Psychology Ph.D. Launched

THE number of Dartmouth academic departments offering Ph.D. programs was increased to nine this fall with the inauguration of a doctoral program by the Department of Psychology. Four candidates for the degree are enrolled at the start, and with a yearly admission of approximately six students planned, total enrollment for the four-year program is envisaged as about twenty. This purposely limited enrollment, permitting tutorial instruction and intimate student-faculty relationships, is seen as one of the major strengths of the new program.

In addition to Psychology, the departments now offering the Ph.D. are Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Engineering Sciences, Earth Sciences, Mathematics, Molecular Biology, Physics, and Physiology-Pharmacology. The first of the nine doctoral programs were offered in the fall of 1962 by Biological Sciences and Mathematics. Although the sciences have dominated Ph.D. developments at Dartmouth, Psychology is a breakthrough for the social sciences, and other proposals are under review by the Council on Graduate Studies.

The Department of Psychology, headed by Prof. William M. Smith, has stated that the primary aim of its Ph.D. program is to help fill the urgent need for psychologists who will pursue teaching careers. Although the number of doctorates in psychology is rising annually, the growth rate is not sufficient to meet the demands of government, industry, and the community along with those of colleges and universities. Dartmouth's emphasis will be on academia, and to that end special attention will be given to developing the graduate student's teaching competence as well as his research skill. The program calls for a sequence of supervised teaching experiences of graduated complexity and also a seminar on problems of teaching.

Against the background of contemporary doctoral programs in psychology, which are mostly built around narrow specialization and methodological competence in particular areas, the Dartmouth program will have another distinction in its emphasis on broad training in experimental psychology. "By experimental," says Professor Smith, "is meant stress on the study of basic psychological processes and their significance for complex behaviors and on the integration of current research with theories of broad scope. We wish to train scholars who will be able to see the implications of their work in its widest ramifications, and who can synthesize their data with relevant information from allied fields such as biology, mathematics, and sociology."

As with other doctoral programs at the College, the one in psychology is expected to enhance greatly the overall capability of the department in terms of faculty, research, and outside support. These benefits in turn can be expected to stimulate improved undergraduate education, a prime reason for the willingness of the Trustees to approve the introduction of doctoral programs.

The Department of Psychology at Dartmouth, with a broad and strong undergraduate program in general experimental psychology, has an excellent record of majors who went on to distinguish themselves as teacher-scholars. The Ph.D. program is an extension of this traditional strength — an undertaking abetted by the relatively new facilities of Gerry Hall and by a 16-man faculty equal to the quality demands of doctoral instruction.