issues and opportunities for departments of psychology using the external review process daniel s....
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Issues and Opportunities for Departments of Psychology Using the
External Review Process
Daniel S. Shaw
University of Pittsburgh
External Reviews:Lots of Fun?
• Negatives– Considerable time and effort– Will it matter?– Following Dean’s agenda vs.
department’s– Trying to justify dept.’s existence
• Potential Opportunities– Creating internal consensus and
shared vision for faculty– Gaining feedback from external
reviewers who value your values but also offer novel approaches to addressing current issues
– Requires Dean to trust your judgment in selecting reviewers and conducting self evaluation
Using External Reviews and Reviewers to Promote
DepartmentStrengths
• Making review interactive by involving external consultants after having read preliminary strategic plan
• Review began with presentation you just heard, followed by individual meetings with faculty, students, & Dean
• Assimilation and accommodation of feedback from external reviewers
• Strategic plan (hopefully) endorsed and further developed by external reviewers offers opportunity for demonstrating department’s value and
need for
university’s
continued
investment
Psychology:Where do we
belong? What is our
identity?One of 6 hubs of science
Psychology: Hub of Science
• Boyack et al. (2005) review mapped structure of all science from 7,000 science citations
• With math, physics, medicine, earth science, & chemistry, hubs create interest in shared problems
• Psychologists sought our for elegant theoretical models and sophisticated methods
• Disproportionately represented on committees of NRC, issues spanning from pollution, crime, education, family policy
• Just at Pitt, psychologists hired in business, education, psychiatry, nursing, medicine, public health, social work, and speech
Establishing our identify via focus on inter-disciplinary
research and training: Implicitly making ourselves invaluable to
university
• Capitalize on increasing engagement with other disciplines
• Transparency in describing current challenges– Balance between core and
interdisciplinary research– Cross-disciplinary training &
across traditional program boundaries
– Future
structure of
psychology
training
programs
Challenges Associated with Inter-disciplinary
Training: Within
Departments
• More Challenges:– Boundaries between
graduate training programs– Necessity of having
programs– Clinical programs & APA
requirements– Future
structure of
psychology training programs
Enhancing Faculty Productivity &
Maintaining Morale in ‘Bad Weather’
• Courseloads• Rewarding research
productivity• Supervision of Honor’s and
directed research students• Maintaining morale of faculty
while maintaining very high expectations
• Expectations for
grant funding in
current Federal
climate
