Meet Caroline Sowards, Pfeiffer’s Assistant Professor of Psychology and Director of Internships & Career Planning! Sowards has been teaching higher ed for 16 years, and nearly 13 of them have been at Pfeiffer! Sowards teaches a wide variety of psychology and counseling courses, including Developmental Psychology, Research Methods, Social Psychology, and Program Design & Evaluation.

Sowards got her start in teaching as an adjunct during graduate school, where she worked at the Albemarle Correctional Facility through a local community college. She eventually found herself at Pfeiffer, where she now enjoys teaching students about psychology. She wants students to leave her classes understanding the importance of critical thinking and knowing that she hopes each one of them will be successful in their futures.

Sowards is currently working on her dissertation for her PhD in Psychology, an accomplishment that she excited about. Her research topic is studying the sense of purpose in life, particularly among emerging adults. She is very interested in measuring purpose and assessing differences in the dimensions of purpose among emerging adults who have had traditional liberal arts education and those who have not.