Advanced Certificate In Engineering Psychology: A Proposal [To be presented and voted on at the January 24, 2013 AS Meeting]

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1 1 Background Advanced Certificate In Engineering Psychology: A Proposal [To be presented and voted on at the January 24, 2013 AS Meeting] The MS program in Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology was established at RIT in 2006, administered by the Department of Psychology. During conversion to the semester calendar, the title of the graduate program was changed to the MS in Experimental Psychology. The renamed program reflects broad expertise in the Department of Psychology and will serve wider student interests. Because engineering psychology is a discipline distinct from experimental psychology, it will benefit students graduating from the engineering psychology track of the program to have the disciplinary title Engineering Psychology in their diploma. The advanced certificate will accomplish this goal. There is an increasing demand for human factors/ergonomics (HF/E) professionals in the labor market as The Technological Society is growing in complexity. This demand should, translate into increased demand for educational programs in HF/E and related disciplines, both in the Rochester area and nationally. The proposed advance certificate will accomplish four specific goals: (1) It will attract established professionals (i.e., non-traditional students), who want to upgrade their educational credentials to advance their careers, but who may not have the means to enroll into a regular MS program due their continuing employment, to RIT; (2) It will allow students enrolled in other degree programs at RIT to add a specific disciplinary certificate to their education to further their career opportunities in the job market; (3) It will especially benefit students graduating from the MS program in Experimental Psychology to have the disciplinary title Engineering Psychology appear on their diploma to distinguish their educational credentials from the broader discipline of experimental psychology. (4) Finally, it will allow non-traditional (fully employed) students to ease into a graduate degree program at RIT by minimizing the time required to be a full time student on campus and the conflict that might have with maintaining employment. Program Description The Advanced Certificate in Engineering Psychology (ACEP) is a post-baccalaureate certificate that provides the students with core knowledge in the key areas of engineering psychology (3 required courses), as well as an opportunity to study particular topics in greater depth through electives (2 open electives). The program will consist of the following 3 required courses for a total of 9 semester credits: PSYC712 Graduate Cognition (3 cr) PSYC714 Graduate Engineering Psychology (3 cr) PSYC715 Graduate Perception (3 cr) In addition, students choose 2 electives among the following courses for the remaining 6 semester credits: PSYC716 Graduate Social Psychology (3 cr) ISEE730 Biomechanics (3 cr) ISEE731 Advanced Topics Human Factors (3 cr) ISEE732 Systems Safety Engineering (3 cr) HCIN610 Foundations of Human-Computer Interaction (3 cr) HCIN620 Information and Interaction Design (3 cr)

2 2 HCIN630 Usability Testing (3 cr) HCIN700 Current Topics in HCI (3 cr) HCIN705 Topics in HCI for Biomedical Informatics (3 cr) HCIN715 Agent-based and Cognitive Modeling (3 cr) HCIN720 Designing User Experiences for Internet-enabled Devices (3 cr) HCIN722 Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices (3 cr) HCIN730 User-Centered Design Methods (3 cr) HCIN735 Collaboration, Technology, and the Human Experience (3 cr) Other relevant courses may also be chosen as electives by approval of the Psychology graduate program coordinator. Requirements Regular, published prerequisites for each course in the program apply unless explicitly waived by the course instructor. This advanced certificate consists of 5 courses, amplifying the importance of each course compared to the greater variety in a MS degree; therefore, students must earn at least a B grade (3 grade points) for each course in the program to earn the certificate. Rationale The proposed advanced certificate program will require no new or additional resources to start. All required and elective courses currently exist, have been converted to the semester calendar, and are taught by existing faculty at RIT. With 5 graduate courses (15 cr.) the proposed certificate is well above and beyond an undergraduate degree, but still short of a MS degree, for it lacks most of the skills components (research methods, statistics, and thesis) that are part of the complete degree program. This will place the certificate program in an ideal position between BS and MS degrees and make it achievable for students completing a MS degree in a different discipline. With 5 courses the Advanced Certificate in Engineering Psychology program is on par with the most rigorous advanced certificate programs at RIT. However, such rigor in no way disadvantages the primary student populations the certificate is aimed at, MS students in the Experimental Psychology, Industrial Engineering, and Human-Computer Interaction programs. Engineering psychology is defined as the application of psychological principles, knowledge, and research to improve the ability of humans to operate more effectively in a technological society. Engineering psychology as a discipline is thus perfectly congruent with the RIT mission to provide technology-based educational programs for personal and professional development and to pursue new and emerging career areas. These 3 required courses provide students with core knowledge expected from practitioners entering the HF/E profession. This is evident from the close match of those courses with both the degree program accreditation criteria of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES; and the Ergonomist Formation Model by the Board of Certification in Professional Ergonomics (BCPE; The proposed advanced certificate meets the requirements and guidelines by the New York State Education Department for advanced certificate programs (listed in the Appendix). Students completing the MS in Experimental Psychology degree with the engineering psychology track will have taken all the 3 required courses and 3 electives in the course of the degree program. They

3 3 will thus automatically also complete the requirements for the advanced certificate while earning their MS degree. Students in the GCCIS MS in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) are required to take the HCIN610, 620, and 630 courses as part of their degree program; these courses are also listed as electives in the Advanced Certificate in Engineering Psychology program. In addition, the MS HCI program allows students to choose three PSYC7xx electives; students wishing to earn an advanced certificate in engineering psychology may thus do so in the course of earning their MSHCI degree. The Psychology courses are not required of all HCI students, but would fit with a MS student s plan of study. Students in the MS in Industrial Engineering (IE) program may similarly earn the advanced certificate in engineering psychology in the course of their degree program. The ISEE730, 731, and 732 courses listed as electives in the advanced certificate program are also part of the MS IE curriculum. The MS curriculum also has room for electives, which the MS IE students could fulfill with the required PSYC712, 714, and 715 courses. Finally, the Advanced Certificate in Engineering Psychology may be attractive to established professionals who want to upgrade their educational credentials to advance their careers, but who may not have the means to enroll into a regular MS program. Other Advanced Certificate Programs at RIT The table below shows other advanced certificate programs at RIT. There are a total of 16 programs across six colleges. Two programs will be discontinued after RIT moves into a semester system; these programs are not included in the table. The median number of courses required for an advanced certificate at RIT is 4.5, mean 4.9, and the range from 3 to 7 courses. Table 1: Advanced (Graduate) Certificate Programs at RIT College Certificate Title Required Electives Total CAST Elements of Healthcare Leadership CAST Health Systems Finance CAST Senior Living Management CAST Service Leadership and Innovation CIAS Non-toxic Intaglio Printmaking CMS Project Management CMS Strategic Training Design CMS Technical Information Design CLA School Psychology COS/KGCOE Materials Science and Engineering GCCIS Information Assurance GCCIS Interactive Multimedia Development GCCIS Network Planning and Design KGCOE Vibrations Engineering KGCOE/CQAS Statistical Methods for Product and Process Improvement KGCOE/CQAS Statistical Quality 6 0 6

4 4 Comparable Programs at Other Universities George Mason University. The Department of Psychology at GMU offers a graduate certificate in aviation psychology under the auspices of the program in Human Factors/Applied Cognition. The certificate has 3 required courses (9 credits): PSYC 530, 645, and 734, as well as 2 elective courses (6 credits) chosen from: PSYC 597, -768, SYST 560, and -571, for a total of 15 credits ( In addition to meeting these requirements, students must meet the university requirements for all graduate certificates: a minimum of 12 graduate credits, only graduate courses may apply toward the graduate certificate, a maximum of 3 graduate credits taken at another institution can be transferred into a graduate certificate program, a minimum GPA of 3.00 in course work presented on the certificate application, which may include no more than 3 credits of C ( Georgia Institute of Technology. Georgia Tech offers several undergraduate certificates in psychology, including one in engineering psychology. The requirement for a certificate is 12 semester hours, which generally translates into 4 courses: 3 required courses and 1 elective. A student must take a psychology course for a letter grade if that course is to be counted towards a psychology certificate. In addition, a grade of "C" or better must be earned in each course that is to be counted towards a psychology certificate. A course may be used towards only one certificate. For the engineering psychology certificate the required courses are PSYC2220 Industrial/Organizational Psychology, PSYC3040 or Sensation and Perception, PSYC2270 Engineering Psychology ( University of Dayton. This interdisciplinary graduate Human Factors Engineering certificate program at the University of Dayton is sponsored by the Department of Engineering Management & Systems within the School of Engineering and the Department of Psychology of the College of Arts and Sciences. The certificate is designed for individuals currently in or pursuing technical leadership positions in human factors and engineering involving the design and development of complex programs, processes, or products. It requires the successful completion of six courses and it integrates traditional psychological coursework related to human performance with the systems and modeling emphasis of engineering. ( Future Developments The Advanced Certificate in Engineering Psychology is aimed at employed professionals who wish to further their education and academic credentials, and at graduate students at RIT enrolled in the MS programs in Experimental Psychology, Human-Computer Interaction, and Industrial Engineering. For nontraditional students nonstandard modes of instruction may be essential, and therefore the courses in the program should also be offered online or with a distance learning option. Modifying the courses will be a major undertaking requiring resources that probably will not be available in the near future. Nevertheless, it will be important to gradually develop online content in the program s courses until a specific subset of 5 courses could be offered solely online, making the certificate program attractive also to employed professionals who will not be able to attend classes on campus.

5 5 Definitions APPENDIX Advanced Certificate. An Advanced Certificate is a Certificate program composed of graduate level courses. New York State Education Department, Senior Deputy Commissioner of Education, Engineering Psychology. Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology is the application of psychological principles, knowledge, and research to improve the ability of humans to operate more effectively in a technological society. [Its] research focuses on people's interaction with or involvement with communication, decision making, and computer information systems, work places, energy and transportation systems, medical and health care settings, consumer product design, living environments, etc. The goal is safer, more effective, and more reliable systems through improved understanding of the user's requirements and performance capabilities Division 21 Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology of the American Psychological Association, Engineering psychology focuses on human factors from the neck up, in contrast to many applications of human factors to issues below the neck, such as lower back injuries, fatigue, work physiology and so forth....[e]ngineering psychology can also be described within the broader discipline of psychology, and within this the somewhat narrower discipline of applied psychology. In the latter, the study of behavior is focused on the applications of those principles and theories of behavior and cognition to areas beyond the laboratory, such as industry, schools, counseling, mental illness, and sports. Within this broader set of applications, the focus of engineering psychology tends to be on performance in the workplace (expanded to include transportation and some aspects of the home), hence characterizing its close linkage back to ergonomics, the study of work, and particularly cognitive ergonomics.... In distinguishing engineering psychology from branches of basic psychology (especially experimental psychology), the former field must be concerned with the eventual applications of its theories and principles, while the latter need not be. Wickens, C. D., Hollands, J. G., Banbury, S., & Parasuraman, R. (2013). Engineering psychology and human performance, 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education. Human Factors/Ergonomics. Engineering Psychology is a specialized sub-discipline of Human Factors/Ergonomics, which is defined as...the scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system, and the profession that applies theory, principles, data, and other methods to design in order to optimize human well-being and overall system performance Definition adopted by the International Ergonomics Association in August 2000, Experimental Psychology. Experimental psychology emphasizes the application of experimental methods to the study of psychological phenomena. These phenomena cover an extremely broad range, but the focus on experimental methods places experimental psychology as a discipline to the basic end along the basic applied continuum of scientific work. The Experimental Psychology Division (3) of the American Psychological Association defined its mission as...to promote scientific inquiry through teaching and research, and to support experimental psychology through the advocacy and educational programs. We work closely with the Science and Education Directorates. Our membership consists of people who do basic and applied research in cognitive psychology, animal behavior processes and neuroscience. In addition, we welcome members who do experimental work in developmental, social, and other areas. Many of our members are primarily teachers of psychology in these areas. Division 3 Experimental Psychology of the American Psychological Association,