West Chester University of PA is searching for a Dean of the College of Arts
and Sciences. If you know of anyone who might be interested (and
qualified), please pass this link on to them.
http://www.wcupa.edu/scripts/vacancies/zoomm.asp?Notice=02-44
Edward I.
Louis_Schmier quoted a college as charging
It is touchy feely people like you, she accused, who are
undermining the professorhood. There is no place in our intellectual
environment for the emotion you want to ram down our throats, she wrote
in something of a denouncing tone. She
.
Original Message-
From: Tikva Ruth [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2001 5:00 AM
To: Pollak, Edward
Subject: Re: Linda Woolf: Darling of the NRA g
Hi Edward,
I am currently in Amsterdam, checking my email, and
have no way to forward a note
Gary J. Klatsky wrote
At SUNY Oswego they pay ~$2300 for a single class (for a masters level
instructor).
Here in the Pennsylvania State System (4 year schools) the absolute bottom
of the pay scale is around $4,000/course. (Sorry for my delayed response,
Jen, but since I'm no longer
What does one do about getting permission to reproduce a drawing from a book
whose publisher is apparently out of business. It's a 1964 book (Peter's
Dictionary of Herpetology) and I'm pretty certain the author is dead. The
company, Hafner Publishing, has apparently published nothing later
Can anyone give me any feedback on Scientech analytical balances? They seem
to be a really good buy for the money . We're looking at the SA-120
http://analytical.balances.com/
Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D., Department of Psychology,
West Chester Univ. of PA, West
Matthew Raney wrote
I've actually received a lot of positive feedback about powerpoint
overheads. I keep them very skeletal in nature, but the words are usually
more clear and with better contrast, which has been a boon to those seated
further back or with visual impairments. Also, if you
Steven Davis wrote
I am curious as to what y'all think about all of these discoveries that
various
psychological problems are really brain problems. Seems to me that this
is at
the same time both obviously true and misleading. This seems to really
just be a
level of analysis problem.
Matthew Raney wrote
I've actually received a lot of positive feedback about powerpoint
overheads. I keep them very skeletal in nature, but the words are
usually
more clear and with better contrast, which has been a boon to those
seated
further back or with visual impairments. Also,
I thought some of you folks might be interested in this
Ed
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2001 6:51 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [BP/BNnews] Mirror Tests Reflect Dolphins' Intelligence
I thought some of you folks might like to see this..
Ed
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010430/sc/science_dolphins_dc_1.html
Pat Bromley wrote
I go over the exam in class, but I do not take questions out loud at that
time.
Students may WRITE comments about items they feel are unfair, misleading,
have
two "best" answers, or are just plain wrong. I give them 2-3 minutes to
do so,
then I collect the exams. In
Gerald Peterson
I have noticed at various times that students having the most difficulty in
class also have trouble locating material in the text and understanding
questions.
Good timing. I just had a conference with a student who couldn't believe
that she got a particular question wrong. To
Chuck Huff asked
What are the lousy statistics that folks look for? I have done
histograms of the number of folks who choose each choice in each
item, but when I looked at these, I was not convinced to toss a
question even though most folks got it wrong. Are there particular
question
It's not one or the other. I look harder for possible ambiguities in a
question if the difficulty discrimination indices are out of whack. FWIW,
I try to emphasize to the class that my adjustments are not a "curve."
Instead, I am introducing a "correction factor" for bad questions. I
suspect
Linda wrote
While a number of the Mizvot seem to have no logic behind them, the
prohibition against the above is speculated as follows - It would be too
cruel for the mother to endure having their young killed in front of
them (something else you are not to do) and then to have them play a
Michael Renner wrote
The "lousy exam" message is easier to diffuse with MC exams if you use
some
form of machine scoring. In my case, I spend
about two minutes after each exam explaining this and giving the results,
including any adjustment to the exam scores based on what I
I don't know about stage performers but students have an inherent need to
believe in mind reading. If you don't believe me, ask a student who flunked
your last essay exam whether he/she believes that you should have been able
to tell that he/she knew the information even though it was
On Fri, 23 Feb 2001, Retta Poe wrote:
Are any of you at institutions that offer undergraduate psychology
courses
- BESIDES introductory psychology and psychology of adjustment - that
attract
healthy numbers of students looking for general interest electives
(i.e., not
necessarily
This is a bit off topic but it deserves a read because of the vast
implications. FWIW, I told my wife that wasn't fulfilling her full
potential. Instead of just nursing our children she could have made me a
parachute.
http://www.forbes.com/global/2001/0219/061.html
I'm sorry if this has been brought up before but rather than giving psych
books to other professor-types there are more philanthropic possibilities.
I once had a local high school take a fair number of psych books off our
hands. On other occasions I've received requests for such books from
Gerald Peterson wrote
"It's been a while since I have read about Milton Erikson, the
famous
hypnotherapist. I understand his work has garnered a strong following
among those promoting "neurolinguistic programming" or NLP. I am
wondering if any tipsters present info about hypnosis
Bill McCowen wrote
Trivia- Old Milton was clinically supervised as an undergrad (I don't know
doing what) by Hull. That is probably where his experimental influence
came
from, I would surmise.
HULL I was trying to remember the "big name" with whom Erikson studied
as an undergrad.
Have your student go to http://www.google.com/ and search for "spirit
spirituality graduate psychology college university". I got a lot of
potentially relevant hits.
Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D., Department of Psychology,
West Chester Univ. of PA, West Chester, PA
Children born deaf and blind do, indeed, smile at the appropriate age. This
fact is often cited as evidence that smiling and some other basic behavior
patterns as "hard wired."
Ed
Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D., Department of Psychology,
West Chester Univ. of PA, West
Nancy asked:
What are the possible results in terms of behavior if the amygdala is
damaged?
The short answer:
a)Interference with learned fears.
b)Disruption of social behavior, esp. (sexual) mounting of inappropriate
objects and difficulty in responding appropriately to social signals
FWIW, I find that once you're over about 20-25 students in a course you're
talking about a more or less straight lecture class. If that's the case, I
don't see much difference between a class of 35 and one of 100. A lot
depends on the physical set up. Some rooms are conducive to 100 students.
Because this is a phone reference there's probably only a 50-50 chance that
you'll be called.
That being said, I tell the sugar-coated truth, i.e., that this is a
student who does well when she puts her mind to a task and that she has
excellent potential. With that info and with the student's
I agree wholeheartedly with Jeff. The Brain Mind series are fabulous.
I especially recommend "Clive Waring: Life without memory" for discussing
hippocampal function. If students don't get turned on by that they're
brain dead.
Neurological deficits are inherently fascinating. Any prof
If you know of anyone interested in this position, please forward this link
to them.
http://www.wcupa.edu/scripts/vacancies/zoomm.asp?Notice=01-57
Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D., Department of Psychology,
West Chester Univ. of PA, West Chester, PA 19383
Stephen disagreed with my ban on internet sources while Rick agreed.
Actually, Rick expressed my thoughts rather well. They can certainly use
the internet for finding printed sources. They could even use the internet
to read (e.g., NIMH) reports that are printed elsewhere. The real problem
is
Tasha R. Howe wrote
I'm teaching senior seminar for the first time this winter. I
would REALLY appreciate all your ideas. What do you do in there? What
topics do you cover? Specific readings you love? Fun/unique
assignments/activities? It's supposed to be an "integrative" experience
that ties
The 10 Commandments of Paper Writing
I. Though shalt not cite directly a paper thou hast not read. Neither
shalt thou include in thy reference section any paper that thou hast not
read nor any paper which has not been cited in the body of thy paper. Such
practices constitute the "padding"
We're currently kicking around the idea of switching physiological
psychology from a 400 level to a 200 level course. Personally, I think it
might be fun top teach such a course and it would mean that more students
would get physio earlier in their careers and would then have the
prerequisites
We are also discussing this. We currently have a moratorium on internal
transfers to Psychology because our 500+ majors are really taxing us. We
just passed a rule that to transfer into psychology the students need to
have passed psych courses in two different categories with grades of C or
Jessica Percodani wrote to ask about getting an adjunct position.
In addition to what's already been said:
1)Saturate local schools with a C.V. and cover letter stating your
interests.
2)Go onto the web and look at the school's catalogues. In your cover
letter, LIST THE SPECIFIC COURSES that
This doesn't sound that surprising to me. Because of the Education Privacy
Act schools need to be a little paranoid. If they are allowing you and your
student access to other students' private educational records it seems that
they would have every right to protect themselves by requiring such
We're going through similar ruminations (and have been for 20+ years).
One
thing that always stops a 2 semester intro psych courses dead in its
tracks
is the fact that intro is a service course for Nursing, Education and
several other majors. Their accrediting agencies often need the one
Last chance to help a doddering old professor: I've reviewed the following
animal behavior texts and find all of them to be inadequate on one or
several dimensions:
Siiter is too low level, too heavy on primates (4/16 chapters) and has
virtually NO discussion of behavioral endocrinology.
I'm in the process of choosing a book (or books) for Animal Behavior. The
only recent ones on my desk are those by Alcock and by Siiter. Anyone have
any preferences? Any other good ones out there? I've used Alcock before
(many years ago) and thought it was OK but a little heavier on
I'm scheduled to teach an animal behavior lab next semester. Can anyone
tell me a source (printed or web-based) of lab exercises, etc for such a
course? I found the lab exercises on the ABS site but little else. I also
have a 20 year old manual of lab exercises but something more recent (and
I'm currently developing a graduate psychopharmacology course geared toward
clinical grad students in our terminal M.A. program. The two books I think
best fit what I'd like to use are Lickey Gordon's "Drugs for Mental
Illness" and "Medicine and Mental Illness" by the same authors but they are
Diana asked : "I'm trying to locate a copy of the program Oprah did on
sexual
reassignment. Any help would be appreciated.."
At the risk of asking the obvious: Have you gone to the Oprah or Harpo
Productions web site?
Ed
Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D., Department
It seems to me that cannot stop the student from screaming but a "screaming
match" takes at least 2 people and you can make certain that you don't allow
yourself to get sucked in.
You simply say "I could flunk you right now for plagiarism. I do not plan
to do so at this point but the very
Jeff Ricker wrote:
"oes anyone know if the efficacy of ECT for the treatment of depression
has ever been tested with a placebo control group? I don't know how one
would perform such a test..."
I can't put my finger on the reference but 10-15 years ago there was a big
report on ECT (I
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
1) Kalat (Biol Psychol, 6th, p. 308), under the heading "effects on
men" says "the body releases enormous amounts of oxytocin during
orgasm, more than tripling the usual concentration in the blood". That
sounds like a lot to me.
There's an obvious snide
Annettte wrote:
"Personally, if it was me, I would have put the cortices in the forebrain
and all the subcortical stuff together in the midbrain to help students,
at least, understand the distinction between what I see is a way of
"categorizing" or "organizing" the structures based on related
Here a copy of the ad that we're currently running. Please distribute to
any potential candidates.
-
Here is the final draft of the ad that will appear this fall for our Social
position.
West Chester University anticipates hiring a tenure-track faculty member in
Social Psychology at
Rick asked: ".. Myers cites Melzack (1990) in
a Scientific American article as saying that people don't usually become
addicted to (or at least develop cravings for) drugs used to control
chronic
pain. John Graham, .cites Fordyce (1979) in article on
the use of the MMPI in
K. Korek wrote:
"Today my Advanced Placement Psychology class finished going through the
various parts of the brain and split brain research. At the end of the
discussion a student asked (why) .the left side of the
brain controls the right side of his body and vice versa. .. He
".The book's publication also marked the real beginnings of scientific
research
into the mind and to the development of truer understanding of mental
health
problems. ...Because of its influence on scientific
thinking, The Interpretation of Dreams
has led to everything
I had written that
The obvious (albeit older) book is Mark Ervin's Violence and the Brain
but
I'm sure it's very dated.
To which Stephen Black responded:
I'd be cautious in recommending this book, especially if it's the only
source consulted. Mark and Ervin are enthusiasts of
Jeff Ricker asked:
".I had a student ask for information about any possible
association between brain dysfunctions and criminal violence. Does
anyone know of any good articles on this that might be understandable to
an undergraduate (and also to me)."
The obvious (albeit older) book
Nancy asked:
" ...a student has asked for an explanation of how hallucinogens act on
the brain at the cellular level, and how that is different from how
addictive drugs act on brain cells"
The short answer seems to be that most hallucinogens act at serotonergic
receptors but there's
Does anyone still have a copy of that humorous column on evolution? I seem
to have purged it. If you could send it to me off list I'd appreciate it.
Ed
Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D. Office: 610-436-3151
Department of Psychology
Nancy Melucci asked:
".. I thought I would
re-inquire about my questions regarding any actual difference between
"physical" and "emotional" seizures. I just wanted to confirm that there is
no such thing as an emotional seizure, and give the student a little
information on how seizures are
Michael Sylvester asked:
are there cases of identical twins separated and adopted by differnt
families where both have developed a homosexual lifestyle?
And if one did and the other did not, would that be evidence of
an environmental influence on homosexual behavior?"
I can't give you a
Michael, please re-post your announcement but this time doing a copy/paste
from the document into your e0-mail.. Many of us get attachments as
gibberish only.
~~
Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D. Office (610)436-3151
Professor of Psychology
Based on my advisees' queries reharding career paths this list of topics
MUST include:
Hannibal Lechter and you: profiling serial killers for fun and profit.
~~
Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D. Office (610)436-3151
Professor of Psychology
Stephen Black wrote: "assuming Freud was administered the
sulphate form of morphine, intravenously, he was given a dose 1/3
greater than the maximum recommended for analgesia.This is not a startlingly
high dose, but it may have been sufficient
for someone in a severely weakened condition. So
James S. MacDonall wrote:
"My department is considering revamping our current underegraduate
statistics course. We are considering going to an SPSS based,
non-computational approach."
Without commenting on the content I'd like to raise my voice to object to a
non-computational,
Donette Steele wrote:
"I am looking for some help. I am putting together a proposal for a new
class, at one of the community colleges, where I teach."
I must admit to being a little skeptical as to how many community college
students you could get to sign up for such a course, Donette. If
RJ asked:
"What is the "typical" and/or most constructive route toward such a degree?
" (i.e., forensic psych)
Has anyone else noticed the dramatic increase in students asking about
forensic psych lately? It seems to me that they all want to be "profilers"
for the FBI. I trace it all back
Can someone tell me the URL for a web site that lists various urban
legends. especially of the e-mail variety?
~~
Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D. Office (610)436-2945
Professor and ChairpersonHome (610)363-1939
Department of
Rip Piacreta wrote:
"To me, that (i.e.,a "breakthough") would be any research that has major
clinical application, starts a discipline, or generates a reformulation of
basic tenets of a field."
I agree, Rip. But the only things I can think of that fit the bill here
would come from
a)
Pat Cabe wrote:
"I think it is very easy to overlook the incredibly short history of
psychology as a science. The 150 years of so that we acknowledge is so very
brief compared to the depth of history behind essentially all the other
"traditional" sciences."
I've got to strenuously disagree
When I was a child I had warts on my hands. My father took me over to see a
family friend, Uncle Rudy, who was also a plastic surgeon. Uncle Rudy put a
band aid on the warts and on the gauze of the ban aid was a yellow
"medicine." Sure enough, the warts disappeared with a few weeks. Many
Joyce Johnson wrote:
"Dr Ronald Webster at Hollins College in Roanoke Va is a world reknown
expert on stuttering and its treatment. ..His basic discovery was that
stutterers have a neuronal/ motoric delay in transmission of internal
feedback from the vibration of the vocal chords tothe
How many adjunct faculty is too many? I would arge that no more than 10-20%
should be adjunct. Now don't get me wrong, I've had plenty of adjuncts who
are better in the classroom than many tenured faculty. But the fact is that
adjuncts
a)do not serve on Dept. or university committees.
b)do
To those who have chastized me for "posting grades by the last 5 digits of
the SS#:
I make no apologies. It's easy, efficient and reasonably secure. Besides,
at my age, "posting by the last 5 digits of the SS#" is as close as I come
to "living on the edge" .. although sometimes,
The discussion of plagiarism is prompting me to post my "10 Commandments of
Paper Writing." I find that putting everything in black and UP FRONT
prevents a lot of difficulty on the back end. i..e., preventing plagiarism
is easier than dealing with it after tyhe fact. Please feel free to
To the question of how to respond to students who cling to notion that twins
know (remotely) when things happen to each other: I attack it in several
ways:
1)I tell them how I often, while driving home, had a feeling that something
dreadful happened to my (then) young children. I would
Another thing that might help: a few days ago I suggested the Nova program,
"Secrets of the Psychics" (narrated by James "the Amazing" Randi) as a
useful video for explaining the experimental method. It's also a wonderful
video for showing how such phenomena melt away when subjected to
Every semester I schedule 2-3 upper level classes with maxes of 35 in a room
that seats 99. This allows me someplace to override the hordes of late
admits, transfers, etc. It also allows the heterogeneity in class size that
I believe is crucial. For example, I'm a traditional; "Herr,
Molly wrote:
"I am in my first year of teaching at a small private college. I only
have 3 students in my class! I just gave an exam on 2 chapters and had
a D and 2 F's. And this was a computer-generated exam from the test
bank that came with the text! I had even given them a study guide,
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