A “Revisited” blog post indicates that I reread the original and used AI-assisted tools (e.g., Grammarly) to improve grammar and word choice.
I’m writing this primarily for the 459 alumni that I recently attempted to contact via a letter who graduated with a Psychology major between 2002 and 2010. Though one of my intentions in that letter was to alert you to the 2011 – 2012 Power of Ten fund-raising campaign of our Carroll Advancement Office, I genuinely am and always have been interested in staying in touch and learning what paths your lives have followed since graduating from Carroll. My undergraduate experience at Oberlin College was formative, informative, and transformational, and I hope that, with time, you will feel the same way about Carroll.
Since many of you responded to the online survey (which my research students and I included in that letter) indicated an interest in staying in touch, I am explicitly sending you a link to this short reflection piece. I welcome YOUR reflections and comments about your experiences. If you did not receive the letter I am alluding to or would like an additional opportunity to complete the short (5-item survey) whose link I included in the letter (and therefore help out my students), contact me, and I’ll send you the link. Feel free to pass along this opportunity to share reflections with other Carroll psychology major alumni.
I arrived at Carroll ABD (All But Dissertation) from Ohio State in 1978 at the same time as Greg Schneider (Walter Young Center), Jerry Isaacs (Computer Science), and Phil Krejcarek (Art). Greg (no longer at Carroll) is now my business partner. Jerry and Phil are still here, though we three and Gary Olsen are now marching at the FRONT of the processional of faculty at convocations. When I joined Carroll, we maintained an enrollment of 1,200 students for the past ten years. Today, our registration is over 3,000.
I joined a psychology faculty of two (Ralph and Virginia Parsons). I had an opportunity to get to know almost every Carroll psychology major because they all HAD to take Psychology 205 (Statistics and Experimental Design) from me to graduate(—today, it sadly is possible for a student to graduate with a psychology major and never to have taken a class from me). At that time, we had very few adjunct faculty teaching and a token evening school program that “traditional students” were forbidden to take. I proudly introduced the first microcomputer into the department—my TRS80 Model I level II machine with 16K memory. One of our first adjunct faculty was Peggy Kasimatis.
Fast forward…The Carroll College of 2002 was much different. Psychology faculty now included Dr. Denise Guastello (still here) and Dr. Keri Hainsworth, a former student currently happily researching at Children’s Hospital of Milwaukee. By then, I was having in the classroom children of former students! Also, I became the short-lived Chair of the Psychology Department before, by administrative fiat, there were no longer chairs or departments at Carroll. Shortly after that, Ralph and Virginia Parsons retired after having given more than twenty-five years of their lives to developing what was correctly recognized as one of Carroll’s academically most robust departments and still is. I know that the reminiscences deeply touched them, and many of you shared with me about them when I contacted alumni to help me prepare a memory book for them.
Fast forward again… In addition to Denise and me, the full-time faculty today include Dr. Chris May, who just received tenure, Dr. Matt Scheel, former Carroll student Dr. Tara Schmidt (who teaches all sections of Experimental Psychology), and Dr. Sandy Arntz, who specializes in Developmental Psychology. Psychology, now a “program” within the Department of Life Sciences at “Carroll University,” continues to be one of the most popular majors at Carroll (we presently have about 230 majors) with a strong research emphasis. Both Chris and Matt have been wildly successful since they began involving students in research, which has resulted in publications and professional presentations.
Do stay in touch. Let me know what/how/ you are doing and what advice you would give to present students–or to things within the psychology area I should try to change or maintain before I depart from Carroll (sometime within the next seven years). –DS
