KnowLedges -- a newsletter from the Ithaca College School of Humanities and Sciences

CONTENTS

Research Teams Make Knowledge the Goal

by Bernard Beins, chair of the psychology department

The psychology department research team program is giving psychology majors at Ithaca College an experience that students at most colleges and universities can only dream of: the opportunity to work with their professors in the creation of original research.

This unique feature of the psychology department curriculum at Ithaca College provides opportunities to learn about the research process while studying in a field of interest to the student. Research team sessions run three consecutive semesters in which team members collaborate in small groups on original research projects. This work gives them a good view of what psychologists actually do in the profession.

Students take responsibility for all aspects of research, from the generation of ideas for the research projects, through the development of research materials and the conduct of the actual study, to data analysis and the presentation of the results. This hands-on, self-directed approach yields enthusiastic students and impressive results.

One of the reasons that we can generate student enthusiasm and student competence in research is because of our outstanding research facilities. Each research team has laboratory space devoted to it. Thus students can gather with other team members and plan research, analyze data, and interpret their results outside of the formal class meeting.

Currently eight research teams are studying aspects of human motivation, cognitive development, humor, psychology and the media, adulthood and aging, positive psychology, neuroscience, and environmental psychology. The quality of this research is attracting the attention of the broader scientific community.

In collaboration with her research team studying positive psychology, assistant professor Leigh Ann Vaughn is investigating how ordinary human beings survive, thrive, and improve in their environments, as well as change their environments for the better. Her team follows a social-personality psychology approach to studying how potentially positive aspects of the self are developed through various situations.

Research recently completed by the team was accepted for presentation at the national convention of the American Psychological Society. Vaughn attended the meeting this spring with two team members, Sandra Schwartz '05 and Thomas O'Rourke '04, and presented their findings.

This type of experience is not uncommon. In fact one of the successes of the research team program is the number of students who are invited to present their research at conferences. We regularly send 15 to 20 students per year to different meetings to present their findings.

Some venues for their work are local, such as the James J. Whalen Academic Symposium on campus; some are regional, such as the University of Scranton Psychology Conference and the Eastern Colleges Science Conference; and some are national, such as the National Conference on Undergraduate Research.

Our students have also coauthored papers presented at major national conferences, such as the annual conventions of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, the Society for Research in Child Development, the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, and others. Our students have also won awards for their work from the New York State Psychological Association and from the Eastern Colleges Science Conference. Most of the published research is collaborative, a model that matches the world of research psychologists.

The collaborative nature of the research team program offers participants significant benefits upon graduation. Most employers look for the precise types of skills developed in the research team setting: collaborating in a group, setting goals and meeting them, problem solving, and successfully completing a project. The program also benefits students who intend to continue their education through graduate study.

When students contemplate graduate school, two of the most important factors associated with acceptance are research experience and strong letters of recommendation from faculty. The research team experience delivers both, giving students considerable exposure to research and giving faculty a keen awareness of the student's strengths -- a persuasive package for graduate school admissions.

Another element that differentiates our program from those of other colleges is that our students develop an interest and enthusiasm for research. In many schools, research courses are used to "weed out" less promising students. Research is viewed as a chore rather than as an opportunity.

Ithaca College psychology students see research very differently. They recognize it as the quintessential part of psychology and value their participation in research projects. At Ithaca College our students thrive in the research environment because we allow them to participate fully and because we expect them to excel. You can see how well this process works in the number of independent research projects that our students complete after finishing their research team commitments. For Ithaca College psychology students, a passion for hands-on research is not an end in itself. Rather, it is just a beginning -- one that truly grows from a team effort. HS