I'm curious, Claudia: will your School end up in the College of Sciences and Engineering or in The College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences?
Marty Martin Bourgeois Professor and Chair Social and Behavioral Sciences Florida Gulf Coast University Fort Myers, FL 33931 ************** Confidentiality Statement ******************** Florida has a very broad public records law. As a result, any written communication created or received by Florida Gulf Coast University employees is subject to disclosure to the public and the media, upon request, unless otherwise exempt. Under Florida law, e-mail addresses are public records. If you do not want your email address released in response to a public records request, do not send electronic mail to this entity. Instead, contact this office by phone or in writing. ________________________________ From: Claudia Stanny [[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2014 11:48 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Fwd: [PSYCHTEACHER] Changing Dept. name from Psychology to Psychological Science Thanks for this historical perspective, Chris. I was unaware of the cachet of "physiological" during Wundt's time. As Santayana said, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. As you can see in my signature, my department has made this leap (and created a name that is too long to meet the character limits of fields in university and State data systems). UWF is in the middle of a reorganization. The current proposal entails eliminating the College of Arts and Sciences and creating three colleges: College of Sciences and Engineering, College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, and College of Health. The campus discussions about which departments and programs belong where have been most interesting. Some departments have multiple programs that will be located in different colleges. Language is powerful. Sometimes what we call things is important. Yes, it is marketing. But there is marketing that is pure spin and marketing that communicates substance to people who won't take the time to discover it otherwise. I think psychology is thin-skinned about this topic because it has sometimes harbored some silly stuff . . . as have other sciences, if we consider some of the "dead ends" of other sciences (phlogiston is the easiest target, cold fusion might be another, remember RNA-transfer of memories? - psychology shares some blame for that one). The self-correcting nature of science solves those problems (eventually). Still, the question about whether this particular marketing misfires and undermines our credibility is worth discussion. _____________________________________________ Claudia J. Stanny, Ph.D. Director Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Associate Professor NSF UWF Faculty ADVANCE Scholar School of Psychological and Behavioral Sciences University of West Florida 11000 University Parkway Pensacola, FL 32514 Phone: (850) 857-6355 (direct) or 473-7435 (CUTLA) [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> CUTLA Web Site: http://uwf.edu/cutla/ Personal Web Pages: http://uwf.edu/cstanny/website/index.htm On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 9:56 AM, Christopher Green <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Yesterday, someone on PsychTeacher asked a question about changing the name of his dept from "Psychology" to "Psychological Sciences." I was reminded of the old adage, "Any discipline that needs 'science' in its name isn't one," and I said so. A number of people responded, some on the list, some through back channel. Last night, I offered this explanation (below), but the PsychTeacher gate keepers thought it was argumentative and insulting (their words) and refused it. I had thought it was the opposite of that, but chacun à son goût. I repost it here, for those of you who are on that other list, and wondered whether I was serious. Chris ....... Christopher D Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M6C 1G4 [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://www.yorku.ca/christo Begin forwarded message: From: Christopher Green <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Date: January 28, 2014 at 12:32:07 AM EST To: Society for Teaching of Psychology PsychTeacher <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Fwd: [PSYCHTEACHER] Changing Dept. name from Psychology to Psychological Science Earlier today I wrote: All I can think of is the old saying, "Any discipline that needs 'science' in its name, isn't one." There has been a bit more blowback than I expected. Note, I didn't say it was an immutable truth, only that I was reminded of it. When I first heard the expression, I was doing graduate "cognitive science," and reflexively thought "They can't mean us!" Then one day I saw a poster for a graduate program in "pastoral science," and I laughed and laughed. Just the way those in biology laughed at me, and those in chemistry laughed at those in the "biological sciences," and so forth. Things don't have to be literally true to make one productively reflect on one's claims and, perhaps more important, on the academic insecurities that make one react defensively to a harmless joke. I understand why a "laboratory" department wouldn't want to be confused with a "clinical" department, but I also know a bit of the history of the field, and that knowledge makes me sometimes giggle at our modern turf battles. Wundt didn't call his psychology "physiological" because he thought he was doing physiology. He called it that in order to borrow for his new approach to psychology the aura of successes that "modern" German experimental physiology had achieved in the pervious few decades (while simultaneously borrowing their lab equipment). "Physiology" was the fashionable academic word of the age. There were "physiological" ethics and "physiological" aesthetics at the time too, so-named for the same reason. It was marketing, pure and simple. And it worked. Wundt and his lab were so successful in placing graduates in philosophy chairs around Germany that the traditional philosophers were driven to present a petition to the Minister of Education to have it stopped. The German government responded by creating separate Psychology departments. It is the same with our lobbying for the word "science" to be included in the names of our departments. Both true and necessary as well as petty and casuistic, all at the same time. Such is life. Chris ....... Christopher D Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M6C 1G4 [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://www.yorku.ca/christo --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13144.1572ed60024e708cf21c4c6f19e7d550&n=T&l=tips&o=33603 (It may be necessary to cut and paste the above URL if the line is broken) or send a blank email to leave-33603-13144.1572ed60024e708cf21c4c6f19e7d...@fsulist.frostburg.edu<mailto:leave-33603-13144.1572ed60024e708cf21c4c6f19e7d...@fsulist.frostburg.edu> --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. 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