KU asks JCCC to offer two new classes
By Gabrielle Fitzgerald
As the Kansas Board of Regents works toward creating a better transfer system in the state, the University of Kansas (KU) is already mutually collaborating with the college’s psychology department.
“KU had changed two courses, and they would like for us to teach them here,” said Roberta Eveslage, professor emeritus. “Also, they were two courses that were required for all psychology majors.”
These two courses are Statistics in Psychological Research (PSYC 209) and Research Methods in Psychology (PSYC 210). These courses were taught at a 300 level at KU, but were dropped to a 200 level.
“These are courses that [KU] would like to see students who take more advanced psychology courses to have information about,” Eveslage said.
“[KU] wanted their students in the psychology program to have a really good foundation in research methods and in statistics before they started taking some of their advanced classes,” said Michael Rader, psychology professor.
With the courses previously being offered at the 300 level, psychology students had the option to wait until senior year to take them.
“Most courses really incorporate statistics and research … so having that basic fundamental understanding of those two was something that was really progressive on KU’s part,” Rader said.
Rader said not only is it important for students to receive this foundation before taking other psychology classes, but it makes the transfer process easier.
“It allows us at Johnson County to teach those courses so that they can transfer to both the KU-Lawrence campus and the KU-Edwards campus,” Rader said.
Eveslage said one of the courses, Research Methods, was an offered course that merely needed tweaking, but Statistics in Psychological Research was non-existent at the college.
“We already had a course in research methods. It was Research Methods in the Social Sciences, so that one we had to change a little bit,” she said. “They wanted only psychologists to teach it so we kind of made some changes in that course, but the other course we didn’t have anything.”
“The statistics course is a brand new course that was just created, in essence to meet a need that was requested by KU,” Rader said.
Eveslage researched and wrote the course outline for the statistics course, turning it in for review last fall.
“It goes into a thing which all teachers can see, and they can look at the course outline and they can give you suggestions,” she said. “Then there’s a big committee called the Educational Affairs Committee which passes or does not pass it … They make recommendations, changes. For example, we changed the name of the methodology course from Methodology in Social Sciences to Methodology in Psychology.”
President Terry Calaway said the Kansas transfer program has many flaws that the Board of Regents is working to fix.
“There was a study done … about three or four years ago … and they identified Kansas as having the worst articulation system in the country,” Calaway previously said.
These two courses are an example of what Calaway and the Board of Regents are working toward.
“It’s a collaborative effort between these four year institutions and two year institutions; I mean, this is kind of ground breaking.” Rader said. “They’re requesting that we do something and we’re saying, ‘Hey we’re willing to do that,’ and the next thing you know, you’ve got these two classes that were created to meet a need.”
“It was extremely feather-in-the-cap of the college to be asked to teach the courses,” Eveslage said. “They have enough respect for JCCC that they figure this would be a good place to have those student introduced to statistics and research methods.”
Contact Gabrielle Fitzgerald, reporting correspondent, at gfitzge1@jccc.edu.