On Wednesday, Feb. 21, the psychology club met for the first time this semester, covering a wide range of topics including event planning, collaboration with other clubs and exploring topics to discuss in future meetings.

Club President Sarah Wallace ushered the meeting from the front of the class, alongside an informative slideshow.

“I hope to involve more students who aren’t psychology majors to learn about the field and become interested in it,” Wallace said. “Psychology is such a broad subject– it’s an endless possibility of knowledge.” 

Among club members from previous years sat several new attendees, with a vast array of majors and interests– some majoring in psychology and many others with a personal interest in the field.

Club president Wallace showed optimism about securing several guest speakers throughout the Spring semester, such as psychology professor Dr. Ayoub, who teaches at City College.

For a significant portion of the meeting, Wallace gave the floor to students attending to provide any and all suggestions for topics they may want to delve into in their next meetings.

A plethora of club members showed their interest in learning more about the connection between mind and body, and how health habits like exercising and eating may directly affect your cognition.

Stemming from this topic, Jane Rauchway, the club’s Psi Beta delegate, proposed a presentation on “Monism,” or the connection between the conscious mind, physical brain and the body all as one.

Wallace met this idea with several suggestions, including collaborations with the campus Mindfulness club and the possibility of asking City College physical education teachers to give a presentation to the club.

The club brainstormed months’ worth of ideas, shedding light on more concepts such as self-actualization, non-verbal communication, media consumption, as well as big names in psychology like Carl Jung.

By the end of this discussion, many other clubs had been suggested for future collaborations and presentations. The club showed interest in meeting with the American Sign Language Club, biology club, computer science club, and the philosophy club.

Overall, the group members are looking forward to engaging in different discussions with these clubs to broaden everyone’s thinking and give a platform to different schools of thought.

The psychology club also aims to go on at least two field trips this semester, one to UCSB’s brain imaging center for cognitive research and another to Sacramento for the Psi Beta honors society conference.

The club is also the only group on campus that is a part of Psi Beta, which is the honor’s society of psychology for community colleges around the country. 

Psi Beta offers scholarships, awards and connections to students who are interested in majoring or minoring in psychology and qualify with a GPA of  3.25 or higher. 

“[Psychology] applies to our daily lives,” Wallace began, giving reference to what could be expected in the club’s future, “in the past, we’ve done love languages, personality tests, childhood development and parenting styles.”

This broad approach is a way for the club to include people from diverse backgrounds and interests and to provoke interest in the field of psychology.

The club’s next meeting will be held on Wednesday, Feb. 28, in the West Campus Center, room 206, from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.