The mission of the Department of Educational Psychology is to empower Educational Psychology practitioners with critical skills in the evaluation, analysis and application of current research, theory and practice in Psychology and Education.
As part of its mission, the Department has mounted a Diploma course in Child Neuropsychology, Master of Educational Psychology, Master of Guidance and Counselling and a PhD course in Educational Psychology. The courses are very marketable as graduates find positions in educational practice, institutional management and academia. The department is in cognizance of the need for high standards in its content and as such a comprehensive curriculum review of its courses was done on the last week of May 2019. Additionally, the department was able to mainstream the competency based curriculum into its programmes through a series of consultative meeting that were neld in the second week of November 2019. This is expected to deepen the professionalism of graduates and make them compliant with changes that are taking place in the Basic Education sector.
The current Chair of the Department is Dr David Kariuki, having taken over from Dr Peter Mwaura who had completed his term. The Department has 23 members of teaching staff who in addition to teaching provide services in the various departmental committees. One of the most vibrant is the Postgraduate Committee which oversees the processing of masters and doctoral student research and project activities. Part of the preparations includes departmental proposal presentations and postgraduate capacity-development seminars. On 22 nd February 2019, the committee mounted a successful seminar that was attended by over 70 postgraduate students where they were taken through writing chapter three and chapter four of a thesis. The committee has done a sterling job in facilitating the student progression as evidenced during the previous (46 th ) graduation where four (4) PhD and two (2) Masters graduants ‘wore gowns’ at that occasion.
The Department has a vibrant Welfare Committee that comprises both teaching and non-teaching staff. This committee has facilitated occasions where members condole, celebrate, bond, bid farewell and share together while navigating life’s milestones. One of the most recent welfare occasion was the induction into grand-motherhood of a member of teaching staff where a lot of dancing, feasting and prayers were done. The other was a joint graduation party held on 23 rd August 2019 that was hosted by new Drs Susan Ngunu and Lucy Mawang’ exclusively for all members of the Department as a way of appreciating their support. In October 2019 a Nissan full of staff stormed Eldoret to support a colleague in his rurachio - traditional dowry negotiations.
Members of the Department have been active in research, exchanges and linkages. A case in point is a fruitful partnership with Kuntztown University in the United States that has mainly facilitated the acquisition of books and other publications for the Departmental Resource Centre. The Department is actively negotiating new partnerships with other stakeholders in other foreign universities and non-governmental institutions providing psychological services. Some members of the staff have been involved in academic exchanges outside the country where they have also been able to help network the Department with supportive partners.
The Department has also initiated a bi-weekly seminar dubbed “brown-bag” for the presentation of academic papers by members of staff as well as invited guests. The first brown-bag was held on Friday 17 th May 2019 and featured a quest speaker Mr Timothy Cho. The Department also initiated a successful outreach activity where in collaboration with an NGO World Hope, was able to conduct a 12 day induction workshop (from 12 th – 24 th August 2019) for untrained teachers from primary schools in Nairobi’s Korogocho slum. The Department’s major contribution to the university is teaching core undergraduate units (Introduction to Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Psychology of Learning and Educational Statistics and Evaluation) in the Bachelor of Education degree course. The Departments looks forward to admitting passionate and talented graduates to its postgraduate programmes.