http://www.uvm.edu/~dhowell/PsychAtUVM/Department.html (World Wide Web Directory, ~04/1995)
(802) 656-2670 Phone
(802) 656-8783 Fax
Revised July, 1993
As long as the above date is July, 1993, the material on the Experimental program is out of date.
In 1937 the Department of Psychology became a separate entity, carved out of a program of psychological studies housed in the Philosophy Department of the College of Arts and Sciences. From the beginning, the Department has emphasized the systematic study of behavior and internal states.
The first Chair of the Psychology Department was Professor John Metcalf who led the Department for fourteen years during its formative period. He was succeeded by Professors James Chaplin (1951-1964), Donald Forgays (1964-1973), Robert Lawson (1970-1971, Interim), John Burchard (1973-1974, Interim), Richard Musty (1974- 1987), Lawrence Gordon (1981-1982 and 1988-1990, Interim), David Howell (1987-1988 and 1990-1992), and Justin Joffe (1992-present).
Under the leadership of the late Professor Donald G. Forgays, the Ph.D. program in psychology was begun in 1965. Professors Forgays and Wayne Patterson were the primary architects of the move of the Psychology Department from the Waterman Building to our current building, John Dewey Hall, in 1970.
Under the leadership of Professor Harold Leitenberg, who served as the first Director of the Clinical Psychology Program, the doctoral program in clinical psychology was established in 1969. It earned full accreditation by the American Psychological Association in 1973, a status it has maintained ever since. Other directors of the Clinical Psychology Program have been Professors John Burchard, Marc Kessler, James Rosen, and the current Director, Joseph Hasazi.
The Medical Psychology Service in the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont was established in 1970, the Behavior Therapy and Psychotherapy Center was established in 1972 in the Department of Psychology, and the first annual Vermont Conference on the Primary Prevention of Psychopathology was held in June, 1975.
The first Director of the General Experimental Psychology Program was Professor Lawrence R. Gordon (1987-88, 1990-92) followed by Professor Robert B. Lawson (1988-1990), and the current Director, Carol Miller.
The Department established the position of Director of Undergraduate Education in 1993 and the first Director is Professor Lawrence Gordon.
The first woman psychology professor was Maria J. A. Van DerLugt, and the first woman psychology professor to earn tenure at UVM was Lynne Bond. The department now has nine tenure/tenure track positions filled by women. Professor Heinz Ansbacher joined the UVM Psychology Department in 1946, and has served as Professor Emeritus of Psychology since 1970. He served as President of Division 24, Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, of the American Psychological Association. Drs. Heinz and Rowena Ansbacher received honorary degrees (Litt D) from the University in 1980. Professor Ansbacher is still pursuing his internationally recognized studies of Alfred Adler's model of Individual Psychology.
Professor George Albee, now Professor Emeritus, joined the UVM Psychology Department in 1972, and is the first member of the UVM Psychology Department to have served as President of the American Psychological Association. He was also President of Division 12, Clinical Psychology, of APA and a founder of the American Psychological Society. Under his leadership, the Vermont Conference on Primary Prevention of Psychopathology began its now internationally recognized series of conferences in 1975. In 1993 he received the American Psychological Foundation's Gold Medal Award for Life Contribution by a Psychologist in the Public Interest.
Since the establishment of the Psychology Department in 1937 we have graduated well over 6,000 undergraduate majors in psychology and approximately 120 Masters and 200 Doctoral students, with the first Ph.D. in psychology awarded to Robert Lavallee in 1967. Patricia Stone was the first woman awarded the Ph.D. in psychology in 1968. The first minority students to be awarded the Ph.D. in psychology were Maria Cruz and Robert Torres in 1984.
Over the years, the Department has encouraged the transmission and the creation of psychological knowledge in an atmosphere of respect for the life of the mind and the integrity of the individual. It is this legacy that we celebrate today, and look forward to expanding upon in the years ahead.
John Dewey Hall contains a well-equipped computer room,
five large IAC sound-proofed rooms, an animal colony, and a clinic. There
are surgical rooms and laboratories for physiological and other
animal research and a complex of connecting rooms with one-way
mirrors, two-way speakers, and video equipment for human research
activities and observation of clinical assessment and therapy.In the Department clinic, the Behavior Therapy and Psychotherapy Center, there is a second complex of clinical space with video cameras in several rooms and a central video recording room. There is a complete clinical neuropsychology laboratory in the Medical Psychology Service of Medical Center Hospital of Vermont, which is used as a clinical and research facility by department faculty and students.
Support personnel include animal caretakers, a departmental mechanician, a computer specialist, a business manager, and secretarial staff. The University is the center for all health- related research and training in the state. The Medical Center Hospital of Vermont complex contains two teaching facilities. An outpatient specialty health center and a clinical research center is located nearby.
Facilities of the Departments of Anatomy, Communication Science and Disorders, Psychiatry, Pharmacology, and Physiology and Biophysics have been made available to individual graduate students and faculty members of the Psychology Department.
Computing facilities are available within the department and from Computing and Information Technologies at UVM on campus.
They are located about three minutes from the department. In addition, the Psychology Department maintains microcomputers and a local area network to which graduate students have access.
Microcomputer Services has available for sale to students computers from a variety of manufacturers. There are substantial educational and contract discounts available, as well as on-campus maintenance services. Accounts on the mainframe computers and access to the Internet are free.