Scott Jensen
Scott A. Jensen is a professor of psychology at Pacific and most recently served as associate dean of College of the Pacific beginning in 2020. He joined Pacific in 2006 as an assistant professor of psychology and served as chair of the Department of Psychology from 2012-2020.
Prior to joining Pacific, he taught at Jackson State University, University of Mississippi Medical Center and was assistant director of the psychological services center at Colorado State University.
His research focuses on parenting and child behavior problems, and especially interventions to help improve child behavior. He is a licensed psychologist and has over 15 years of experience providing evaluations and interventions in juvenile justice and school settings.
Scott and his wife Holly have 10 children – eight girls and two boys. As a family they enjoy reading together, music, camping, playing games, swimming and most other outdoor activities.
PhD, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, 2004
MS, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, 2003
BS, Brigham Young University, 1998
Teaching is about making connections-making clear associations between the current material to be learned and what the student already knows, as well as with the students' short-term and long-term goals.
Perhaps the most important connection is that made between the professor and students. The relationship established between the teacher and students sets the stage for learning and is part of what I enjoy most about teaching I try to relate to my students by learning their names (even in the large lecture classes), injecting humor into the lectures/discussions, sharing from applied experiences, and generally learning about their experience and interests.
I hope that through this process, my enthusiasm for the course content will transfer to the students, making it easier for them to learn, retain, and use the information from my courses.
I also believe that the more a student interacts with the course material, the better they will learn the material and the longer they will retain it. I try to help students see how the information from class fits into their lives and impacts their world, and also elicit such comments from the students. Many of my course assignments are targeted at helping students to better interact with the course content and apply it to their lives.
My primary research interest is in parenting and parenting interventions. Our research team provides a community based parent and child intervention course taught by undergraduate and graduate students. We continue to look for more effective and efficient ways to improve parents skills and child behavior. Recent research has focused on comparing multiple treatment methods for training parent skills (including generalization), exploring details of effective skills (e.g. length of time out, correct vs. incorrect modeling of skills, and specific vs. generic praise), and best practices in assessment of parenting skills. There are always great opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students to be involved in these trainings and research. Please contact me at any time about becoming involved in our research team.
