August 29, 2001

Dr. Paul Nelson

American Psychological Association

Washington, DC 20002

Dear Paul:

We are happy to submit this progress report which focuses on our activities since January 2001, and our plans for this coming academic year.

I have organized the report according to the outline you suggested, beginning with an update to the February report, followed by challenges we have experienced, and finally, an estimate of participation in the program.

I. Update to the February report

A. What experiences have our students gained in the areas of teaching, research, and service?

In February, Bill Addison, who was a candidate for president-elect of Society for Teaching of Psychology, and is a Miami doctoral alumnus, visited the department. He met with our Social Psychology Research Interest Group to talk about "Service in Professional organizations" and gave a colloquium on "Student Evaluations of Teaching." Ted Wagenaar, a Miami faculty member in Sociology, gave a session on "Teaching Portfolios" Feb 26. Tim Dowd, multiple-times winner of Miami's Psi Chi "faculty member of the year" award, led a session on "Teaching Large Classes" March 5.

Ayesha Shaikh attended a pre-conference workshop at MPA sponsored by APA on preparing for faculty roles.

Over the course of last year, we had colloquia from a partner faculty and a doctoral alumnus, a practice we would like to continue. We had "brown bags" on diversity, professional development and non-teaching aspects of the faculty role. These are slots we’d like to see filled again. Jim Korn, a member of the APA task force on PFF, and Barney Beins, who currently serves as APA Director for Precollege and Undergraduate Programs will be coming for colloquium. Incidentally, they are both Miami undergrad alumni. Lee Fox-Cardamone, a doctoral alumna, will also visit. Robin Bartlett, partner faculty from NKU, will give colloquium, as well as talk about her hiring experience and first year as a new faculty member. Len Mark, winner of the Jahnke-White departmental service award, will lead a brown bag Sept. 24, and in February we plan to go to College of Mount St. Joseph for a session on technology in teaching led by Beth Uhler and Tim Lawson (partner faculty). Still to be settled are: a panel of administrators to talk about that as a career path, and perhaps a visitor on service learning.

2. What mentoring experiences are students participating in?

Each of our APA PFF scholars completes a "placement" on one of the partner campuses, including a mentoring relationship with a partner faculty member. Without doubt, based on their interview comments and their year-end reflections, these were valuable experiences in helping Scholars understand how context affects faculty roles. We are deeply grateful to our partner faculty for their investment in our students.

3. What experiences are students gaining from interactions with the different partner institutions?

The "placements" have been extremely valuable; we intend to make some changes this year, to be described below. Everyone agreed that the Tri-State Psychology Symposium should be repeated this year. This year we intend to start planning earlier, involve doctoral faculty sooner, and involve more of the Scholars in making it happen.

This year, second-year graduate students in PSY 685, Teaching Practicum, will be given the option of visiting one of our partner institutions. As mentioned above, we are including partner faculty in our colloquium and brown-bag series. We hope to hold a "getting to know you" event early in the year for partner faculty and the APA PFF Scholars.

4. What activities have we undertaken to seek out graduate students from diverse and culturally different backgrounds for participation in the PFF program?

We were successful in recruiting a member of an ethnic minority to be one of our APA PFF Scholars for 2001-2, and another member of the group is a member of a sexual minority. In terms of program content, our chair is working on an invitation to a speaker for the colloquium series on diversity issues, and on making contact with Central State/Wilberforce (area HBCUs) regarding exchanges. If that fails, I have surveyed APAs Directory of Ethnic Minority Professionals that you sent, and identified a few names of possible speakers.

5. What activities are we undertaking to integrate PFF activities with current faculty preparation programs?

PSY 685 (Teaching Practicum) students will be given opportunities to visit partner campuses. We are also integrating some of the speakers for the program into the regular departmental colloquium series and the "brown bag" professional development offerings with the pre-existing Social Psychology Research Interest Group. We participated in the departmental poster session in April. I made sure that the 685 students and APA PFF scholars noticed the workshops and grant opportunities from the university Committee on Enhancement of Learning and Teaching, and have heard that at least one 685 student intends to submit a small grant proposal. Talks are beginning regarding extending the program to other doctoral departments at MU.

6. What are we doing to disseminate information about the PFF program?

The APA-PFF scholars held a meeting during the Council of Teachers of Undergraduate Psychology (CTUP) sessions at MPA, on our first-year experiences with the program. This was somewhat disappointing as a dissemination opportunity, however, since the only people who came to our session were affiliated with the program in some way (we must have been up against some scheduling competition). However, we made good use of the time to receive input and impressions about the program from different constituencies, including current scholars, partner faculty and doctoral faculty.

The APA PFF scholars put together a poster for Departmental Poster Day containing their reflections for the year, which were also published in our newsletter.

Ayesha Shaikh participated in a panel discussion for grad students at APA titled, "Preparing for faculty positions: What you need to know."

I wrote an essay about the program that appeared in the College of Arts & Sciences magazine, Compass. I participated in a pre-conference workshop at Society for Research on Child Development on doctoral education in developmental psychology, partly to talk about the program.

At the beginning of this academic year, packets of information about the program including our newsletter, descriptions of the program, and an article about the national initiative, are being distributed to various constituencies (grad students, partner and doctoral faculty). Faculty are also getting information about faculty at the other schools, and partners are getting information about this year's crop of APA PFF scholars and Miami's colloquium schedule. Administrators will receive a copy of our newsletter and this report.

We will be presenting a panel on "Preparing Doctoral Students for Faculty Roles" at MACTOP in October. We submitted a proposal for a session on that topic to the Lilly Conference on College Teaching.

7. What have we done toward evaluation of the program?

Last year, we prepared a pre-test/post-test evaluation of the program for our APA PFF scholars group, and a year-end questionnaire for various constituencies, as well as a questionnaire about the Tri-State Symposium. At this point, we have to say that the quantitative data were disappointing as a source of information, due to low return rates. I have issued the pre-test questionnaire to this year's APA PFF scholars, and hope that over the next couple of years we will accumulate enough responses to make this a meaningful source of quantitative information. I am open to suggestions on improving return rates for the questionnaires that we distribute to other constituencies.

However, qualitative methods have been much more helpful and informative. Each APA PFF scholar submitted a portfolio of their activities and reflections on these, and wrote a short reflection on the program; these have been helpful in publicity efforts. Sandy Neumann conducted a qualitative evaluation of the program, by interviewing APA PFF scholars.

Enthusiastic emails following the Tri-State symposium, the CTUP session and the PFF conference itself have been valuable sources of information about the perceptions of the program by partner faculty. These, plus the interview information Sandy obtained, were the primary sources of information we used in making plans for the coming year.

We are grateful for the time, energy and enthusiasm brought by cluster participants to the meetings at CTUP and the PFF conference. Participants at the CTUP meeting included: Jim Bodle & Tim Lawson (CMSJ), Wally Dixon (doctoral alumnus), Terri-Messman-Moore & Margaret Wright (MU), Beth Uhler (MU-M), Ayesha Shaikh, Amy Buddie, & Sandy Neumann (grad). Representatives at the PFF conference included: Jim Bodle (CMSJ), Diana Punzo (Earlham), Robin Bartlett (NKU), Shannon Maxwell (MU-H), Beth Uhler (MU-M), Sandy Neumann (grad), Patty Mills (grad), & Cecilia Shore (MU).

II. Challenges

One of our biggest joys was also our biggest problem: Placements. There was considerable inequity--some people taught a class by themselves. Others did teaching assistant type work. Some people got paid. Others didn't. Travel time differs considerably to the different campuses. Scheduling is an intractable nightmare. Partner campuses need to know who will be filling adjunct positions months before our grad students know what their support picture or schedules will be.

In response, we intend to increase the flexibility of the types of involvement our Scholars have on the partner campuses. If students can serve as adjuncts on partner campuses, we will encourage and support that, but "teaching a class" will not be our only model for becoming involved with a partner campus. Scholars can visit undergrad organizations, involve students in their research, do mock job talks, give presentations/guest lectures on their specialties, attend Faculty Assembly meetings, shadow partner faculty, serve as Science Fair judges… There are many possibilities. Some students may want to concentrate on a single partner campus, whereas others may want a taste of different institutions. We are setting a goal of 50 total hours (including travel time) over the year for partner involvement by each Scholar. Although some Scholars will be involved with several different partner campuses, we tend to think it is still of value for each Scholar to develop a professional relationship with a particular partner faculty member, to give the perspective of depth of knowledge of a particular campus.

I think the other important challenge is evaluation. Busy students and professionals are unlikely to return surveys, though this seems like the most open form of requesting feedback, and one amenable to quantitative analysis. An analysis comparing job success for PFF vs. non-PFF students is years away, in terms of the outcomes of interest, and developing sufficient data to be meaningful. Consequently, it might be more realistic to consider more face-to-face methods, like focus groups of various constituencies. You mentioned that you were planning to get program directors together to talk about these issues--I look forward to meeting with you and other cluster representatives to consider these problems.

III. Participation by various groups

I am remiss in not taking attendance at various PFF events, so I can only give a fairly broad account.

Partner faculty: I have noted partners' names who participated in the program in one way or another over the year (allowing themselves to be shadowed, coming to the Tri-State symposium, etc.). From NKU: George Goedel, Jeff Smith, Jim Thomas, Angela Lipsitz, Doug Krull, David Hogan, Perilou Goddard, Angie King, Robin Bartlett. College of Mount St. Joseph: Lynda Crane, Mary Kay Fleming, Jim Bodle, Tim Lawson. Earlham: Kathy Milar, Vince Punzo, Diana Punzo, Mary Schwendener-Holt. (There may have been others who attended a meeting with our 685 students last fall, but I did not get their names). MU-Middletown: Beth Uhler, Tony Cooper. MU-Hamilton: Shannon Maxwell. Each of these represents a substantial percentage of the faculty in their respective departments. We are grateful for the welcome we have received from our partners, and their willingness to share their time with us.

Doctoral faculty: MU faculty members who have had notable involvement in PFF events this year include: Karen Schilling, Phil Best, Roger Knudson, Steve Hinkle, Terri Messman-Moore, Margaret Wright, Lynn Olzak, Len Mark, Tim Dowd, Marv Dainoff (and myself). There were several additional members of the department who were present at either or both the SPRIG/colloquium events or at the Tri-State symposium, but I don't have their names listed. Consequently, about half of the faculty had notable involvement, and perhaps nearly everyone experienced one event. Our graduate dean, Bob Johnson, and members of his staff attended the talk by Jennifer Robinson last fall, and both Dean Johnson and Provost Crutcher participated in the Tri-State symposium.

Grad students: We had seven APA PFF scholars last year, two of whom continued to this year and were joined by a new five, bringing us back to seven. These students serve as the core attendees of brown bags and colloquia. Eleven additional PSY 685 students visited partner campuses last fall and went to the Lilly Conference on College Teaching. The entire first-year class came to the talk I presented to the College of Arts and Sciences about the program. Most of the social and developmental students were at the SPRIG Bill Addison presented. The talk by Kathy Milar and the Tri-State symposium were attended by about 20 grad students. I estimate that about 50-66% of the grad students participated in one or another event over the course of the year.

We thank APA and our graduate dean for making this program possible. We have come a long way this year in terms of establishing a partnership between our graduate program and our partner institutions. I have been impressed by the exciting dynamic of the relationships between our grad students and our partners. It has been tremendously exciting and rewarding to see the many benefits of these relationships, not just to the grad students and partner faculty, but also to undergraduates. Our first year has been very rich and I hope that we can build on our accomplishments in the coming year.

Sincerely,

Cecilia Shore

Professor

Cc:

Karen Schilling, Chair

Robert Johnson, Graduate Dean

Ronald Crutcher, Provost

Partner faculty: Beth Uhler, Shannon Maxwell, Jeff Smith, Jim Bodle, Kathy Milar

Partner administrators: George Goedel, Mary Kay Fleming, Lynda Crane, Len Clark, Gary Wheeler, Lee Knisley Sanders, Gail Wells, Cynthia Zane

Contacts at other APA clusters, and University of Cincinnati