Developmental Faculty Meeting



Developmental Faculty Meeting

September 19, 2007

Minutes.

Present: Dawn Gondoli, Nicole McNeil, Darcia Narvaez, Julie Turner, Cindy Bergeman, Tom Whitman, Dan Lapsley, Trish Mitchell, Chrystyna Kouros, Kristin Warzon.

Dr. Turner gaveled the meeting to order at 11:30.

Preliminaries

Dr. Turner noted that Nick Lynchard successfully completed the written preliminary examination. She extended thanks to Drs. Day and McNeil for serving as readers.

Dr. Turner urged program faculty to attend the DSG brown bags on Friday afternoons at 12:30.

Looking Back

Dr. Turner reviewed a number of initiatives that were accomplished over AY 06-07. These included:

• Launching the weekly DSG brown bag

• Concluding the discussion of prelim formats with a menu of three options

• Revision of the Socioemotional and Theory and Methods courses

• Course planning over the next 2 or 3 years; and a program commitment to offer 1 required course and 1 seminar each semester;

• The development of a welcome packet for incoming graduate students, in response to graduate student concerns;

• Addressing reading list and prelim question(s) issues, in response to graduate student concerns.

• Revision of the prelim cognitive development questions.

Dr. Turner noted that she would like to do course planning for the next two years, noting the difficulties that attend planning around grants, leaves and other course reductions. Still, the core courses appear to be set for the next two years.

Looking Forward

The program needs to complete the revision of the prelim reading list this semester. Dr. Turner noted that more overlap between the prelim reading list and course readings in the core classes is advisable. This issue will be put on the agenda for the next meeting.

Dr. Bergeman suggested that the reading list applicable at the end of the third year or end of masters thesis (whatever comes first) be the reading list that serves as the basis for the preliminary examination. Trish Mitchell noted that making the changes, and explaining it, as soon as possible would mitigate whatever confusion is extant among graduate students.

Drs. Gondoli, Bergeman and Narvaez noted that written accounts of the prelim policy can be found in Department’s “General Requirements for Graduate Students” and in the “Developmental Psychology’s Program Guidelines” (both of which can be found on “Dan’s website”).

It was noted, too, that students now receive the rubric scores (averaged across readers) and written feedback on their performance on the prelim. Dr. Narvaez advocated for faculty advisors to also learn the scores.

Top Tier Journals List

Dr. Bergeman reported on list of top-tier journals. She noted that the Administration finally understands that there are many more quality journals other than APA journals. The list that we generate will not be shared with the College, but serve rather as assistance to CAP when they need a rationale for why certain journals are considered quality journals. Quality is not necessarily vouchsafed by APA status, insofar as not all APA journals are necessarily high quality outlets.

What about “impact factor” as an indicator of quality? This is not failsafe, either. Impact factors may only be relevant within sub-disciplines. Moreover, the most closely tied a journal is to medicine, the higher is its impact factor. Impact factors are helpful, but we must be wary.

We went through the list, identifying the top tier journals, although there was considerable discussion about specialty journals and “society” journals. There are clearly many specialty and society journals that program faculty felt quite good about, even though not necessarily “top tier.” We discussed the desirability of a short versus long list of journals. Cindy and Nicole (among others, perhaps Tom) held out the desirability of a short list, as this would serve as benchmarks for program improvement, and for P & T purposes. Others (perhaps only Dan) noted that a longer list has attractions if the list is intended only for internal purposes and as an informational benefit for CAP.

Consensus developed around the idea that two lists were desirable: one list of the top tier journals (for which there is already considerable agreement); and a second list of worthies.

There was agreement that the following journals belong in the top tier:

Behavioral and Brain Science Development and Psychopathology

American Psychologist Psychology and Aging

Monographs of the SRCD Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Child Development Journal of Marriage and the Family

Developmental Psychology Science

Nature Psychological Review

Psychological Bulletin Journal of Experimental Psychology (all of them)

J. of Educational Psychology J. Consulting and Clinical Psychology

Psychological Science

The program area was asked to nominate one specialty/society journal to add to the top tier; and to compile of List of Worthies (along with a rationale/justification).

Planning Committee:

Dr. Bergeman explained the work of the Planning Committee. She noted that the Planning Committee is looking for specific topics that they can pursue. They are asking programs to make suggestions. The Planning Committee has multiple roles: It envisions (“dreams”) possible futures; it discusses departmental priorities. CAP does not have time to take on these tasks. The Planning Committee works with CAP and with standing committees. For example, the Undergraduate Education Committee is going to be tasked with developing strategies for tracking what graduate schools our majors end up in, and if there are ways to improve the quality of their placements. The Planning Committee will re-think our pattern of staffing, particularly with Judy Spiro’s impending retirement. And so on.

Executive Session

The committee took up a matter in executive session.

The Program committee adjourned at 1:20.

Respectfully submitted,

Dan Lapsley

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