UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MADISON
MADISON, WISCONSIN
53706-1696
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Department
of Psychology |
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(608) 262-1040 / 262-1041 |
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W.J.
Brogden Psychology Building |
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Fax: (608) 262-4029 |
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1202
West Johnson Street |
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November 18, 2004
Innovative
Practices in Graduate Education in Psychology Award Committee
Attn: Emanuel Donchin, Professor and Chair
Dear Award
Committee,
The Psychology Department at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison nominates itself for the Innovative Practices in Graduate Education in Psychology Award. We nominate ourselves for a set of
innovations we have made in our graduate training program designed to foster excellence in research, especially
cross-disciplinary, integrative research, among our graduate students.
Psychology is
unique in its position of being at the crossroads of the biological and social
sciences. Some Psychology departments
have responded to this situation by becoming fractionated and even splitting
into separate departments (e.g., a behavioral neuroscience department vs. a
social development department). In
contrast, we have embraced our diverse perspectives and remained unified
because such diversity within a single department creates immense potential for
integrative, cross-disciplinary work affording powerful insights about
behavior. Our goal is to train our
graduate students to conduct ground-breaking research that connects levels of
analysis from the cultural to the neurobiological. Below, we describe the innovations we have
made, and are continuing to make, in our program to achieve this goal. These innovations permeate all aspects of our
graduate training program and department life in general. Most importantly, these innovations have the
potential to affect not only how the discipline is taught to graduate students
but also how psychological science is conceived and conducted during the 21st
century. In describing each innovation,
we underscore its relative uniqueness and present information attesting to its
success.
First Year Project and Symposium.
Our innovations began in 1985. At
that time we became disenchanted with the narrowness of our graduate students
and their research. Although faculty
members in our department had begun to appreciate the fruitfulness of an
interdisciplinary approach to psychological science, this growing awareness was
not reflected in our graduate training program.
Our traditional Master’s Degree encouraged students to remain narrow in
research focus and to select members of their Master’s Committee solely from
their own Area Groups (e.g., Cognitive).
Moreover, we also had become concerned about how much time it took some
graduate students, especially in Clinical, to complete the program. We reasoned that the traditional Master’s
Degree also contributed to this problem because students often procrastinated
about the topic of the Master’s and did not complete it in a timely
fashion. To remedy these problems, we
abolished the Master’s Degree requirement and instituted the First Year Project in its place. With the First Year Project, students must
become heavily involved in research their first year because they must turn in
a paper reporting their results at the beginning of their second year. To facilitate research breadth on the
project, students select a 3-person First Year Project Committee consisting of
their major professor and at least one member from outside their own Area
Group. Moreover, an immensely
successful, and relatively unique, component of the First Year Project is the First Year Project Symposium. Departmental faculty and graduate students
attend this all-day affair, and the new second-year students each present their
First Year Projects at the symposium.
This symposium marks a very significant developmental milestone for our
students. It provides the first forum
for them to develop their scientific style and receive feedback from faculty
with perspectives far different than their own or those of their major professors. Quite literally, the First Year Project
Symposium affords the opportunity for our entire faculty to participate in the
scientific mentoring of each student.
Moreover, the third-year class presents a “skit” at the beginning of the
Symposium which provides a humorous, but powerful, mechanism for underscoring
the continuity of the research enterprise throughout graduate training. Finally, the Symposium provides a vivid and
exciting socialization into the research process for the incoming students.
Faculty and
students alike view the First Year Project and Symposium as extremely
successful and comment that students’ talks are on par with those of seasoned
professionals. In response to our 2004
survey to our graduate students, one student commented, “It (the First Year
Symposium) was fantastic. The student
research presentations were excellent … Additionally, the traditional
presentation (skit) by the previous 2nd year class, while technically informal,
goes a long way for modeling some of the program’s implicit values for incoming
and current students … values such as perseverance, intellectual courage for
independent thought, humor, and collegiality.”
For the First Year Project Symposium to work, it is critical that both
faculty and students attend. We have
attendance figures from the past 2 years and are delighted to report that
approximately 90% of faculty and students who were in town on the day of the
symposium attended.
Since the
incorporation of the First Year Project and Symposium into our graduate
program, how do our graduate students fare on various indicators of
success? As mentioned, one motivation
for the First Year Project and Symposium was to facilitate graduate, especially
clinical, students’ timely progress through the program. Our data on number of years students take to
earn their Ph.D. suggest that we have achieved this goal. Because clinical students must complete
practica and internships prior to earning the Ph.D., of necessity they will
require an additional year to complete it.
Therefore, we present data separately for clinical and non-clinical
students. Clinical students entering
after the First Year Project requirement was instituted in 1985 take
significantly fewer years to complete the Ph.D. (including completion of the
internship) than clinical students entering prior to this requirement (1978 –
1984; 7.2 years vs. 8.6 years, respectively; p < .0001). Similarly,
non-clinical students complete the Ph.D. more quickly now than before (6.0
years vs. 6.7 years, p <
.002). Thus, clinical and non-clinical
students currently take about 6 years to complete in-house academic/research
requirements for the Ph.D. We believe
that this amount of time is optimal for students to develop as young
scientists. Thus, we do not wish to
further reduce the amount of time it takes students to progress through the
program.
Graduate
students entering since we instituted the First Year Project requirement also
are doing very well on indicators of scientific success. The awards bestowed on scientists provide an
important index of impact and contribution.
Perhaps the most prestigious award that can be given to a young
scientist is the American Psychological Association (APA) Award for
Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology. It is noteworthy that 2 of our former
graduate students who entered the program after the First Year Project
requirement was instituted earned this award in recent years. More generally, our current graduate students
and recent Ph.D.’s have won a large number of very prestigious awards
including: Society for Psychological
Study of Social Issues Dissertation Award; Tursky Award, Society of
Psychophysiological Research; Jason Albrecht Young Investigator Award, Society
for Text and Discourse; Spencer Foundation Dissertation Award; APA Dissertation
Awards; W.T. Grant Faculty Scholars Award; International Society for Self and
Identity Early Career Award; Richard E. Snow Award for Early Career
Contribution to Educational Psychology; American Psychological Foundation,
Elizabeth Munsterberg Koppitz Travel Stipend in Child Psychology; Best 1st Year
Assistant Professor Award at Florida State; Best Student Paper at 2004 Society
for Text and Discourse; Neal Miller Award from the Academy of Behavioral
Medicine; LSB Leakey Foundation Grant; Dennis Klatt Research in Speech Science
Award, American Speech, Language, and Hearing Association; 21st Century Scientist Award Bridging Mind, Brain,
and Behavior, James S. McDonnell Foundation; Acoustical Society Young
Investigator Award, Acoustical Society of America; Best Student Poster Award at
Psychophyiological Meeting; University of Minnesota Early Career Award from
International Society for Study of Individual Differences; and University of
Minnesota McKnight Presidential Fellow.
In addition, our
current graduate students have been very successful in securing NSF and
NIH/NIMH/NRSA pre-doctoral fellowships.
Of 90 graduate students currently in our program, 8 hold or have held
NSF pre-doctoral fellowships, 1 has held a National Defense Science and
Engineering Graduate Fellowship, and 2 have been awarded NIH/NIMH/NRSA
pre-doctoral fellowships. Other students have received awards from agencies not
typically associated with psychology such as an L. S. B. Leakey Foundation
grant to a student studying social learning in wild chimpanzees in
Tanzania.
Moreover, our
current graduate students have been prolific in publishing scientific
papers. The average number of papers
published or in press for students currently in residence who have completed
their 4th year or beyond is 4.04 (range = 0 – 10).
Finally, our
students have been very successful in securing research positions for their
first jobs. For the following years,
among students receiving their Ph.D.’s for whom we have outcome information,
the percent who secured a research position (post-doc fellow, assistant
professor, scientist/research) is: 2000
– 83.3%; 2001 – 87.5%; 2002 – 85.7%; 2003 – 100%; 2004 – 100%.
Clearly, our
current students are flourishing scientifically, and the First Year Project and
Symposium have been formative in their training. While a few other programs have abolished the
Master’s Degree requirement and instituted a First Year Project requirement,
our First Year Project Symposium is quite unusual and constitutes an especially
exciting innovation distinguishing our program from others.
Individualized Graduate Major (IGM). Although
the interests of some of our incoming graduate students fall within the 5
existing Area Groups within the department (Biological, Clinical, Cognitive and
Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental, and Social/Personality), many do not. That students’ interests cut across our
departmental Area Groups and/or interface with other departments on campus is
to be expected in a top-notch department because Psychology itself stands at
the interface of the biological and social sciences and the boundaries of
Psychology are in flux. In 2000, we
developed an Individualized Graduate
Major (IGM) designed for graduate students who do not find a niche in our
current Area Group structure and, instead, wish to cross traditional Area Group
lines and/or incorporate substantial training from other departments into their
Psychology graduate work. Each student
selecting an IGM has a 5-person mentoring committee, with at least 3 faculty
members from Psychology. The graduate
student and mentoring committee work together to develop a graduate course and
research curriculum to facilitate the student’s scientific development.
Since its
inception, the IGM has become an increasingly popular choice for incoming
graduate students. Indeed, a number of
graduate students report that the IGM was a major selling point in their
selection of our program. Our statistics
show that an increasing number of applicants to our graduate program desire to
do an IGM: 2001 – 7 applicants; 2002 –
6; 2003 – 15; and 2004 – 23. Currently,
21.7% of our graduate students are doing an IGM, and we expect this percentage
to become even higher in subsequent years.
When we
instituted the IGM in 2000, we considered it an “experiment” and have monitored
its success. It appears to be very
successful. First, the IGM committees,
in fact, are bringing together diverse faculty who typically would not interact
in advising a student. In this regard,
the average number of faculty members (out of 5) on an IGM Committee who are
from outside the department is
1.44. Moreover, the average number of
area groups from within the department represented on each IGM Committee is
1.94. Second, graduate students doing an
IGM are overwhelmingly satisfied with it.
In our 2004 survey, 100% of IGM students indicated that they are
satisfied with the IGM. Comments
students wrote on this survey are especially laudatory of the IGM. For example, one student wrote, “I think it’s
(the IGM) wonderful … the IGM program allows me to really personalize my
education so that I can get the most out of it.
I love it!” Another student
commented, “It (the IGM) made a big difference to me … I wanted to be in an
interdisciplinary environment for my Ph.D. work … Some (departments) have
blinders that don’t allow them to even see the walls that exist and the
limitations inherent in looking at a problem from one perspective alone. The fact that the (UW) psych dept (here)
offered the IGM … spoke volumes about how this dept. sees interdisciplinary
training and research.” A student who
switched to an IGM from a traditional area group said, “It (the IGM) has given
me the flexibility to select a graduate committee that can advise me better
than a committee made up from only one area group, and only the psychology
department.” Still another said, “I came
here because of the IGM program.” Echoing
this student, another commented, “Since my interests overlap several of the
existing major areas within the Psychology Department, I choose the
individualized path (IGM). The freedom
to choose, in addition to other factors, influenced my decision to be part of
the UW community.” Another student
described her perspective on the IGM, “ … I am reminded of the South African
saying ‘It takes a village to raise a child’ … but I am thinking that it takes
a scientific community to raise a generation of committed and generous
interdisciplinary scientists … the IGM helps with that …” Finally, another student used one word to sum
up his feelings about his IGM:
“Thrilled!”
In part because
the IGM has been so successful, we are in the process of instating Mentoring Committees for all of our
graduate students. This past year the
Clinical Area Group instituted the mentoring committee requirement, and other
Area Groups likely will follow suit soon.
The Mentoring Committee ensures that students will be exposed to diverse
perspectives on their research throughout their graduate careers.
Training Grants. An
important component in developing our students’ cross-disciplinary approach to
research is training grants. Although
some other Psychology Departments have training grants, our Training Program in Emotion grant,
funded by NIMH and in operation here since 1996, provides a unique and
unusually powerful interdisciplinary research experience for graduate students.
The Emotion Training program brings together a diverse group of scientists
studying emotion from different perspectives and all levels of analysis. A key component is the monthly
interdisciplinary emotion group which all pre-doc and post-doc Emotion trainees
attend. Further, a major highlight is
the annual Wisconsin Symposium on Emotion.
At this symposium, scientists from all around the world studying emotion
from different levels of analysis present their work. Each pre-doc is assigned to read one
presenter’s work and be a discussant of it.
Students rave about this opportunity.
Thirty graduate students have been or are currently supported as
trainees in the Emotion Program. Each
student was/is supported for 2 years.
The number of students supported each year since 1998 is: 1998 – 4 students; 1999 – 3; 2000 – 6; 2001 –
4; 2002 – 5; 2003 – 3; 2004 –5.
A parallel
interdisciplinary training grant in Language is under review.
Additional Interdisciplinary
Experiences. Although we have chosen to retain our
traditional Area Groups because they are useful, we are developing educational
experiences for our graduate students which transcend traditional Area Group boundaries and foster
interdisciplinary connections. For
example, we are in the process of instituting “Special Interest Brownbags”
which will alternate with brownbags in our traditional Area Groups. A sample topic is, “Processes of Change in
Intervention and Development.” Such a
brownbag would bring together developmental and intervention psychologists who
typically do not interact in psychology departments. Our graduate students have collaborated
enthusiastically with us to develop these mechanisms for fostering
interdisciplinary connections.
Financial Support for Graduate
Research. A critical component in encouraging
graduate students to pursue interdisciplinary research that cuts across the
labs of different professors inside and outside of our department is providing financial support for graduate research. Graduate students’ opportunities for
cross-cutting research will be limited if they must rely solely on support from
their mentors’ grants. To this end, our
department has been extraordinarily successful in obtaining funds for graduate
research both from departmental faculty as well as outside donors. In this regard, Professor Janet Hyde set up a
Royalty Research Fund to which she and other professors regularly contribute
royalty money to fund graduate research and travel to conferences to present
research. We also have a number of
outside donors who have set up funds for graduate research. For example, one donor funds graduate
research awards and cross-disciplinary symposia. Another funds graduate research in
Experimental Psychology. Yet another
funds research and training awards in Clinical Psychology. And still another funds graduate research in
all areas. While we very actively have
sought out donors, it is noteworthy that some donors have been
unsolicited. As an example, in 2002, an
unsolicited donor established an annual award in the amount of $500 for the
“Lyn Abramson Award for Cognitive Approaches to Psychopathology.” In addition to funds from donors, our
Graduate School gives us about $5,200 each year for graduate research and other
expenses. Such funding enables our
graduate students to conduct research which does not fit neatly into the aims
of their major professors’ grants and thus cannot be funded off of these
grants.
In addition to
funding graduate research, we also fund
graduate travel from the sources described above. Specifically, it is critical for developing
scientists to present their work at national conferences and make connections
with other investigators. Thus, we award
funds to our graduate students to present papers and posters on which they are
first authors at national and international conferences. This funding mechanism clearly encourages
graduate students to present their work outside of the department and provides
the financial means for them to do so.
The amount of
money we award for graduate research and travel each year is impressive and
unusual. Summing across our various
graduate research, travel, and miscellaneous awards, we have awarded the following
amounts of money over recent years:
1999/2000 - $25,265; 2000/2001 - $27,953; 2001/2002 - $37,408; 2002/2003
- $31,883; 2003/2004 - $28,860.
In addition to
funding research and travel for our current graduate students, we also fund
“recruitment visits” for prospective graduate students to attract those with
strong interdisciplinary research interests.
The amount of money spent on recruiting visits over recent years
is: 1999/2000 - $6,255; 2000/2001 -
$4,371; 2001/2002 - $9,147; 2002/2003 - $7,327; 2003/2004 - $8,385.
Psychology Research Experience Program
(PREP). Having a diverse group of graduate
students facilitates integrative graduate research. To facilitate recruiting a diverse student
body, we have instituted the Psychology
Research Experience Program (PREP).
This program provides research experience for undergraduates. We are one of the few such programs in the
country that limits admission to minority and first generation college students
of limited financial backgrounds. The
goal of this program is to provide a research foundation for disadvantaged
undergraduates to help prepare them for high-powered research-oriented graduate
programs. Each summer, a subset of our
faculty mentor the PREP students for 9 weeks as the students do research in the
mentor’s laboratory. We currently have a
3-year NSF grant for this program and have leveraged other resources to fund
33% more positions than the NSF grant provides.
Itr is noteworthy that each year 25-28 faculty volunteer to mentor
whereas we have only 11-12 funded positions. PREP students are provided with a
$3,000 stipend as well as funds for room, board, and travel. Our hope with the PREP Program is to recruit
a number of the PREP students for graduate study here at UW. Currently, four students in our Graduate
Program previously were part of our PREP Program.
Informal Interactions. Last,
but not least, we strongly believe that the informal interactions between graduate students and faculty
contribute importantly to students’ scientific commitment, identity, and
acquisition of an integrative perspective.
In keeping with our interdisciplinary focus, we have instituted a number
of social activities to provide opportunities for students to get to know
faculty with scientific perspectives different than their own. As an example, we have departmental teas at
which graduate students and faculty from all areas of the department are
encouraged to interact. We also have a
Welcome Reception at the beginning of the year at which all incoming graduate
students are introduced to the entire department. At this reception, a subset of the faculty
and students participate in a humorous skit that often relates to important
themes in psychology. For example, this
year, we borrowed from the Olympics and introduced a “dream team” of historical
figures in psychology. Professor Richard
Davidson, our William James Professor of Psychology, played William James and
presented the implications of James’ views for contemporary science and
training. Professor Janet Hyde, our
Helen Thompson Woolley Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies, played
Woolley and compared the role of women in science today to that in the
Victorian period. A graduate student
played Sigmund Freud. While we are aware
that graduate students participate in humorous skits (often mocking their
professors) in other departments, we suspect that our innovation of having
faculty participate in skits to illustrate important themes in psychology is
quite rare, if not unique.
Given the shared
interdisciplinary vision of our faculty, the conditions were ripe for us to
make the described innovations in our program.
However, we emphasize that such innovations could be implemented by
other departments that share our goals.
We have invited visitors to our First Year Project Symposium and welcome
guests from other Psychology departments who wish to observe our symposium in
action. Similarly, we have detailed
guidelines for our First Year Project requirements and Individualized Graduate
Major which we would be happy to share.
Visiting scientists do attend activities such as our annual Emotion
Symposium. Finally, our PREP program is
well documented and other Psychology departments have consulted with us about
how to develop a similar program. We have many tips to pass on about
successfully cultivating donors. More
generally, we are very proud of our innovations in graduate education and look
forward to sharing them.
A consensus
exists among our faculty that integrative, interdisciplinary research affords
the most powerful insights about behavior.
Ironically, although psychological scientists increasingly are
subscribing to this view, many departments have not adequately incorporated it
into their graduate training programs.
The typical graduate program still is designed to train a more narrow
researcher, much as we did prior to making these innovations. Our innovations have the potential to push
the boundaries of what is known about the link from culture to mind to
body. Thus, if adopted widely, our
innovations could shape the future of psychological science.
We have
re-conceptualized our faculty organization and hiring to deliberately seek more
interdisciplinary connections. Although we retain traditional areas of
Biological, Clinical, Cognitive and Perceptual Sciences, Development and
Social, we have identified five Themes that cut across several levels of
analysis: Emotion, Language, Processes of Development and Change, Social
Motivation and Self-Regulation, and Perception Action and Attention. Each
faculty member fits within one traditional area group but also fits into at
least one Theme and each Theme has members from multiple area groups. We are
explicitly advertising our new positions to emphasize interdisciplinary and
cross-cutting themes. In the near future we see this re-conceptualization as
having a major impact on the internal structure of Psychology departments.
Throughout this
letter, we presented data relevant to the assessment and evaluation of our
innovations. These data suggest that we
successfully have implemented the innovations and they are having the desired
effects. Consistent with the overarching
goal of our innovations to train integrative, interdisciplinary psychological
scientists, 82.1% of our graduate students described their research as
interdisciplinary in our 2004 graduate survey.
We will continue
to monitor and evaluate our interventions in the ways described in this
document (e.g., progress through program; quality of research as indicated by
awards, publications, and jobs; student satisfaction with the innovations;
enthusiasm of faculty for the innovations as indexed by their presence at
critical events such as the First Year Symposium; amount of money we are able
to award for graduate student research and travel, etc.). Most importantly, just as with clinical
interventions, we are especially interested in the long-term follow-up of our
students. Will our students stand out as
leaders and innovators as measured by doing groundbreaking work, securing
prestigious prizes (e.g., Nobel prize), producing students themselves (our
intellectual grandchildren) who make important scientific contributions, etc.?
Perhaps the most
critical factor in the long-term viability of our innovations is the quality of
our faculty and its commitment to the innovations. There is absolutely no doubt about the
quality of our faculty. We are
well-recognized as a world class psychology department. Our faculty have received the most
prestigious awards in our field such as the APA Early Career Award (e.g.,
Abramson, Moffitt, Devine, Caspi, Saffran), APA Awards for Distinguished
Scientific Contributions (e.g., Davidson, Berkowitz), etc. In addition, the extraordinary regard in
which our scientific contributions are held is reflected in our unparalleled
success in obtaining funding for our research.
The latest data on total and federally funded research and development
expenditures for fiscal year 2001 just have been released by NSF. As in 1998, 1999, and 2000, UW Madison
Psychology continued to rank first in the nation. Further, our faculty shares the same vision –
a commitment to the interdisciplinary, integrative approach we are trying to
foster with our innovations. As noted
above this vision is guiding our current hiring and thus will be maintained in
the department. Finally, we have much
institutional and other support for our innovations. In this document we have described various
funding sources. In addition, many
facilities on campus such as the Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging
and Behavior support our interdisciplinary training program. The Keck Laboratory brings together faculty
from Computer Science, Medical Physics, Statistics, Psychiatry, and Psychology
to provide remarkable interdisciplinary training for our students who conduct
brain imaging studies. More generally,
faculty from diverse departments enthusiastically participate in the training
of our students.
In sum, over the
past 19 years we have instituted a number of changes which, collectively, have
provided very significant innovation in our graduate training around the theme
of fostering cross-disciplinary, integrative research. Indeed, we are aware that in the past we were
known as an “apprentice-model” graduate program in which graduate students
essentially were “tied” to one professor and did not benefit from exposure to diverse
scientific perspectives. With the
innovations described above, we have completely remade our graduate program to
take advantage of Psychology’s unique position at the crossroads of the
biological and the social sciences.
Sincerely,
Lyn Y. Abramson
Professor of
Psychology, Director of Graduate Studies, and Associate Chair