Teaching 471taught as “experimental psychology” courses. The authors
wrote separate chapters on personal adjustment courses,
technical training, implementation problems based on institu-
tional differences, and the need for a research agenda to mea-
sure the effectiveness of undergraduate education.
A similar study group approach, the Michigan Confer-
ence, was sponsored by the National Science Foundation
10 years later and was reported in McKeachie and Milholland
(1961). This group began with data from a survey of 548 de-
partments to which 411 responded; 274 had revised their cur-
riculum since the earlier Cornell report. They found that 69%
of the respondents used the earlier recommendations. An im-
portant point to note is that the Michigan group of six psy-
chologists framed their recommendations in the context of
two critical external forces affecting psychology. First, the
demographics of higher education were changing both in
terms of increased numbers and increased diversity (specifi-
cally in age and vocational goals). Second, “more serious
than the problem of sheer numbers is the fact that teaching is
not a prestigeful occupation in psychology these days. The
research man is the status figure” (p. 6).
A compelling integration of Veysey’s (1973) three
forces—utilitarian demands, scientific advances, and values
of a liberal education—form a subtext for this entire report.
McKeachie and Milholland (1961) asserted that the psychol-
ogy curriculum “would be firmly anchored in the liberal
arts, rejecting undergraduate vocational training as a pri-
mary goal” (p. 33). This principle is operationalized in great
detail in two chapters: “The Beginning Course” and “The
Experimental-Statistical Area.” The greatest value lay in
“teaching psychology as an organized body of scientific
knowledge and method with its own internal structure for de-
termining the admissibility of materials to be taught” (p. 59).
The authors were unequivocal in their commitment to
teaching psychology as a continually advancing science,
reaffirming the Cornell group’s objectives: content knowl-
edge, rigorous habits of thought, and values and attitudes.
They expanded these general goals with a set of 16 objec-
tives, many of which are similar to statements about “critical
thinking” that emerged as part of identifying liberal arts out-
comes when assessment initiatives became so influential in
the mid-1980s and after. The Michigan authors sketched
three different curricular models because they could not
agree on a single one. In what was a utilitarian and prescient
comment, they concluded, “What is ideal, we now believe,
depends on the staff, the students, the total college curricu-
lum, and other factors” (p. 103). Into the 1990s, “staff,” “stu-
dents,” and the “total college curriculum” would play an in-
creasing role in shaping how individual institutions
communicated the discipline. “Other factors”—all external
to the discipline and to campuses—would play an even more
important role in setting the timetables and parameters for
changes in the curriculum.
The 1991 St. Mary’s College of Maryland Conference had
a long history in development, an ambitious agenda, and di-
versity in its participants. Its processes and outcomes reflect
the continuing evolution of the discipline’s attention to un-
dergraduate education. A resolution introduced to the APA
Council of Representatives by the Massachusetts Psycho-
logical Association asked the Committee on Undergraduate
Education (CUE) to examine(1) the role and purpose of the undergraduate psychology major
in relation to traditional liberal arts education (and prepara-
tion for graduate school in psychology) and preparation for
a bachelor-degree-level job in a psychology-related field, and
(2) whether APA should set forth guidelines for curriculum mod-
els in undergraduate psychology (with an accompanying ratio-
nale). (As cited in Lloyd & Brewer, 1992, pp. 272–273)The CUE formulated a response, approved by the Council of
Representatives in August 1985, that reaffirmed the psychol-
ogy baccalaureate as a liberal arts degree, that no prescribed
curriculum should be developed, but that guidelines or mod-
els could be considered based on continuing, periodic sur-
veys of undergraduate education. Continuing discussion led
to a conference proposal. Sixty psychologists met for one
week in a highly structured group dynamic designed to pro-
duce draft chapters of a handbook on seven topics: assess-
ment, advising, recruitment and retention of ethnic minority
faculty and students, faculty development, faculty networks,
curriculum, and active learning practices. Among the 60 par-
ticipants at St. Mary’s, 28 (47%) were women and 11 (18%)
were ethnic minority persons (neither the 1951 nor the 1960
conference had such representation). In addition to partici-
pants from liberal arts colleges and universities, there were
five faculty members from community colleges, two from
high school psychology programs, and two representatives
from Canada and Puerto Rico. As planned, a comprehensive
handbook was produced (McGovern, 1993); at the urging of
Ludy T. Benjamin, a Quality Principlesdocument was also
produced by the steering committee and eventually approved
as APA policy by the Council of Representatives (McGovern
& Reich, 1996).
In their chapter on the curriculum, Brewer et al. (1993)
reaffirmed the importance of psychology as a liberal arts dis-
cipline. “The fundamental goal of education in psychology,
from which all the others follow, is to teach students to
think as scientists about behavior” (p. 168). They amplified
this statement with six specific goals: attention to human