UTEP Legal Psychology Ph.D. Program

Below we provide the Legal Psych Ph.D. Curriculum that our students engage in.
Sample courses and field placements are also provided based upon recent years.

The Ph.D. Program is designed to train all students in the fundamental areas of psychology. The department extends this training with three concentrations in (1) Health, (2) Legal, and (3) Social, Cognitive and Neurosciences. Students with a legal concentration have an opportunity to conduct research in areas such as detection of deception; facial recognition and eyewitness identification/memory; interviewing and interrogation; jury decision making; and child / adult suggestibility. Ph.D. candidates are required to complete 78 semester hours.

Course Requirements

1) Statistics and research methods courses (12 semester hours)

PSYC 5310 Applied Correlation and Regression Methods
PSYC 5311 Experimental Design and Analysis of Variance
PSYC 5334 Foundations of Research
Plus one additional research method course approved by graduate program director.

2) Breadth courses include three of the following (9 semester hours)

PSYC 5371 Animal Learning and Behavior
PSYC 5372 Behavioral Neuroscience
PSYC 5374 Cognitive Psychology
PSYC 5376 Developmental Psychology
PSYC 5330 Social Behavior

3) Research (24 semester hours)

PSYC 6310/6311 First Year Research (6 semester hours)
PSYC 5301 Research Applications (6 semester hours)
PSYC 5398/5399 Thesis Research (6 semester hours)
PSYC 6320/6321 Dissertation Research (6 semester hours)

4) Legal Concentration Courses (24 semester hours)

PSYC 5344 Survey of Legal Psychology
PSYC 5342 Special Topics in Psychology & Law (6 semester hours)
                    * Psychology of Investigative Interviewing
                    * Polygraph Procedures in Lie Detection
                    * Psychology & Law across the Life Span
                    * Actual Innocence & Wrongful Conviction;
PSYC 6305 Field Placement (6 semester hours)
                    * 388th District Court (El Paso, TX)
                    * El Paso Adult Probation Office
                    * El Paso County Public Defenders Office
                    * El Paso County Sheriff's Office & Region VIII Training Academy
                    * Federal Judicial Center (Washington, D.C.)
                    * Support Services Division of the State of Connecticut Courts
Additional hours of approved Legal courses (9 semester hours)

5) Nine additional semester hours of general electives

Transfer Students with Graduate Credit

Students accepted into the Ph.D. program with graduate credit from another university must satisfy the same requirements as those beginning their Ph.D. graduate training in Psychology at UTEP without previously earned graduate credits. The student may petition the Graduate Program Committee to accept a maximum of 24 hours of graduate credit completed at another institution. Students who have completed an empirical thesis prior to entering the UTEP Ph.D. program may petition the Graduate Program Committee for waiver of the thesis requirement.

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