The school year runs by the 12-month calendar, so students take their finals in December 'in the middle of the dark ages,' as clinical student Raymond Madsen puts it. Meanwhile, Karl Halvor Teigen, head of Troms s psychology department, says theirs is the most international of Norway s four psychology departments. Our department constitutes a sample of world psychology despite being in a small city surrounded by space,' says Teigen. Half of the faculty come from such countries as Britain, Italy, Poland, Holland, Finland, Canada and the United States, or they are Norwegians educated abroad. Student exchange programs are also popular.
Equality is a strong social norm in the university and in Norway in general.
Students, for example, join in decision-making and in electing university officers. And the department trains future psychologists to be 'jacks of all trades, rather than specialists,' says Teigen. Norway s population is sparse, so a psychologist must be able to handle every kind of problem single-handedly,' Teigen says. In future Monitor articles, we ll call on psychology departments in other parts of the world. Cover Page for This Issue APA Home Page .