By Frances Best
Whether it be training for marathons or researching the brain, Dr. Megan St. Peters has enjoyed challenging herself. When turning 40 years old next year, St. Peters hopes she would be able to do the Rim-to-Rim hike at the Grand Canyon.
“That’s 40 miles, so 40 miles for my 40th,” St. Peters said.
St. Peters explained this after just completing another challenge that glows in her academic career at Ferrum this year.
Being the Director of the Master’s Program in Psychology, St. Peters was responsible for designing the program that has been available to students since summer 2020. Her primary responsibilities included designing the program of study, hiring faculty members, assessing the program, teaching, advising the students, and some marketing and recruiting.
One of the first things St. Peters hopes to advertise to the public is that the master’s program is offering an accelerated program, which is part of her tactical design to appeal to students’ need for continuing education. This accelerated program is available to students who have already earned 15 undergraduate credits in psychology at Ferrum. Students admitted to this program have the opportunity to receive both their bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Ferrum in merely five years. Courses for this master’s program are also offered entirely online, which allows students with busy work schedules to make good progress without interfering with their other engagements.
“We really want to help people who have other jobs, other responsibilities, who want to get some real-life experience after their degree to also be able to take the program,” St. Peters said.
St. Peters also prides herself and the master’s program on the incorporation of a research component in the curriculum. According to the American Psychological Association’s guidelines for graduate programs, research design is strongly recommended. Many online graduate programs don’t require their students to complete a thesis project for their degree, however, which St. Peters found in her research of current online psychology graduate programs across the United States. Ferrum chose to emphasize the role of research in this graduate program to stand apart.
“We are one of the few online programs that require a thesis,” St. Peters said, “I’m excited to see how that plays out because we haven’t had any students begin that component in the program yet.”
To prepare students for their thesis project, the master’s program in psychology requires all students to take Ethics and two Research Methods and Statistics courses, which are foundational courses. Students are then allowed the flexibility to choose elective subjects based on their personal interests, such as developmental, multicultural, or abnormal psychology.
“There’s a lot of flexibility…. We really help the students tailor the program to their personal goals,” St. Peters said.
Adjuncts from all around the nation were hired to teach students in this master’s program. They came from various backgrounds and areas and thus allow students to experience teaching methods and styles that can be different from what we have at Ferrum. St. Peters also asked all adjuncts to help students maintain a healthy work-life relationship by strategically allocating their coursework through weekdays but to avoid weekends.
“It’s an ethical standard within our professional body to make sure that you’re taking care of yourself,” St. Peters said.
St. Peters also intentionally designed the program to fit the Ferrum lifestyle. Most classes are kept relatively small, with ten or fewer students in each group; this allows students to get to know their professors and get the personal help they need even in an online environment.
“I really like getting to know the students. I like having the smaller class sizes, it’s one of my favorite parts about it,” St. Peters said.
St. Peters is currently planning on expanding the marketing of the program. She hopes to travel to local high schools and community colleges to spread the word of the accelerated program, in the hopes that potential students will take an interest in being able to graduate with two degrees in five years.
St. Peters joined Ferrum College as an assistant professor of psychology in 2011. Before that, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan. After teaching undergraduate courses at Ferrum for nine years, St. Peters was appointed the Program Director of the Master’s Program in Psychology.
This program is in its second cohort and plans to start the third one in spring 2021. Applications for the accelerated program are also currently open and students can begin taking courses as early as spring 2021. To be eligible, students must have completed at least 15 credits in undergraduate psychology courses with a 3.0 GPA or higher and submit an essay describing how their previous coursework has prepared them for a graduate program in psychology and their intended goals based on successful completion of the program.
Any questions about the program can be directed to ferrumgoes@ferrum.edu or mstpeters@ferrum.edu.