ACADEMIC PROGRAM REVIEW ACTION PLAN

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY

December 22, 2006

Approved at psychology faculty meeting December 15. 2006

Revised per Executive Committee recommendations, May 22, 2007

Approved at psychology faculty meeting June 1, 2007

Revised in consultation with the Dean’s Office, June 11, 2007

Program Review Committee

Roger Bakeman (Chair)

Lindsey Cohen

Sarah Cook

Kim Huhman

David Washburn

A. Brief Discussion of Relevant Findings...... 2

B. Summary of What the Department has Accomplished (and How It Has Changed)

since the Review Process...... 3

C. Point-by-Point Action Plan...... 5

D. Timeline and Budget...... 12

Appendix A. Self-study, External Review, and APRC Recommendation Comparison….13

Appendix B. Vision Statement for the Department of Psychology...... 19

Appendix C. Faculty Counts for Recruitment ...... 20

A. Brief discussion of relevant findings

As is summarized in Appendix A, there were key commonalities between the Academic Program Review Committee (APRC) report and the External Review Committee (ERC) report, as well as some interesting differences. These recommendations in turn map closely but not perfectly onto the goals and objectives agreed upon by the faculty of the psychology department and articulated in the Academic Program Review document. Broadly, the three documents reflect agreement on the following basic themes:

Vision-directed recruitment

The APRC recommended that the department develop a staffing plan that is consistent with its research vision and its projections of teaching needs over the next decade. The need for additional tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty members, especially minorities, was also emphasized by the ERC. The size and composition of the psychology faculty is also directly related to several other recommendations made in the APRC and ERC reports. For example, both reviews indicated that the department should address the lack of coherence, breadth, and identity in the Social/Cognitive Program by addressing the need for “additional and more diverse strength” (ERC report). Recommendations related to undergraduate instruction and research productivity are also related to faculty recruitment.

Departmental environment

A second group of recommendations pertained to the work environment for faculty, staff, and students. Although both reports concurred with the self-study by noting that morale is generally high, challenges to well-being and risks of burn-out threaten the department’s capacity to attract and retain outstanding faculty, students, and staff. Both the APRC and the ERC commented on the need to address faculty compensation, which is both uncompetitive in comparison to psychology departments at our peer institutions and compressed with respect to pay by rank and experience. Stipends for graduate students were also cited as low and insufficiently stable in both reports, and recommendations were made to address both the level and the stability of graduate-student funding in order to attract and retain high-quality students, which in turn would reduce faculty stress and improve productivity. The ERC report further noted the risk of faculty burnout from the simultaneous and heavy demands of teaching, service, and professional development. These reviewers emphasized the need to provide relief and rewards to faculty who are productive. In addition, both reviews recommended changes in the departmental support staff, noting new positions that should be filled and existing responsibilities that should be performed by staff so as to free the faculty to work toward the department’s vision.

Instructional excellence

The third group of recommendations from the APRC and the ERC related to the quality of the department’s undergraduate and graduate instruction. The APRC indicated that the department should reconfigure course prerequisites, offerings, enrollments, and class sizes to manage undergraduate instruction. The external reviewers also recommended a thorough review of the undergraduate curriculum, with the goal of streamlining of course offerings and managing the number of majors without unfairly limiting access. Review, integration, and streamlining were also recommended for the graduate curriculum. The two reports both recommended strengthening the graduate program in the areas of professional development, teaching proficiency, neuroscience, social and cognitive psychology, and (unique to the ERC report) ethics.

B. Summary of what the department has accomplished (and how it has changed)

since the review process

1. Vision: We were challenged by the external reviewers and the APRC to sharpen our vision for the department. The vision statement (Appendix B) describes where we want to be as a department in the future, and reflects the values, input, and endorsement of the psychology faculty. It rejects the option of promoting one aspect of development to the exclusion of others, but rather sets forth the ambitious goal of building our reputation and resources for scholarship while simultaneously enhancing undergraduate and graduate instruction, and also while providing service to the community and to the discipline. It recognizes trends (e.g., toward neuroscience, translational research, and interdisciplinary collaboration) within the discipline and proposes that we adapt to, but not be driven by, these trends. It endorses growth that is guided by current interdisciplinary areas of focus while cultivating new areas of strength that could be emphasized in future initiatives.

2. Student health insurance: Established as a goal by the faculty in the APR document and endorsed at every level of review, reasonably priced health insurance became available to graduate students beginning with the Fall, 2006 semester. The College provides a stipend to reduce the cost of this coverage to students, and the department will consider whether it is possible to add to this stipend.

3. Faculty size and composition: Since the self-study, the psychology department has added four tenure-track and two non-tenure-track faculty members. One additional faculty member with a joint appointment in gerontology and psychology was hired. Each of these hires builds upon areas of strength in the department and university (Partnership for Urban Health, Brains & Behavior). However, these accomplishments were offset by the loss of three tenure-track faculty members and the retirements of two other tenured faculty members.

4. Social/Cognitive (SCG) program coherence and breadth: The external reviewers and the APRC recommended that SCG program faculty project how their respective disciplines would change in the future and re-envision the current program in view of those changes. Accordingly, program faculty has generated a beginning plan for addressing the coherence and breadth of the program, embracing the interdisciplinary nature of the current group, and building strength in social and cognitive psychology as core sub-disciplines within the department. The department will continue to discuss the viability and structure of the Social/Cognitive Program and will revisit this issue in FY08. The recent recruitment has partially addressed concerns about the under-representation of cognitive psychology in the current SCG program.

5. Diversity: Our efforts to increase the diversity of our search pools appear to be paying off, as several of the recent searches show improved diversity both with respect to the demographic characteristics of the applicants and also the topics and participant populations studied by these applicants. Two of the new faculty members are persons of color.

6. Staffing: Acknowledged as a need at every level of our academic program review, a Grants and Contracts Officer II has been hired for the department. Beyond this position, a significant turn-over of core staff, together with reassignment of several continuing staff members, has changed the departmental staff culture and clarified the duties of each employee. Efforts are continuing to promote staff efficiency, development, cooperation, and morale.

7. LRC re-integration: David Washburn was appointed chair of the Department of Psychology following the term of Dr. Mary Morris. Dr. Washburn currently retains his role as Director of the LanguageResearchCenter. The animal care program of the LRC has been moved under the direction of the university veterinarian to be consistent with the rest of the campus animal care program. One of the new faculty members hired into the department is a Brains and Behavior researcher who studies social cognition in nonhuman primates. Efforts to re-integrate the LRC into the psychology department are ongoing.

8. Space: The University broke ground on the SciencePark, which includes the Science Research Laboratory building that will provide lab, office, and support space for behavioral neuroscientists in the psychology department. The purchase by the University of the SunTrustBuilding has set into motion a series of events that we anticipate will eventually result in additional space for the department (including classroom space originally programmed for the Science Teaching Laboratory, as well as space for new faculty offices and laboratories) in the Urban Life building.

9. Neuroscience degree: The External Review Committee endorsed development of a neuroscience degree at GSU. Initial discussions are underway to determine how such a degree could be offered within current departmental structures of psychology, biology, and other relevant departments. The departmental faculty renewed its commitment to ensuring that behavioral neuroscience remains at home in the psychology department.

10. Undergraduate Advisement: The department secured a grant from the provost’s office to redesign the advising system. Group advising sessions were developed that focused on planning a psychology major, careers in psychology, gaining research experience, the practicum program, gaining admittance to graduate school, and the college’s honors program. These group advising sessions will be offered on an ongoing basis. In addition, a psychology advising WebCT page will appear in every psychology major’s WebCT account. The advising office will use this page to communicate with majors about an array of matters including advising programs, curricular developments, research opportunities, departmental registration policies, etc. Finally, a peer advisor model will be instituted in late spring 2007. Peer advisors will be available to consult with students about course loads, course content, and practicum opportunities, as well as assist with the undergraduate newsletter and manage a career and graduate school materials library.

11. Undergraduate curriculum review/revision: The undergraduate program committee has surveyed program areas as part of an extensive curriculum review. In addition to the ongoing effort to redesign the research methods and statistics courses, this review has highlighted the need for changes in prerequisites and the desire for courses in history and human diversity, among others. The UPC has also worked with the college to ensure that majors experience two 25-seat courses that promote the development of critical thinking through writing.

12. Managing the number of majors: Reviews of strategies for managing the number of psychology majors in a way that is fair and reasonable, given burgeoning enrollments, are underway. To date these efforts have resulted in setting limits on the number of times that majors can re-take the gateway courses (methods and statistics), and increasing the number of seats or sections for selected courses so as to reduce unmet demand.

13. Compression and market equity: Funds made available to the college in FY07 were distributed to begin to address the concerns related to salary competitiveness and compression. Psychology benefited significantly from these funds, given the productivity of our faculty, the clear need as documented in the self-study, and the discrepancy between our psychology faculty salaries and the OklahomaState study. We hope that future budgets will include opportunities for additional merit-based corrections in salaries relative to national averages.

C. Point-by-point action plan

We intend to pursue the 6 broad goals and 21 specific objectives endorsed by the psychology faculty and listed in the department’s Academic Program Review document. These goals were strongly endorsed by the reports of the ERC and the APRC (see Appendix A). To achieve these aims, we propose the following 4-point action plan:

1. Recruit and maintain a departmental faculty of 45 full-time tenure-track faculty members and 7 full-time lecturers.

Evidence supporting this direction: Both the APRC and the ERC reports endorsed the necessity of expanding the current faculty. A larger departmental faculty and a larger proportion of departmental faculty members in lecturer positions…

 follow directly from the vision we have articulated for the department;

 affect the breadth and quality of instruction that we provide at the undergraduate and graduate levels;

 influence the number of students who can benefit from this instruction at the undergraduate and graduate levels specifically, and more generally support the 10-year university strategic plan to increase the GSU student population at both the undergraduate and graduate levels;

 determine the department’s capacity to reduce its reliance on visiting/part-time instructors;

 improve the departmental environment and morale with respect to issues of workload, service, and leave;

 increase departmental diversity;

 provide one means for increasing collaboration, research productivity, grant support, and other resources consistent with the objectives articulated in the self-study (i.e., increase journal publications to over 100 per year with individual publication rates averaging over 3.0 per year, increase external support by 12% each year);

 enhance our international reputation in our areas of strength;

 and cultivate future areas of focus and growth.

This plan continues the approved but unmet goal of the 1994 psychology self-study, adjusting the target numbers in recognition of the fact that several current faculty members are engaged full-time in college or university administration and in response to the need for growth in the area of neuroscience (thus, setting the goal for tenure-track faculty to 45 from the 40 that was subject of the 1994 action plan) and that additional lecturers will reduce the department’s reliance on visiting lecturers and part-time instructors. Current departmental faculty members are fully engaged by the concurrent demands to be outstanding, productive, and funded scholars while filling the instructional and service needs of one of the largest undergraduate majors and one of the largest graduate programs in the College. Without additional faculty members it will be impossible to respond to growing demands on the department, including (1) the institutional goal of increasing the size of the student body at GSU by as much as 25%; (2) the changes in instructional and staffing demands inherent in the university’s strategic and Quality Enhancement plans; and (3) the growing need and market for psychologists to address a wide range of societal issues (e.g., mental health, education and training, health and exercise, substance abuse, violence and aggression, risk and safety, sexual behavior, resilience and coping, and interpersonal relations). In light of these goals, the justification is clear for additional departmental faculty members to provide scholarship, training, and service to the discipline, university, and community.

Rationale for specific recruitment areas / numbers: Each of these hires described below should yield a faculty member with interests in one or more of the areas of focus (Partnership for Urban Health, Brains & Behavior, Language and Literacy) and who has broad opportunities for collaboration across programs and centers within the department. For example, note that several of the recruitment efforts justified above (clinical, developmental, social) could yield faculty members that would affiliate with the community program or any of the other programs.

Recruitment of additional developmental psychologists is justified by needs created by recent retirements/resignations (2 positions).

Recruitment of additional clinical psychologists should address needs created by recent retirements/resignations (2 positions) and support growth in the two joint programs, clinical-community (1 position) and clinical neuropsychology (1 position). These joint areas reflect our vision of where the discipline is heading and our desire to build on existing departmental strength in these research domains.

The clinical neuropsychology direction is also justified by our desire to build upon departmental strengths in behavioral neuroscience. Movement within the discipline toward biobehavioral inquiry and existing university commitments to the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience and the Brains and Behavior program make it reasonable to recruit additional neuroscientist (2 positions) in psychology (one cognitive neuroscientist working in humans or nonhuman primates, and one wet-lab neuroscientist who studies brain-behavior relations in nonhuman animals such as rodents, birds, or primates).

The department also has renewed its commitment to a strong core of faculty with research expertise in social behavior that fit within the interests of some other program areas and would connect with existing initiatives and centers. Recruitment to “replace” a social psychologist who resigned (1 position) and to build additional strength in social and affective neuroscience, applied social psychology or other emerging research foci (2 positions) should have the goal of a core faculty of psychologists who clearly fit within another existing program area and who can teach needed courses in foundational areas such as Social Psychology and History & Systems of Psychology.