psychology_Sons_(2003)

CHAPTER 23

Undergraduate Education

THOMAS V. MCGOVERN AND CHARLES L. BREWER

465

THE CONTEXT OF AMERICAN
HIGHER EDUCATION 465
TEACHING 467
Courses: Catalog Studies and Surveys of the
Undergraduate Curriculum 467
The Discipline: Recommendations from
the Experts 469
SCHOLARSHIP 472

Defining the Outcomes of Undergraduate Psychology 472

Assessing the Outcomes of Undergraduate Psychology 473

SERVICE 474

PAST AS PROLOGUE FOR THE

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY 475

REFERENCES 478

Education is discipline for the adventure of life: research is in-

tellectual adventure; and the universities should be homes for

adventure shared in common by young and old. For successful

education, there must always be a certain freshness in the knowl-

edge dealt with. It must be either new in itself or it must be

invested with some novelty of application to the new world of

new times. Knowledge does not keep any better than fish.

(Whitehead, 1929/1952, p. 106)

Since the first undergraduate course of study at Harvard
College in 1636, American higher education faculties have
pursued Whitehead’s vision. During the past 100 years, psy-
chology has become one of the most popular pathways for
this adventure. In 1996–1997, 74,191 baccalaureates and
4,053 doctoral degrees were awarded in psychology, 6.3%
and 8.8%, respectively, of the total number of degrees
awarded at these levels (Almanac, 2000). This chapter exam-
ines the evolution of undergraduate psychology, first as a
body of knowledge implicit in courses and curricula and sec-
ond as explicit learning outcomes that faculty expected of
constantly changing student populations.
We chose the “three-legged stool of faculty activity”
metaphor to organize the chapter: teaching, scholarship, and
service. The section on teaching is a historical review of the
changing courses and degree requirements of the undergrad-
uate psychology curriculum. The section on scholarship ana-
lyzes how faculty identified and assessed specific learning
outcomes. In the section on service, we discuss how psychol-
ogists educated each other and public audiences about their
pedagogy. In a concluding section, we suggest a number of
issues on the horizon, yet to be navigated in the new century.

We begin with a brief sketch of the historical context of

American higher education.

THE CONTEXT OF AMERICAN

HIGHER EDUCATION

“The current pattern of American undergraduate education

is a result of almost 2,500 years of historical evolution”

(Levine & Nideffer, 1997, p. 53). A long look at higher edu-

cation would begin in the Greek academy and trace its

changes in Cicero’s humanitasandars liberalis,through the

scholarship of Constantinople and the Arab world, to

Bologna and Paris, then to Oxford and Cambridge, before ar-

riving in America. The study of the liberal arts was organized

around the verbal arts of the trivium(logic, grammar, and

rhetoric) and the mathematical arts of the quadrivium(arith-

metic, geometry, astronomy, and music) and was the core

curriculum of the medieval universities.

“Curricular history is American history and therefore car-

ries the burden of revealing the central purposes and driving

directions of American society” (Rudolph, 1977, pp. 23–24).

In the first American curriculum at Harvard College, the lib-

eral arts components were organized by the subject matter of

the European triviumandquadrivium. This became the basis

of an almost uniform course of study for America’s colonial

liberal arts and state colleges in the eighteenth century and in

the first half of the nineteenth century. Individual institutions

offered alternatives to this classical course of study in the

forms of applied knowledge such as engineering and techni-

cal and mechanical education (e.g., West Point in 1802 and