Psych Lab in a Communication department?

[Gvh]

Hi all,

 

This is sort of an odd question; but has anyone had any experience in applying/wanting to apply to a lab conducting psychology work/psychological experiments that happens to be in the Communication department of the school of interest? The PI is a psychologist by training. 

 

There's a lab I am thinking of applying to in this situation, but I'm not sure I want (or would be eligible for) a PhD in Communication; that said, many of the graduate students in the lab seem to have strong psych backgrounds.

 

The bottom line is: would I be able to apply to the psych department but work with a PI in the comm dept?

 

I tried emailing the school's general "grad info" email address, but I never got a reply. I don't want to contact the PI in fear of looking clueless.  

 

Any thoughts? :/

Edited May 15, 2014 by Gvh

[Lisa44201]

Cross-departmental research is not unheard of; however, I think your PI would need to be in the Psych department. Is there someone in Psych who works frequently with the person in Communication? The other side of it is, a Master's in Communication does not prevent you from going on for a PhD in Psych later on (the Psych department here just did this with one of the incoming first-year students, FWIW).

[clinicalpsychphd20]

Does the PI have an affiliation in Psychology? Sometimes they would then be able to mentor students.. but it's rare. You would probably need to find someone in the Psychology department, and you could the potentially collaborate with the Communications PI

[Gvh]

@Lisa - I think you are probably right, I would have to apply to the psych dept and potentially work with the PI in communication. Though, did the incoming student apply to the Comm dept first as an MA student and then re-apply to the psych dept for a PhD? How would it work otherwise?

 

@ClinicalPsych - I'm not sure if he is affiliated with the psych dept or not. All I know is that his undergraduate and graduate work is all in psych, and the methods he uses are some of the methods I want to use.

[lewin]

Another thing you might want to consider is which journals he publishes in. You want to graduate with a CV full of psychology journal articles, not journals that might be good within communication but where nobody in psychology knows anything about them. So much of the job market is heuristics ("Oh, you got a Psych Science [or JEP], that's great!").

[Gvh]

That's a good point, Lewin. He does publish in psych journals; not as many as your typical psych PI, but due to the relevance of his work to the field of psychology, he almost has to publish in psych journals. 

 

Interestingly, his close collaborator (who he has published a book with and worked with at other institutions) is in a psych department. 

 

Bleh. :/

[Lisa44201]

@Lisa - I think you are probably right, I would have to apply to the psych dept and potentially work with the PI in communication. Though, did the incoming student apply to the Comm dept first as an MA student and then re-apply to the psych dept for a PhD? How would it work otherwise?

 

@ClinicalPsych - I'm not sure if he is affiliated with the psych dept or not. All I know is that his undergraduate and graduate work is all in psych, and the methods he uses are some of the methods I want to use.

The person actually has a Master's in Communications, and applied to the PhD program in Psychology. 

[juilletmercredi]

This also probably depends largely on the rules of the school and the department.  Formally, for a dissertation committee for example, your committee chair probably has to be a professor within your home department.  But informally, many students have been able to work this out depending on the university.  My own department has several students primarily or jointly working in a lab outside the department but nominally overseen/advised by a departmental professor.  So I'd ask some graduate students at the school whether this is something that happens, and then ask the PI whether it's feasible.

[QASP]

Usually you need a main advisor who is in the department you are going into, but I know a lot of people who work more heavily outside of their department with someone else than they do with their main advisor. It is somewhat dependent on the university and departmental culture whether this is acceptable.

 

I'm very interested in the intersection of Communications and Psych. If you would be willing to PM me this person's name so I could read some of their work, I'd be grateful for it.

[Gvh]

Thanks for your thoughts everyone. I think you're right in that the main advisor must be in the dept you're getting your degree in. I suppose I should get in touch with some of the grad students to get a feel for the culture at this particular school/department.

Edited May 19, 2014 by Gvh