Bishop’s in the Biology programme and in my first semester I was doing research for an English paper about IQ tests. One of my classmates suggested reading about IQ tests in the Intro Psych text, so I borrowed the book from a friend and was immediately hooked on psychology. I promptly added a Neuroscience concentration and completed my honours BSc. in 2008. My psychology profs were extraordinarily helpful throughout my four years at BU, assisting me with fitting courses from two programmes into my schedule, delivering top-quality lectures, interminably editing my papers prior to submission, giving helpful feedback on exams and assignments, and being available for office hours, sometimes even over school holidays! They are also simply great people from a non-academic standpoint – an added bonus.

At BU, I was grateful for the opportunity to present a poster outlining my honours work at the annual Bishop’s Research Week and at the Société Québécoise pour la Recherche en Psychologie (SQRP) conference in Trois-Rivières. I was also fortunate to be vice-president of our small Neuroscience club its first year in existence and we enjoyed a year-end wine and cheese which had as many professors as students in attendance!

The aid I received from my supervisors on my honours project could not have been rivalled by a larger university, and despite our school being small, I had 100 volunteers and community members participate in my task. Thanks in part to these people and, I’m convinced, my professors’ reference letters, I was accepted directly into a PhD program at Otago and received scholarships fund my work. Currently, I am expanding my honours project to use brain imaging (EEG and perhaps fMRI) to learn about communication between brain regions during bimanual tasks (movements performed with both hands together) and transfer tasks (movements learned by one hand leading to improved performance on the task with the other hand). I will be writing reviews on these topics and testing left-handers, right-handers, and patients with varied pathologies, such as cerebellar lesion, agenesis of the corpus callosum, and split-brain. I am thankful for my experiences at BU that have facilitated getting me where I am now. I will always look back on my undergraduate years with fond memories.

I have been accepted to a health internship program in Nepal through an organization called Volunteer Society Nepal. I am working in and around the Kathmandu Valley at various health posts, clinics and hospitals in need of medical aid. The program entails anything from learning how to give immunizations and execute health promotion strategies to aiding in minor surgery. It is an amazing opportunity, made possible only by the fact that I have this Health Psychology degree of mine! No matter where I am in the world, I will be thinking of Bishop’s!

"When I first came to Bishop's, I was a French speaking 19 year old girl who barely spoke English. Even if I was afraid, I knew that if I wanted to become a clinician, I had to be able to express myself in both languages. Today, almost five years later, I can say that I made the best choice in my life. During my years of study in the Psychology department, I met great teachers who were always ready to help me push my limits to achieve success. I am proud to say that these remarkable people have helped me to become a person with a critical appreciation of the psychological domain and with a broader range of knowledge and an interesting experience in the clinical field. In addition, during my second year, I even had the chance to take part in an exchange at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. It has been for me, an extraordinary experience that I will always remember. At Bishop's, I also made exceptional friends who are now working or studying in very interesting areas. Presently, I am one year from completing a Master Degree. I look forward to work as a clinician in a hospital for children. All this has been possible due to the great support I received during my three years of study at Bishop's. Based on my personal experience, I would recommend Bishop's University to every person who wishes to live a great academic and personal experience in a "family" environment. All the best!"

Photo:
Catherine Sansfaçon at graduation.