Department of Psychology Fund for Excellence

The Department of Psychology Fund for Excellence is a vital means of providing ongoing support to make the greatest immediate impact on the department. Contributions like yours allow us to continue working on and spearhead numerous exciting endeavors that will keep our department thriving. With the financial challenges faced by SUNY — and now the reduction in funding for scientific research — students are less likely to receive grant money to support their research. As such, we count on outside assistance to help bring their research endeavors to fruition. With your support, they are better able to focus on their scholarship and optimize their ability to excel during graduate school and enter the careers of their choice.

The fund supports much-needed undergraduate scholarships, graduate research stipends, startup money for new initiatives, a visiting expert colloquium series, travel funds for students to present their research findings at conferences and ongoing research. Annual giving allows our department to respond quickly to new opportunities and urgent needs not covered by other funds, such as tuition.

Our faculty includes award-winning leaders in clinical science, cognitive science, integrative neuroscience and social and health psychology who study affective, cognitive and social neuroscience; biological and psychosocial aspects of stress, development and aging; interpersonal and intergroup relations; psychosocial interventions; quantitative methods; and social inequality. Faculty and alumni are highly visible as presidents of major science societies and editors-in-chief of high-impact journals and are often cited in research discoveries. We recruit top graduate students and successfully place them in academic positions around the world as the next generation of leaders.

As a field that bridges the biological and social sciences, psychology contributes to interdisciplinary research excellence at the university and is a hub for training undergraduate students for careers in business, education, law, marketing, psychology and social work. As a result, the psychology major at Stony Brook is extraordinarily popular, with over 2,000 undergraduate majors and counting. To keep recruiting and supporting the best minds and future leaders, we need your support. Thank you for your generosity!