September 2003
Volume 16, Number 9
Shifting Focus
The Experience of a Traditional Academic in a Professional School
I am a scientist-practitioner in the tradition of the Boulder Model. I have taught in three major medical schools, in a small state university, in two graduate schools, and have just retired as professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In the spirit of the scientist-practitioner, I have been a clinician in large and small group practices as well as in individual, independent ones. In all of these roles I have been interested in how psychological knowledge can be developed and applied more meaningfully. While I pride myself for having made many transitions and for pioneering some "cutting edge" applications of science to practice, my recent transition (since my retirement) to directing a large PhD program in a free standing professional school (Pacific Graduate School of Psychology) has required a substantially different level of adaptation.
I am employed less than full time at PGSP, and am on campus two days a week and in my home office every night. I oversee a student body of 250 doctoral students and over 20 faculty members. At some levels, the shift I have made is very subtle. For example, I maintain my commitment to both science and practice. My hope for this program, however, is not to breed academic scientists, but to create practitioners who use the scientific method to both invent new treatments and to guide their use of older ones.
Like other professional schools, PGSP emphasizes academic-scholar roles for students rather than scientist or scientist-practitioner ones. I envision our students as working at the front line, both to develop new knowledge and to apply that knowledge to program development, program evaluation, outcome assessment, and even individual patient evaluation and psychotherapy.
There are many larger and more difficult adjustments that I have had to make in assuming this position than simply altering my training model. For example, working in a free-standing professional school requires one to accept a tight and often denied link between the availability of money, on one hand, and decisions about student admission, application of student discipline, and even grade assignments, on the other. Every decision must be weighed, at least partly, by whether it will attract and retain applicants to the program. While I've always thought of students as the "consumers" of my work, this concept no longer holds true. Students are instead the democratic voice; they directly dictate whether my proposals will be implemented. I can no longer look beyond a given body of students to those in the future in order to seek a more distant objective. The budget, and hence the programs, are immediately affected by the decisions of a single individual not to re-enroll. I've become near-sighted.
The administration is also more closely involved in my decisions. In major universities, a professor is several tiers removed from the administration. In an independent graduate school, however, the designated leadership is rarely more than a step away. There is a tendency to engage in over-management. Roles blur as everyone wants to have a part of all decisions, and the organization tends to become top heavy as everyone assumes some title to designate his importance.
Then there are the students. The nature of students in a free standing professional school is different than in research universities. They require more careful handling, they are less interested in the philosophy that I enjoy so much, and they demand that you justify the practical and immediate applicability of any program or hypothesis that one advances.
In the face of challenges such as those only briefly mentioned here, I have, on many occasions, been asked why I decided to use my retirement in this way. In fact, the answers are relatively simple:
I assumed this role first and foremost to have the opportunity of working with some special friends and colleagues. Bruce Bongar has been a long time collaborator, and the chance of working more closely with him, Phil Zimbardo, Jim Breckenridge, and others in the Palo Alto/PGSP/Stanford community, is very gratifying.
I like a challenge and value opportunities for innovative program development. We have recently developed a coalition with the Palo Alto Veterans Medical Center and with Stanford Medical School. It is my challenge here to ensure continuing CoA/APA accreditation of our program. The alliances that are available to accomplish this task provide remarkable opportunities for growth and creativity.
My colleagues and I had, for some months following the events of September 11, 2001, discussed the possibility of developing a national center to study and develop programs that address crises of terrorism and disaster. Since moving to Palo Alto, I have been provided an opportunity to institute such a center with the help of the PGSP Veterans Medical Center and the Stanford coalitions. As a result, there is now a National Center for Disaster Psychology and Terrorism. Seed funding and some skeletal programs are in place, and we have a large body of national and international colleagues who have signed on as consultants.
Bongar, Zimbardo, Breckenridge and I believe that we can make a difference in today's world. Through the help of the Palo Alto coalition, the PGSP, and the National Center on Disaster Psychology and Terrorism, we combine old knowledge, new knowledge, and many viewpoints with a large student body to address the problems of an increasingly globalized, frighteningly volatile violence. Here is where the research and practice of psychology can really matter.
