THE
FACULTY SENATE
Senate
Document Number 7309S
Date
of Senate Approval 04/09/09
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Statement
of Faculty Senate Action:
APC Document 58: Change in the Capstone Requirement in Psychology
Effective Date: Fall 2009
1.
Add: On page 246, new capstone course PSYC 412:
412 Senior Seminar in Psychology (4)
An in-depth examination of psychological knowledge and/or practice in
one of three types of seminars: 1) topical,
in which students read about and discuss an area of psychological research, and
then write about an aspect of it in a formal literature review; 2) practicum, in which students work in a
community setting concerned with the well-being of others, and then write a
literature review related to their work; or 3) research, in which students undertake a scientific study by
reviewing previous research, collecting and analyzing data, and, then write a
report of results. Students also practice formal and informal public speaking.
Prerequisites: Senior standing and 24 hours in Psychology. Fall and Spring.
Impact:
PSYC
412 is designed to replace our single-course demonstration of competency (PSYC
390), which will be phased out during the next year. PSYC 412 will provide
seniors with three optional capstone experiences, each of which addresses a
common core of learning outcomes identified by the Department as critical for
all seniors. The number of hours required for the psychology major will be
increased by one once this course is fully implemented.
At
present the Department must provide a senior capstone experience for
approximately 90-100 students per year.
During the 2008-2009 academic year, we have offered 5 sections of PSYC
390 (enrollment cap = 20) to meet this demand.
Enrollment caps for PSYC 412 will be set at a minimum of 10 and a
maximum of 15 students, requiring us to offer approximately 7-8 sections per
year (up to 4 each semester). The
Department will be able to staff the additional course sections created by the
smaller class size of PSYC 412 in two ways.
First, PSYC 463 (Field Work), currently capped at 10 students, will be
phased out as we transition to PSYC 412. We presently teach 4 sections of PSYC
463 per year, thereby freeing two faculty to teach two sections each of the
capstone (Type 2). Second, the
Department typically offers 1-2 Special Topics courses per year with an average
class size of 10-15; in the future, these courses will be offered as PSYC 412
(Type 1). Specifically, during the
2008-2009 academic year, we offered 4 sections of Field Work and 1 topical
seminar; combining these with the 5 sections of Psych 390 offered in this same
time period, we offered a total of 10 sections of courses that will now be
subsumed under the PSYC 412 requirement.
PSYC
412 will also be the course in which oral competency is demonstrated. The
present method for evaluating oral competency involves most members of the
department who teach 300 or 400-level courses for majors. Each faculty member
must complete a written form indicating competency and providing feedback. This
process is cumbersome in terms of paperwork, and it spreads the task of
evaluating oral competency across many faculty members and courses, thereby
decreasing uniformity of results. Incorporating demonstration of oral
competency into PSYC 412 should result in more uniform evaluations of
competency using a smaller core of faculty and requiring no specific
documentation. During the phase-out period for PSYC 390, it will also be the
course used for demonstrating oral competency.
This
change has no effect on hours required for a minor, or for any other university
requirement, but it could potentially affect teacher licensure students in the
K-6, B-K and K-12 Reading programs, if those students major in psychology.
Rationale:
After
engaging in extensive discussions about the nature of our capstone course,
Psychology faculty arrived at a common set of teaching objectives for the
senior capstone course, based on guidelines adopted by the American Psychological Association: a) to implement a developmental
and systematic approach to required writing; b) to provide multiple
opportunities for developing speaking skills, including a formal presentation;
c) to provide opportunities for scholarship requiring the synthesis of
knowledge and skill in a specific content area, and d) to provide multiple
opportunities for collaboration in conjunction with preparation and
developmental feedback.
PSYC
412 will be offered in three different seminar formats, each of which addresses
our common teaching objectives for the capstone course: a) a topical seminar, in which students will read,
write and speak about the scientific literature in a selected area of
psychology; b) a practicum seminar,
in which students will read, write, and speak about the applied scientific
literature as it relates to clinical and community experiences; and c) a research seminar, in which students will
read, write, and speak about the scientific literature in the context of an
individual or group research project.
The
three-option format for our capstone course is primarily designed to better meet
the needs of our senior psychology majors, who often do very different things
upon graduation. While the majority of our majors enter the workforce
immediately after graduation, the jobs they seek vary widely from helping
professions to education to business. Even among majors who pursue graduate
study, career goals are also quite diverse, including research-oriented fields
of psychology, service-oriented degrees in counseling or social work, or
professional degrees in allied health or law. In addition, the flexible format
of the capstone seminar also gives our faculty some choice and freedom in
selecting a seminar format that is best suited to their expertise and interests
at a given time.
Finally,
the Psychology Department has required our current capstone course (History and
Systems of Psychology) for at least a decade, and we have concluded that it
meets virtually none of the objectives described above. With an average class
size of 20 and a narrowly identified body of content, PSYC 390 simply fails to
provide our graduating seniors with the type of experience we are seeking in a
capstone course. We are not yet deleting
PSYC 390 from the Catalog to allow for a transitional year for both faculty and
students, during which we will phase in our new capstone course. Similarly, we will retain PSYC 463
(Fieldwork) for a transitional year, as it is similar in content to the
practicum version of our new capstone course.