As some of you may have heard, the President and Provost of Western Michigan University recently announced the elimination of 8 doctoral programs and 13 master's programs following a university-wide review. Among the programs being cut were the doctoral program in clinical psychology and the master's program for industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology. While the faculty union recently earned two concessions from the administration in the form of an appeals process (decisions were previously announced as final) and the resignation of the Provost (who headed up the graduate program review process and proposed the cuts), we're not out of the woods yet.
Both of these programs are very successful, productive, cost-effective, and firmly grounded in behavior analysis. At least two faculty members in the Clinical program are trained in ACT (Scott Gaynor and Amy Naugle) and two faculty members in the I/O program are interested in the application of ACT/RFT to organizational problems (John Austin and myself).
We believe these proposed cuts are unwarranted and would have a very negative impact on both our department and the field of behavior analysis in general.
To learn more about how you can help and the details of the situation, visit http://wmupsy.com and then sign our petition at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/psychology.
Thanks much for your support.
Best,
Eric J. Fox, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
Western Michigan University