The Social and Health Sciences division of the psychology department has added a new area of study, social psychology, with hopes of restoring Duke to a position of excellence in this area for which it was once widely revered.
Although officially centered in psychology, the new program will bring together faculty members from varied disciplines, including sociology, the Fuqua School of Business and other departments, said Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences William Chafe.
"There was a meeting not too long ago of 20 people who will be a part of this cross-departmental initiative," Chafe said. "They're all very excited about it. It will put us on the map as being one of the most cutting-edge programs in the country working on social psychology."
Professor Timothy Strauman, chair of the psychology department, shared Chafe's optimism about the potential benefits that social psychology could bring to the University.
"This is an area that Duke can really take the lead in--we have a really unique opportunity here," Strauman said. "Already a lot of really good people around campus are doing work that is applied social psychology. By hiring social psychologists into our department, we will have a core to build an identity for Duke as one of the best places to study social psychology."
Professor of Sociology Lynn Smith-Lovin, who will teach in the new program, said the cross-disciplinary character of the new program is one of its greatest assets.
"The plan is for it to provide a much broader and deeper intellectual resource than any one department could provide, by supporting research opportunities, teaching and monitoring across all of these departments," she said.
Smith-Lovin added that social psychology is studied in a variety of disciplines because of its comprehensive nature.
"Social psychology is the domain that brings a lot of the information that we already have about social structures, cognition, emotional response and other phenomenon that actually affect our relationships with other people," she explained. "I think it is very important in its own right and in a number of specific applied areas, which is why you see social psychologists in the school of business, public policy, the social sciences, as well as psychology, which you might think of as its home discipline. There are social psychologists everywhere."
Tonya Chartrand, associate professor of marketing and psychology at the Fuqua School of Business, will be a member of the burgeoning area of study. She noted the important role that social psychology plays in the current climate of psychology.
"Social psychology is a core area of psychology now, and almost every major department has a social psychology group," Chartrand said. "Duke used to have a fantastic social psychology group, but they had lost it over the years. In the broader academic community people are talking about it and think it is great that Duke is trying to rebuild it's social psychology department."
Strauman said that while the introduction of social psychology "was certainly something that this department was interested in," many other departments at the University also called for such a program.
"It emerges over several years from a number of different influences. One was people around campus who want their students in other disciplines to get training in social psychology," Strauman said. "So for example, the faculty in the business school who were doing research would have liked their graduate students to take courses related to the basic study of social psychology."
The major impetus for the creation of social psychology came from an external review of the department that occurred last year, Chafe said.
"When we had an external review of the psychology department, this was seen as one of the areas where we needed to reestablish our reputation and put resources," he added. "This program is a product of the good side of the external review process."
The study of social psychology will be available to undergraduate students and will also be a graduate program in the department.
Strauman said the program would begin at the graduate level in Fall 2004 and the department will be accepting graduate students in the social psychology program starting in the current application cycle.
In addition to faculty members already lined up for the new program, Chafe was excited about a new hire in psychology, Wendy Wood.
"Wendy Wood arrives on campus for good in January," Chafe said. "She has been the vice provost for research at Texas and she is one of the top 10 people in the country doing this kind of work."
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