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
Department
Strengths
• 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 interdisciplinary
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
• More Challenges:
Challenges
Associated
with Interdisciplinary
Training:
Within
Departments
– 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
For copy of
Pitt’s
Department
Strategic
Plan
Contact Daniel Shaw at
casey@pitt.edu