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The following feature story appeared in the campus publication MOSAIC in September, 1996. Although some courses, students, and faculty members referenced in the story may have changed, it still provides a full and accurate picture of the Psychology department. For the most current course information and faculty listing, we encourage you to visit the department's homepage.
Psychology
Collaborative work with students is modus operandi
One might expect the hallway of the psychology department to be decorated with images of the brain, mug-shots of Sigmund Freud, John Watson, B. F. Skinner, Anna Freud, and Carole Gilligan, and perhaps an M. C. Escher maze. Icons, at the least, of psychology's domain, history, and methodology. Instead, the reward of a journey to the second floor of the Life Sciences Center is walls festooned with senior theses. The papers suggest something of the diversity and breadth of psychology's contemporary domain. You'll find papers dealing with memory loss and Alzheimer's disease; language choice in bi-lingual preschoolers; sexuality; body-images and self-esteem; gender differences and moral development; cognitive abilities in eating-disorder patients; drug use; smoking; and tennis. The papers and their handsome mounting also nicely articulate the department's central concern for student learning."Our modus operandi," says department chair Professor Sharon D. Herzberger, "is active collaborative research. We believe that students learn best through their active participation in the creation of learning." Accordingly, students are engaged in research from early on and asked to perform more and increasingly sophisticated research as they progress through their course work. A focus on student-conducted research naturally prepares students remarkably well for graduate study, clinical practice, and teaching psychology. "We get wonderful feedback from graduate schools and other research institutions where our graduates have gone to pursue an advanced degree or assist in research," says Herzberger.
But student-conducted research has other important implications as well. According to Professor Karl F. Haberlandt, the department's approach "enables students to acquire the tools to continue learning after they have left Trinity. What we do is only the beginning of a lifelong learning process." And preparing students to understand more fully "the oneness of the human mind in all its manifestations" is solid preparation for the so-called real world no matter what calling one finally listens to. The students agree. "Because you learn that psychology is not some abstract concept but something that is going on all around you, it's good preparation for pretty much anything you'll do," says Adam Devlin-Brown '97.
A history of innovation
Established only in the mid 1960s, the department had the advantage of starting from scratch and was built around talented young faculty who brought the newest innovative ideas. This history of innovation has become a hallmark of the department. Offering more than forty different courses each year, the department provides a coherent structure to help students organize their learning and develop their own paths to the major while gaining a broad understanding of psychology.Because the future of psychology will likely involve studies increasingly conducted through advanced technology and will feature both more biologically oriented and interdisciplinary study, Trinity's excellent computer facilities and the department's comprehensive collaboration with other departments, from fields as diverse as art and engineering, will enable psychology to build on its heritage of innovative study.
Trinity's location presents students with a wealth of opportunities for internships and independent study and research. "Hartford," says Haberlandt, "is a very important site for our students to find contexts and settings for learning." Students can intern at nearby health care institutions, such as Hartford, St. Francis, and Mt. Sinai hospitals, and the Institute of Living. The College's proximity to the state legislature and the state courts also presents students with unique opportunities for exploring the real world applications of their studies. Recently, Associate Professor David A. Reuman and a group of students were able to sit in on the court proceedings for Sheff v. O'Neill, Connecticut's landmark court case on school integration.
Community learning
Associate Professor Dina L. Anselmi believes that Trinity's connection to Hartford also offers exciting opportunities for students to test psychological theories against the life lived in the surrounding community. By conducting research projects with community agencies students can "actually see the things that they are learning in class," says Anabela L. DaSilva '97. And many students, like Carly Theall '97, speak of their eagerness to begin senior seminar projects that take their learning into the community, perhaps as a foretaste of their own future clinical work.The department of ten covers the range of psychology and its major subfields. Herzberger focuses on social psychology, particularly on matters dealing with family violence. Haberlandt's field of expertise is cognitive psychology, and he has written one of the standard textbooks on that discipline. Professor William M. Mace, while researching and publishing on perception, has also studied the control of motor activities in novice and expert athletes; he is now the editor of Ecological Psychology. Anselmi focuses her research on child and adolescent development with special attention to gender differences.
Professor George C. Higgins, Jr. conducts research on abnormal psychology and serves as the director of the College's Counseling Center, where he is joined by associate director and fellow department member Associate Professor Randolph M. Lee, who conducts research on eating disorders and psychotherapeutic theory. The area of neuroscience and neuropsychology is covered by Assistant Professor Sarah A. Raskin and Associate Professor Priscilla Kehoe, who also is the director of Trinity's neuroscience program. Reuman studies the effects of the social organization of schools on academic motivation and achievement. And Associate Professor David Winer, who also serves as Dean of Students, focuses his research on young adult behavior.
This wide range of reference and the number of active research projects make those senior theses in the hallway even more compelling. Distinguished and productive scholars all, the psychology faculty place student learning at the center of the departmentŐs educational enterprise.
-Mark Warren McLaughlin