Article archive / March 1, 2015
Originally published: . Volume 6, No. 3. Source pages: 1, 10.
After a two-year shutdown, the Louisiana State University Psychology Department plans on restarting its Industrial- Organizational Psychology Program.
According to Search Committee Chair, Dr. Janet McDonald, the department is currently interviewing for two Industrial-Organizational Psychology faculty positions one at the associate professor level and one at the assistant professor level. The Times spoke with Dr. McDonald last month who said that the reinstating of the program was a decision supported by the department and the university.
According to the university job information, the tenured Associate Professor will direct the Industrial-Organization Ph.D. program and guide its future growth in collaboration with the Department Chair, Dr. Jason Hicks. The ideal candidate will have a highly visible research program. The Assistant Professor will include graduate and undergraduate teaching and a strong line of research.
Dr. Courtland Chaney, I-O psychologist and retired professor from the LSU, is helping with the search. “In the 1970s and 1980s the industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology program at LSU was well-established and successful in its use of a scientist–practitioner model, preparing graduates for both university and business careers,” Chaney explained to the Times.
In a memo to the department Chaney recommended that the I-O program include the “three historically relevant areas of ‘industrial,’ ‘organizational,’ and ‘social’ psychology,” and noted areas such as job analysis, test validation, job performance measurement and prediction for industrial, and areas such as individual, interpersonal, group behavior and organization development for organizational.
He also noted that he saw some overlap with present department strengths to be beneficial. “New I-O faculty potentially could work with school faculty on topics such as teacher evaluation procedures, teacher morale, school safety and violence mitigation, impact of school privatization, and other efforts at improving school management. I-O faculty also could work with cognitive faculty in researching decision-making processes among business and government leaders under different circumstances (e.g., strategic planning, making decisions during crises or under duress). […]”
In 2013 the Times reported the end of the LSU IO program. At that time the Chair Dr. Bob Mathews said that due to resources the program was “Gone for good.”
The LSU Industrial-Organizational Psychology Program was one of the oldest, continuously running I-O programs in the US, with a long, distinguished legacy. It marked its 60th anniversary in 2012, beginning in 1952 with Dr. Bernard Bass, an early expert in I-O who gained national acclaim for his work in transformational leadership. The combination of Dr. Larry Siegel and Dr. Irv Lane, both who served as Chair, marked for many a profound influence through the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Greg Dobbins and Dirk Steiner took the reins into the next decade, and to a program led by Dr. Tracey Rizzuto and Dr. Russell Matthews until 2013.
Dr. Matthews is now at Bowling Green State University and Director of the Institute for Psychological Research and Application.
Dr. Rizzuto is currently Associate Director of the Human Resource & Leadership Development program with the School of Human Resource Education & Workforce in the LSU College of Human Sciences & Education. She is the Mary Ethel Baxter Lipscomb Memorial Endowed Professor.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.