Université Laval’s École de Psychologie Will Be 50: A Long Road to Scientific Training

In 2011, the École de Psychologie (School of Psychology) of Laval University will celebrate its 50th anniversary. For the occasion, the reader is invited to learn more about this North American university, and its psychology programs, located in the very French environment of Québec City.

A Special Case in the Americas

No one will be surprised by the fact that there are hundreds of millions of people speaking Spanish, English, or even Portuguese in the Americas. But it is less known that more than 7 million people in Canada are French speaking (francophones as we say here), with more than 6 million of them living in the Canadian province of Québec. The largest city in this province is Montreal, which is mostly bilingual and includes two English speaking universities (Concordia and McGill). In the second largest city of the province, Québec City, there is only one university campus, Laval University. Laval offers education in French, hosts more than 44,000 students and 1,100 professors, and is the alma mater of, for instance, former Canadian Prime Ministers Louis Saint-Laurent (1948-1957), Brian Mulroney (1984-1993), and Jean Chrétien (1993-2004).

In1663, Monsignor François de Laval, the first bishop of New France, founded the Séminaire de Québec, the first educational institution of the colony, which later became Laval University. As such, it is the oldest higher education institution in Canada and the fourth in North America, after Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and Harvard University. Indeed, from a North American standpoint, Québec City is quite old, celebrating the 400th anniversary of its inception in 2008.

On December 8, 1852 (December 8 is a now holiday at Laval), a Royal Charter was granted by Queen Victoria to the Séminaire, which marked the creation of Laval University. Laval was then structured on the basis of four faculties: Theology, Law, Medicine, and Arts. Now, 400 academic programs in 17 faculties are offered at Laval. Most undergraduate students, as is the case in the entire Québec province, are admitted after two years of general education at the college level, which follows high school. In psychology, the bachelor’s degree is usually obtained in a three-year program.

École de Psychologie

Early in the 20th century, the first few courses in psychology at Laval were related to rationale psychology. They were first intended for students in theology, and then in philosophy, in the context of the scholastic philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, which was popular at Laval. This progress via philosophy is somewhat surprising considering that most psychology departments around the world were already taking distances from philosophy in the second half of the 19th century. In 1940s Canada, there were already psychology departments at Dalhousie (1863), University of Toronto (1892), McGill (1922), Acadia (1926), Western Ontario (1931), and Queens (1935), and the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) was founded in 1939. It was only in the 1930s that experimental psychology began being taught at Laval. It was eventually via the School of Pedagogy, founded in the 1940s that more psychology courses were developed and offered.¹

In 1961, the School of Psychology was founded following a reorganization within the School of Pedagogy and Orientation. This reorganization led to the creation of four departments: Pedagogy, Orientation, Psychology, and Physical Education. During that period, the psychology department was not on campus. It is only in 1974 that this department became the School of Psychology, when it became part of the Faculty of Social Sciences. Since 1978, the École has been located in one of two towers in the middle of the Laval campus (see photo), Pavillon Félix-Antoine Savard (the FAS building, named after Monsignor Savard, a French Canadian writer). This stable location came after some moves over the years off-campus and in an attempt to get the School closer to the Faculty of Social Sciences, which is based on the De Koninck building in the middle of the campus.

Psychologists in the Québec province need to be members of the Ordre des Psychologues du Québec (OPQ; Québec Psychologists Order). To become a member, the minimum diploma required used to be a master’s degree. Since 2003, new members are required to complete a doctoral degree and there is no more need to complete a master’s degree after the bachelor’s degree for being admitted at the doctoral level. This major change had an immediate impact on our graduate programs — the master’s programs in psychology at Laval were abolished and more doctoral students were admitted.

Nowadays, out of the 225 undergraduate students starting in the first year of the bachelor program, about 160 will complete it. Each year, roughly 40 students are admitted to one of our four doctoral programs, most of them having graduated from Laval. The most sought after program, which has a very limited number of places available, is the Research/Intervention program. This program, which received the approbation of the CPA and the American Psychological Association, offers a PhD and the possibility to practice clinical psychology, not only in the Québec province (as a member of the OPQ) but also elsewhere in Canada and North America, pending completed exams in other states. In our PsyD program, the production of a research paper (a mémoire doctoral, briefer than a PhD dissertation) is required. This degree opens the doors of the OPQ. We also offer a PhD program dedicated only to research. This program recognizes 12 credits for a research practicum outside the institution. Finally, the School also offers a doctoral degree with a specialization in Community Psychology.

Although the FAS building hosts many laboratories and graduate students, there are also large research centers hosting psychological research elsewhere in Québec City. One is the Centre de Recherche de l’Université Laval Robert-Giffard (CRULRG, a center in a psychiatric hospital). Its mission is to study the causes and treatments of brain disorders in children, adults and the elderly and, with the assistance of high technology, to understand the brain mechanisms of those disorders. Another is the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Rehabilitation and Social Integration (CIRRIS). The focus of this research center is the rehabilitation and social participation of persons living with motor, auditory, visual, neurological, or language impairment or deficit. The research of professors and students in psychology at Laval receives support from each of the three main Canadian research granting agencies, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, as well as from many Québec province research programs.

Celebrating the 50th Anniversary

The 50th anniversary of the School will be an opportunity to invite alumni back for opening and closing ceremonies. Alumni, the present students, and, most importantly, the public at large of the Québec City area will be invited to attend free talks that will be held monthly on Saturday afternoons in 2011. These conferences will be offered on a volunteer basis by professors or retired professors from the School of Psychology. The conferences will inform the public about specific topics, for instance sleep disorders, anxiety treatment, pathological gambling, and developmental issues, which are all research strengths at Laval (see the list of professors and their main field of specialization to the left). Other activities, like the launching of a book on the history of the School, the attribution of a honoris causa doctorate, a public information campaign on services by psychologists, and special participations to national meetings, are also on the schedule.