NLC Psychology Department Receives Grant to Implement District-wide Forum

(April 30, 2008) Northeast Lakeview College's Department of Psychology received a $5,000 grant from the APS Fund for Teaching and Public Understanding of Psychological Science to implement the "ACCD Psychology Forum. The forum will provide opportunities for faculty to discuss issues facing ACCD students, share techniques in the teaching of psychology at the community college level, and learn innovative teaching methods.

All District psychology faculty members will be invited to a half-day Fall colloquium to hear from an expert in the field and to discuss pedagogical issues. In addition, a symposium, one in the Fall and another in the Spring, will be held to provide an exchange and sharing of ideas and concepts among colleagues.

Historically, there have been no formal structures that convene psychology faculty members across the District to facilitate the exchange of experience, knowledge and skills as it pertains to the practice of teaching psychology. The ACCD Psychology Forum aims to facilitate communication among psychology faculty members of ACCD who experience comparable challenges as they teach community college students.

The goals of the ACCD Psychology Forum are to improve communication between ACCD psychology faculty at the colleges, promote a better understanding of ACCD students and their needs and issues, provide professional development for ACCD psychology faculty and develop relationships with faculty at four-year institutions in the San Antonio area to facilitate the transfer process for psychology majors

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The project was initiated and will be implemented by Dr. Stephanie Greiner, Assistant Professor of Psychology at NLC. "The District will benefit from this forum as it moves to create better alignment of programs, including psychology," Greiner says. "This project will provide the groundwork for the development of relationships among faculty members who will work collaboratively to ensure that ACCD provides quality instruction to all psychology students in the District." This pilot program will initially serve the psychology department, but could eventually branch out to other disciplines across the district.