Regardless of how often our “#1 Dream School” prompts us to whine, one thing that NYU deserves props for is having extremely cool classes, like the one I’m taking now, “Child and Adolescent Psychopathology.”

The introductory course of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health minor, “Child and Adolescent Psychopathology” deals with mental disorders in children and adolescents, teaching students everything from disease etiology to epidemiology and diagnosis. What that means in human words is that students learn about the causes of mental disorders, factors that influence them, ways to identify and diagnose them and everything in between. Learning disorders, mental retardation, eating disorders… you name it and it’s probably covered in this class.

Besides the fact that the subject matter is really fascinating, there are lots of added bonuses. For one, the class is taught by Dr. Jess Shatkin (pictured), not just a professor but a renowned child psychiatrist, as well as the Director of Education and Training at the center. Rarely do undergraduate college students get the chance to study with professionals that are really important in their field, let alone one like Dr. Shatkin (or Jess, as he lets us call him even though no one has the guts to), who is a really approachable guy.

Definitely cooler than smart, famous doctors who go by Jess is that students are required to sit in on a psychiatric evaluation between a patient and a doctor, and then write up an evaluation of their own. According to Dr. Shatkin, most students agree that this is their favorite part of the class, and it’s easy to see why. “Being able to observe a child and family suffering from mental illness puts faces, emotions, real people and real struggles to the often dry discourse found in psychopathology text books,” he says.

Surprised that inexperienced undergraduates are given such a privilege, I ask Dr. Shatkin why he’s built it into his curriculum. He explains that the sit-in gives students a chance to really imagine what their future in the field could be. “They get to see the clinician in action and, in their minds, play with the idea of sitting in that seat, taking on that role.” Shatkin acknowledged that undergrads rarely have much exposure to clinical settings but, “since we have all the resources of the NYU Child Study Center at our fingertips, we feel it’s important, and almost our duty, to share this opportunity with them,” he said.

For students as fascinated with psychopathology as I am, the fun’s not over when the class ends. The Child and Adolescent Mental Health minor offers plenty of other awesome classes, including new ones which are being added every semester. CAMS, as the program is called, began in the fall of 2006, partially as a response to the rash of NYU suicides of 2003-2004 and the attention they brought to juvenile mental health. While Dr. Shatkin says that “CAMS really is a separate issue,” he admits that the program was started during that time “because mental health was pushed to the forefront of the school’s agenda…it made terrific sense to develop an academic program of study so that students could learn about how these sorts of things, amongst many others, happen in the first place.”

The semester hasn’t even reached the halfway point… but I’ve already decided to add this as a minor.