Facing an already high student-to-faculty ratio, the department of psychology is anxious to resume hiring.
The size of its faculty has shrunk to 24—a four-decade low. The number of professors had hovered around 27 over the past four decades.
Space and budgetary constraints have prevented the department from replacing departing professors.
“We can’t run our department on what we’ve got,” said Department Chair Susan E. Carey ’64.
While many departments in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences grew during the more financially stable years in the early 2000s—during this time, the Faculty expanded from 589 to 712 members—the psychology department’s size remained static because the department could not find physical space for incoming professors.
By the time rooms and laboratory space in the new Northwest Science Building were available for the department, FAS had imposed heavy limitations on faculty hires in response to the 30-percent drop in the University’s endowment in 2009.
But as the financial situation of FAS improves, members of the department said they are hoping FAS Dean Michael D. Smith will authorize the faculty searches the department needs to bring it back to its typical size.
Department members said that while they understand that other FAS departments are also in need of new professors after nearly two years of reduced hiring, they are making their voices heard in the FAS administration.
“We are an opinionated department,” said Psychology Professor Mahzarin R. Banaji, the head tutor in the department.
“We have on multiple occasions sent word that we hope that we will not be penalized for having been good citizens in the past,” she said, referring to the years of FAS expansion when the department held off on hiring.
Psychology Professor Marc D. Hauser’s unexpected year-long leave of absence in the wake of allegations of misconduct this summer has only further reduced the size of the department’s faculty for the year.
The psychology department, which had consisted of around 27 faculty members in total since the 1960s, is currently conducting two searches for junior members, according to Carey.
But with 24 faculty members and 192 junior and senior concentrators, the department is facing one of the largest student to faculty ratios in the College, said Banaji.
Psychology ranks as the fourth largest undergraduate concentration at the College.
By contrast, the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology has more than 30 professors for 121 declared concentrators.
Read more in News
University Hosts 30th Annual Celtic ColloquiumRecommended Articles
-
Report Said Communists Shouldn't Teach at Universities -
Carey Studies SchizophreniaCaitlin E. Carey ’12 has spent the semester immersed in the Social Neuroscience and Psycho-Pathology Lab in William James Hall, studying somatic associations and schizophrenia.
-
Fix Advanced PlacementThe A.P. system would be more useful if there were a more sensitive scale than just one through five.
-
Large Departments Encourage Students and Professors To ConnectThe government and psychology departments have introduced new initiatives meant to encourage undergraduates to make personal connections with their professors, as large concentrations work to counteract the idea that their size allows for little contact between faculty and students.
-
Psychologists Talk About Minds and ResearchMore than a hundred students and community members packed Geological Lecture Hall Tuesday evening to listen to a conversation between psychology professors Steven Pinker and Howard E. Gardner ’65.
-
Remembering, at Harvard
