Psychology department refocusing faculty and resources

In a step to preserve the liberal arts mission of Georgia College & State University, faculty members have decided to eliminate GC&SU’s master’s of psychology program.
As almost 300 undergraduate students have declared psychology as their major, eliminating the master’s of psychology degree will allow the department to use more faculty and resources to cater to the undergraduate students.
The psychology department stopped taking students for the master’s program in the fall of 2002. These students will be able to continue working on their degree without a problem. Also, faculty members will not be released due to this change.
Beth Rushing, dean of the school of liberal arts and sciences, stated that no more faculty would be relieved of their jobs.
“We need all the faculty we have, and would like to have even more,” she said.
In the past, GC&SU has offered three tracks for the master’s program. A general theoretical track was in place for students planning to go on to get their doctorate, an adventure therapy track, and an applied track. Of the three, the applied track was the most popular.
Several years ago, due to changes in the laws and licensing requirements, faculty in the psychology department decided to eliminate the adventure therapy and applied tracks, but to continue to maintain the general theoretical program with very few students.
Most recently, and largely due to the push to have smaller classes and more involvement with undergraduate students, the faculty decided to first suspend, and then eliminate the master’s program as a whole.
“The faculty made a difficult decision to eliminate the master’s program in an effort to shift our resources and focus on our undergraduate program,” Psychology Department Chair Dr. Sheree Barron said. “It was just not possible to use faculty resources to teach a class of three or four graduate students and cover our upper level psychology courses for our large number of majors.”
Dean Rushing fully supports the decision.
“I believe that the elimination of the master’s program will allow the psychology faculty to concentrate more on collaborative research with undergraduates, which will strengthen the baccalaureate program,” she said.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Jan 23 2004. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry