Psychology Major

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About the Major

Psychology majors use scientific methods to explore the complexities of human thought, feeling and behavior. They learn to gather information systematically; think critically, analytically and creatively; and communicate effectively. They also develop essential skills in research, evaluation and counseling that allow them to have an impact on human affairs — from the level of individual and family functioning to policies governing broader social institutions.

Jobs in Psychology

• Counselor/mental health professional
• Social worker
• Researcher
• Educator
• Human resource officer

Past Elon Psychology Internships

• National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)
• American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy
• Hopeline
• Alamance County District Attorney's Office
• UCLA Early Childhood Partial Hospitalization Program

Related Majors

• Biology
• Business Administration
• Communications
• Elementary Education
• Human Service Studies
• Public Health Studies
• Sociology

Lumen Scholar goes beyond the research to help Black women prioritize self-care

At a young age, Eukela Little devoured books about the human body and became particularly fixated on the brain — but it was the brain’s psychology rather than its physiology that made her most curious and eager to learn more.

Even at that young age, she saw the need for mental health services in her hometown of Wadesboro, North Carolina, and was drawn to do something.

“I clung to that and started taking more classes about it,” she said.

Little’s first foray into research was in high school at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham, where she worked with a mentor in cognitive psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A first-generation college student, she was accepted into Elon’s Odyssey Program and knew she wanted to continue studying Black women’s mental health.

But she didn’t just want to study it. She wanted to make a difference.

And that she did with her Lumen Scholar research. Little, a 2022 Elon graduate who majored in psychology, centered her research on the “strong Black woman” schema and whether it leads Black women to feel the need to meet unrealistic standards at the expense of their health.

While she performed all the typical steps of research under the guidance of her mentor, psychology associate professor Buffie Longmire-Avital, Little did more than explore, write and present. She helped. She created an eight-week intervention aimed at encouraging and reframing self-care, self-compassion and self-contemplative practices.

There’s one thing [Buffie Longmire-Avital] told me during our first meeting together during my first year at Elon, and that was, ‘You have a sparkle about you — don’t let anyone take it,’ and that has stuck with me six years later,” Little said. “I am indescribably fortunate to have [such a] mentor; she is one of the core reasons I am so grateful for my time at Elon.

Her review of existing literature on the topic showed connections between the strong Black woman schema and depression, anxiety, self-silencing and other mental health issues, but she found little about how to address those problems.

“We don’t want to take away what the strong Black woman is to Black women because it is something we need to navigate this world,” Little said in 2021 in the midst of her research. “But how can you be a strong Black woman and also care for yourself?”

Little interviewed numerous experts in the field, both at Elon and elsewhere, as well as former students of Longmire-Avital. She filmed those interactions and broke them into digestible videos with prompts and activities for the nearly 30 participants.

Each week of the intervention, which took place in 2022 in the fall semester of her senior year, Little presented the participants with a different concept — understanding self-care, mindful mediation and other topics — to focus on and turn intention into action.

“There was this moment where I was trying to push Eukela into this typical research box, and she was like, ‘That’s not what I wanted to do. I want to create workshops and immediately help people. I’m not about just writing the research up.’ She wanted to disseminate this information,” Longmire-Avital said. “It wasn’t about generating research for her consumption or a select few.”

Longmire-Avital mentored Little throughout her four years at Elon. As a first-year student, Little presented at the Black Solidarity Conference and then sought out professors on campus to help her continue researching important topics in the Black community. Longmire-Avital offered to be her mentor and then offered Little a position as her research student. They began working together officially during Little’s sophomore year, during which they prepared for the $20,000 Lumen Prize application.

As part of her research project, “Strong, Black and Selfish: Reframing the Strong Black Woman Persona to include Self-Care through a Mobile Health Intervention,” Little created the Instagram page, Project S.E.L.F. (Self-empowering and Loving Formation), a platform that merged her interests in Black women studies and self-care. It was a space to share information, while also highlighting her journey in prioritizing well-being.

In the conversations Little had with the participants and the experts on the topic, a recurring theme of community was continuously exhibited. Establishing a sense of self is paramount, she learned, but equally important is creating a base of supportive reinforcement around yourself.

“Being able to be in a space, confide in someone and feel safe shows the importance of Black sisterhood that a lot of women explained,” Little said in 2022. “That has been really eye-opening.”

The topic of reframing the strong Black woman schema and prioritizing self-care was one that didn’t take a lot of convincing for the participants, as they had a genuine desire for the information that Little’s research helped provide.

Little ended up presenting her findings at a number of conferences during her time at Elon, including the Minority Health Conference at UNC Chapel Hill, the Spring Undergraduate Research Forum at Elon and the American Psychological Association conference in Minneapolis. But she is most proud that her research had a direct impact on the people who participated in it.

“My biggest gripe when it comes to academia is that we’ll do research on the community and then write this big elaborate paper and present it to other people in academia,” Little said. “Well, the people that you’ve spent six months studying don’t know about all of these conferences.”

Looking back in 2024 on her time at Elon as she was preparing to enter a master’s program in psychology that fall, Little said getting the opportunity to conduct funded research so early in her academic career and have a supportive mentor throughout it “was and still is indescribable,” she said. “Accomplishing such a feat has opened so many doors for me as an academic.”

In graduate school and beyond, Little hopes to continue community-centric research and working with the Black community on topics of mental and physical health. Wherever she goes, she’ll take with her the strong base Elon and her mentor provided her.

Little said she learned countless lessons from Longmire-Avital — from learning how to design a project to understanding how to run correlations tests — but one was particularly invaluable.

“There’s one thing she told me during our first meeting together during my first year at Elon, and that was, ‘You have a sparkle about you — don’t let anyone take it,’ and that has stuck with me six years later,” Little said. “I am indescribably fortunate to have [such a] mentor; she is one of the core reasons I am so grateful for my time at Elon.”

Curriculum & Degree Requirements

• Psychology A.B. (opens a new window)