Tagore Arts College has been offering diverse academic courses in traditional and job-oriented Disciplines. However Psychology could not find any room in the higher education arena of Union Territory of Pondicherry till the year 1995. The glorious journey of this department has begun in the same year. The public utility of this discipline to society is magnifying and being an altruistic profession, is making an important landmark in the academic map of the Puducherry.

The demand and scope of Psychology is on a continual rise and keep on attracting a good number of students every year. The Department of Psychology, unique of its kind in the Union Territory of Pondicherry, has been offering B.A. Degree at the under-graduate level. The discipline of Psychology has got a novel outlook and exclusive status in this college when Balachandran Madhavapanicker, a regular hand recruited through UPSC, joined in service in 2003. Consequently, this Department started working as an independent discipline; and soon became distinctive in the campus. Being the Chairman of Board of Studies of Psychology, Pondicherry University, he could restructure the course into B.Sc. Pattern in 2007. The department was supplemented with a good collection of new laboratory equipments, a well equipped laboratory and a library to deliver effectively the content of the subject to the student society. At present, department has a collection of more than 250 books. The Department laboratory utilises more than 150 psychological instruments and tests for assessing psychological traits and imparting necessary services to the needful. To list some; Wechsler Adult Performance Scale, Bhatia's Battery of Intelligence Tests, Myers Brigg's Type Indicator, Thematic Apperception Test, Differential Aptitude Test (DAT), Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices, Rorschach Ink Blot Test, Eysenk Personality Questionnaire, and a good collection of tests used for educational, vocational and clinical purposes. The department is planning to provide assessment services of cognitive and non-cognitive factors to the public.

PSYCHOLOGY LABORATORY

The Department has a laboratry of nearly 50 instruments and test, in order to take care of the needs of the students of all three year of the course. Though small in number these labortory tools are suited to modify the preceptual understanding of the concepts and theories in psychology, as per the syllabus. Details of the equipments in the psychology laboratory are given below..

The new Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) course pattern provides updated course content that attract and encourage students with aptitude, interests, and skills to join for graduate programmes and thus to pace the availability of semi- trained competent psychologists within the reach of public in Pondicherry. It tries to incorporate conventional, application-oriented and advanced areas into the syllabus by integrating and sequencing the courses, concepts and topics in a systematic fashion. Contents within the courses are presented in such a way as to arouse and sustain the students' interest and curiosity throughout the course and to optimize their inspiration to join for post-graduate studies. In addition to the conventional fields of psychology, ample space has been created to include all developing branches of Psychology. The new curriculum will update the conceptual baseline of students and to use new approaches and techniques to enable them to utilise the scientific outlook for tackling psychological problems. We look forward to that if the students shoulder the responsibility of developing an attitude of seriousness, self-supporting curiosity, and habits of methodological work and observation; and the teachers shoulder the responsibility of sincerity and commitment we could achieve the best for the personal and professional development of both the groups.

Keeping in view the ever-increasing need for counselling, we plan to establish MAANAS, a Center for Psychological Testing and Counselling in this College under the control of the faculty of the Department of Psychology. Personal Counselling, Aptitude testing and career counselling could be carried on at MAANAS. The key areas in which MAANAS proposed to functions are:

Aptitude Testing: Every individual is gifted with certain innate potentials, which, if nourished, can help the person actualize his/her self and thus achieve professional success and personal satisfaction. We, at MAANAS, use certain standardized aptitude test batteries to test the student in different areas to know where his/her potential lies. These tests give us valuable information about what field of study could be chosen so that the student enjoys the learning process. It is a testing programme to identify and guide the child's innate potential to choose a course, a way to identify the gifts that you have!

Career Guidance: Most people are not aware of the diverse fields that are available in terms of graduate and post graduate or diploma courses, as well as in terms of job or career opportunities. Especially important is the need to know oneself as a person and then to find out what kind of job suits one best. We couple aptitude tests with personality tests and prepare a profile of the person considering both. After a week of aptitude testing, we call the parents and students together for career guidance sessions, where we suggest educational and vocational options, depending upon the aptitude test results.

Personal Counselling: We will organise counsellors at the centre who can give personalized counselling sessions for a variety of problems, such as anxiety, depression, interpersonal difficulties etc.

DSC - 2A PSYC 112 Biological Bases of Behaviour

AECC - 1 PADM 113 Public Administration

DSC - 2B PSYC 122 Social Psychology

AECC - 2 ENVS 123 Environmental Studies

DSC - 2C PSYC 232 Experiment Psychology

SEC - 1 PSYC 233 Personality Development

DSC - 2D PSYC 242 Psychological Assessment

SEC - 2 PSYC 243 Life Skills

PSYC 352 Cognitive Psychology

PSYC 353 Psychopathology

PSYC 354 Health Psychology

PSYC 355 Counseling Psychology

PSYC 356 Organizational Psychology

GE-1-PSYC 357 Psychology for Effective Living

PSYC 362 Statistics for Psychology

PSYC 363 Counselling Skills and Techniques

PSYC 364 Consumer Psychology

PSYC 365 School Psychology

PSYC 366 Behaviour Modification

GE - 2 PSYC 367 Positive Psychology