Article archive / January 1, 2013
Originally published: . Volume 4, No. 5. Source pages: 9.
Dr. Janet B. Ruscher, past Chair of the Tulane Psychology Depart- ment and currently Associate Dean for Graduate Programs in Tulane’s School of Science and Engineering, spoke with Dr. Joseph E. Steinmetz in his Presidential Column in the APS Observer, December 2012.
Dr. Ruscher and colleague Dr. Neil Rowland from the University of Florida, shared their experiences in leading their departments of psychology, in Steinmetz’ column titled, “From Where the Chair Sits.”
Ruscher said challenges for department heads include the large numbers enrolled in psychology courses. But, Ruscher explained, that if one asks a colleague what she was busy doing, “one hears not only about these obvious responsibilities but also about the nearly invisible – and certainly under- acknowledged – activities that cumulatively devour an academic psychologist’s time.”
In this list Ruscher included: colleagues outside of psychology who ask for statistical advice, those who ask for strategies to address program evaluations for grant proposals, and colleagues who ask for comments on STEM initiatives.
She also included that department chairs are to play a leadership role in “service learning and internships, coverage of behavioral medicine to address the new MCAT, and both new and classic interdisciplinary initiatives such as social entrepreneurship and neuroscience.”
Author Steinmetz notes that it is clear that scientific psychologists at universities make a “significant impact on the life of those institutions.”
Ruscher said, “These contributions to the university are akin to dark matter in the universe: critical to structure and function but overlooked, underestimated, and even doubted by current standards.”
“Personally, I would not trade the chaos of relevance for the tranquility of the inconsequential,” Dr. Ruscher told Steinmetz.
Dr. Janet B. Ruscher served as the Chair of the Psychology Department at Tulane until last year when she accepted the Associate Dean position. Her research work involves social cognition, prejudice, and language. The article can be read in full at the APS website.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.