Issues Chairs May Think About
Related to the Future of the Field
Stephen P. Hinshaw
University of California, Berkeley
COGDOP
2/11
Overview
Linda and Rich: Conceptual/Visionary
 Me: A bit more ‘on the ground’:

– Issues arising during our external review;
issues I think about every day in pondering my
own program of research, which incorporates
aspects of
 Developmental/clinical: developmental
psychopathology
 Social: stigma
 Policy: treatment disparities
 Narrative: mixed methods
Centrifugal or Centripetal?

Fissionary tendencies
– Q: How many “departments of biology” are there today
at major universities?
 A: Not many!
– Some eminent Psychology Departments have split
– Some have reunited after a decade or more of splitting!
 Can neuroscience coexist with other subdisciplines, not just
intellectually, but in terms of teaching load, funding for
trainees, expectations for research, etc.?

Berkeley: strong attempt at continued integration
– No medical school (which is across Bay at UCSF), but
Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute has been a vital
force
 Not a Department, but does have separate graduate program
“Home” for Psychology?

Social Science?
– At Cal, we’re in Social Science, though we argued against it
loudly at our External Review! We’re outliers in terms of the lab
science we do, the $ amount of start ups, etc. etc.

Biological/Natural Science?
– Many departments in such a division

Life Science?
– E.g, UCLA

“Own” school?
– Or, as we argued, psychological/cognitive/brain
sciences/maybe with linguistics
Quality/Diversity

How is quality really ranked?
– Pubs/cites/h-indexes/grants/long-term impact?

Faculty ‘productivity’
– Counterexample: Harvard and Berkeley offer NO buyouts from
teaching for any level of research ‘productivity.’
– At Cal, argument is that we’re a publically funded research
university; ‘intrinsic motivation’

How does a department show a true commitment to
diversity?
– Example of search at Cal, earlier this past decade: Sociocultural
bases of behavior
– Student diversity will follow faculty diversity
Sub-areas vs. Unity

Rule of thumb:
– Large departments, areas = mini-departments; small depts: no real areas
– But see Indiana

Middle range: how much autonomy for areas?
– Federalist system?
– Berkeley: all hires full vetted and voted on by entire Department; areas
exist to organize colloquia and courses and to admit grad students

Exercise (prompted by our own external review):
– Tally of active collaborations among faculty in our department
– For our external review, yielded 3 single-spaced pages, largely crossarea

Revitalization of areas
– Change, Plasticity, and Development, Behavioral Neuroscience
– But why not an ‘Emotion’ area?
Money, Support, Completion

Safe to say we’ve entered a new ballgame in terms of
expectations from new faculty for start-up
– But we’ve now entered an era of retrenchment
– Start-up = rate-limiting factor for future hires
 Campus units with sufficient endowments CAN hire now!

On the ground:
– Can we attract top candidates?
– Can we meet inflation for grad student support?
– Inequities across students (fellowships, RAships vs. chronic
teaching assistant loads?)
– How fast to push students to complete program? What is the
‘point of readiness’ and how much of a post-doc is expected?
Grad Education: ‘Core’ vs.
Apprenticeships

Chronic ‘tension’: How best to prepare our doctoral
students for the moving target that constitutes our
‘hub’ status

Minimize core requirements vs. offer a well-taught
set of truly cross-disciplinary ways of approaching
problems?

Is most education done within the mentorship?
– But then how to get good data on quality of mentoring?

Berkeley model: no 2 students have same program…
but is there cost here?
Anticipating the future for a
‘hub’ discipline

Where and how will discoveries be made?

Moving target for entire field—and which
departments (and campuses) will lead the way?

Back to starting point: Will psychology exist as a
discipline in 50 years (a la biology)?

Or, will it maintain identity and vitality as it strongly
plays a role in linking cog sci, neuroscience, affective
science, developmental science, psychopathology,
several different professions (see Rich), etc. etc.?
In memoriam: Geoff Keppel

Former COGDOP member; Dept Chair at Cal in early
’70s (when he was < 40), literally unifying
Department (which existed as three ‘groups’ that had
never met together for 15 years)..

Leukemia for 20+ years (but swam .5 to 1.0
miles/day)

Many of you used his design and analysis ‘handbook’

WOGDOP!

I fly back at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow to conduct his
memorial service on campus