Statement on Academic Structure (ASEC)

Mary Starke, SSHS, Psychology

        Although I never thought I would say this, I believe very

strongly that the psychology faculty should be housed under one school.

        The program has expanded exponentially, with 576 students in the

major, 1778 students enrolled in psych courses (fall '03), 17 fulltime

faculty, and anywhere from 10 to 20 sections of psych courses taught by

adjuncts per semester.

        The number of students in the major has more than doubled in the

past seven years, but the number of faculty has not increased. We have

been forced to try and keep up with student demand by employing two to

five temporary fulltime faculty members in addition to numerous adjuncts

for the past five years, but we have not come close to meeting student

demand for our courses. The number of student majors per tenure-track

faculty member is currently 48 to one, but it was 76 to one just a year

and a half ago. (We were allowed to replace two of our retirees within

the last two years.)

        The percentage of courses taught by temporary and adjunct

faculty has ranged from 43% to 58% over the past three years, and the

average number of students per course is 27.7 even when we include the

13 sections of courses that are capped at 15 to 20 students. (Fire-code

restrictions prohibit faculty from admitting extra students in many of

the courses.)

Upper-level courses in the major, and many of the 200-level courses,

close during the first day of senior registration, and we are hard-put

to offer a sufficient number of the required courses so that seniors may

graduate on time. Students complain bitterly (and justifiably) about

being closed out of courses they need for graduation, especially in the

evening program. That is the only black mark the program receives among

the comments collected from graduating seniors during the college's

"exit interviews:" i.e., it is so hard to get into psych classes..

        Basically, we have been hiring two temporary fulltime or

tenure-track faculty every year (often at the end of December for the

following spring semester when one or more of our faculty members are

offered tenure-track positions elsewhere) for the past four years. The

turn-over in faculty has incredibly high due to the use of temporary,

fulltime faculty and adjuncts, but also because of sabbaticals,

retirements, illnesses, release time for administrative office (e.g., to

become dean, VPAA, assistant VPAA,  Middle States chair, and so on), and

the number of non-psych courses taught by psych faculty (e.g., College

Seminar, Senior Seminar, Gen Ed courses, school-core courses, and

courses in the Graduate Science and the teacher education programs) that

the psych faculty teach.

        Given the complexity of the major (four required courses plus

one course from each of five required categories and three elective

psych courses), the exponential expansion in the number of majors in the

program, and the high turnover among fulltime faculty, the

administration of this program has become almost impossible.

Unfortunately, the fact that psychology faculty members are dispersed

among three schools has exacerbated this situation. Just one small

example of the types of problems that occur involves sabbaticals. As

sabbatical approvals do not go through the convening group, we found

ourselves in a situation for next semester where we will have three

psychologist on sabbatical in the spring (and no psych faculty on

sabbatical during this fall semester). That creates a hiring nightmare,

and would not have happened had the convener or either of the deans

involved been apprised of this situation in advance of the approval for

these sabbaticlas. Similar snafus occur with the scheduling of classes

as faculty go through different deans when they do not want to teach

courses that are required by the program.

        Although the unwieldy size of the major insures that it will

never be an easy program to administer, we could offer our students much

better service by eliminating much of the confusion caused by the

dispersal of the psych faculty among three different schools.