Neuro Now!: Should Neuroscience be a Department or a Program?

" Neuro Now! " That is the battle cry among our students who are fighting for departmental status at Pomona College. Typically at undergraduate institutions neuroscience majors are administered by faculty members in multiple departments. That is, neuroscience is a program rather than a department. Program administration of majors is a very flexible and attractive way for colleges to offer its students additional fields of study without additional resources. When a college has a critical mass of faculty in a coherent and cohesive area of study, it can combine existing resources across departments to offer a full-fledged major. This seems to be a common administrative structure for many interdisciplinary areas of study, such as Women's Studies, Black Studies, Media Studies, and Neuroscience. What exactly are our students clamoring for and what is wrong with program status, anyway? I think there are at least three potentially significant limitations-ones that are common to undergraduate and graduate programs alike. First, programs tend to have little say in new and replacement positions. A hire that is in the best interest of a department may not be in the best interest of a program, and vice versa. Because departmental priorities will win out over program priorities, this may make it extremely difficult to staff programs, leaving many programs understaffed or not strategically staffed. Limited staffing can leave some critical areas of the curriculum and research experience without coverage. Second, programs do not have a " home " for their students. Because faculty are scattered among contributing departments, students miss the intellectual stimulation and interpersonal cohesiveness that their counterparts in traditional departments experience. Ed Stricker, who conducts the biannual Associate of Neuroscience Departments and Programs (ANDP) survey stated, " not all schools with neuroscientists as faculty members have departments of neuroscience. Neuroscientists in these other departments understandably want to interact with their colleagues elsewhere on campus, both in research centers and in graduate training programs. The resultant integration for neuroscientists across departments and across schools undoubtedly enhances the quality of those programs while making the community more collegial, more visible and attractive to students and faculty, and more influential on campus. " Third, faculty involved in both a home department and a program tend to have greater demands placed upon them than those who don't because they are attending to the needs of both entities. This can create a strain on faculty who participate in programs. …