The Hillsdale College psychology program, after its former director resigned, was restructured this last summer.
Associate Professor of Psychology Kari McArthur was promoted to psychology chair after Professor Fritz Tsao resigned during the summer. Assistant Professor of Psychology Collin Barnes joined the faculty on the tenure track. Two adjunct lecturers in psychology were also hired: Terri Pardee and Janis Yeaman.
“We’d like to continue the tradition of giving our students a strong research background so that they have a really solid foundation, no matter what they go into,” McArthur said. “It’s not just my vision. It’s our team’s vision.”
McArthur said the department will replace the two adjunct lecturers with a full-time visiting professor starting next fall. The department will then drop that position and hire a permanent professor starting in the fall of 2014.
Barnes graduated from John Brown University in 2003 and earned his doctorate from the University of Oklahoma in 2010. He then worked for a year as a researcher for HealthCore, Inc., a private health care research company, before coming to Hillsdale.
“My time here at Hillsdale has been terrific so far,” Barnes said. “I love being with a group of students who are actually zealous about learning for the sake of learning, because that has not always been true in my teaching experience.”
The department also bought new equipment. The psychology suite now has nine new computers, soon to be equipped with software for data collection, experiments, and data analyses.
“The psychology suite is the hidden gem of Hillsdale’s campus,” senior psychology major Brad Francis said. “I actually got to visit the social psychology labs of a few graduate schools in Texas, and I was surprised to see that our facilities here are much better than at those doctorate programs.”
The department also purchased push-button response equipment that can measure a participant’s reaction to various stimuli down to the millisecond.
“That is very much par for the course for contemporary psychology labs, so we will be right up there with the best departments in a lot of ways,” Barnes said.
Psychology students and professors will break away from their revamped suite to hold a psychology workshop at the Rockwall Lake Lodge Sept. 28-30. McArthur said she expects 17 to 19 interested speech students to attend.
“A number of speech students do quantitative research, so this will be helpful to them,” McArthur said. “It’s also nice to be able to work with other departments.”
Psychology students say activities like the workshop demonstrate McArthur’s passion for creating an academic community.
“Even though the psychology department is small, I’ve always felt disconnected from everyone else, but she is bringing more unity,” senior psychology major Amanda Johnson said. “I love that she is so excited about this and trying to make the whole department a team.”
