5 June 2011 Review of the Neuroscience & Behavior Program at Wesleyan University

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1 5 June 2011 Review of the Neuroscience & Behavior Program at Wesleyan University External Review Committee Andrew Bass, Professor of Neurobiology and Behavior, and Associate Vice Provost for Research, Cornell University (607) Rebecca Compton, Department Chair and Associate Professor of Psychology, Haverford College (610) Howard Eichenbaum, Professor of Psychology and Director, Center for Memory and the Brain, Boston University (617) Elizabeth Gould, Professor of Psychology, Princeton University (609) Overview Wesleyan University is regarded by the review committee, as by our colleagues, as one of the premier institutions in the United States for undergraduate education. We appreciated the opportunity to learn about the Neuroscience and Behavior (NS&B) program at Wesleyan University which clearly lives up to Wesleyan s goal of building a diverse, energetic community of students, faculty and staff who think critically and creatively and who value independence of mind and generosity of spirit (from Mission Statement). NS&B is a vibrant program, with faculty dedicated to the mission of neuroscience education within a liberal arts college environment and faculty and students enthusiastic about neuroscience research. Yet, as we detail below, explosive growth in student interest, together with departmental constraints on hiring, tax the ability of NS&B faculty to provide a nationally competitive, comprehensive neuroscience education including classroom and research training opportunities in a range of neuroscience fields. We offer our recommendations for future program development with a clear sense of optimism that these changes will enhance the vitality of an already strong program and put Wesleyan at the forefront of an integrative approach to neuroscience and behavior education in the liberal arts setting. Evaluation The NS&B program involves ten core faculty, five who have their primary appointments within Psychology and five within Biology. The curriculum is aimed to encourage fluency across multiple fields within this discipline. It begins with a series of foundational introductory courses in biology (2 lecture, 2 lab), chemistry (4 lecture) and physics (2 lecture). This is followed by one core behavioral neurobiology lecture course, and then by choices from lists of advanced courses in relevant biology, psychology, and research methods areas. Strengths: The strengths of the program include its dedicated faculty, who excel in balancing teaching, advising and research missions; its talented and ambitious 1

2 students, who express great enthusiasm about the program; and a clear pattern of rising student enrollments. It is important to realize that NS&B is the largest natural science major (140) for the size of its faculty (10) [but see note added by DB in paragraph below]. Aside from a wonderful selection of advanced courses, additional strengths include the successful team-taught foundational NS&B core course (Behavioral Neurobiology, NSB 213), a scientific writing course inclusive of grant proposals and review and most recently, the Neuroscience Capstone course for seniors which includes reading primary literature, intensive science writing, interacting with distinguished visiting neuroscientists and outreach in neuroscience education at the high school level. In addition, many of the NS&B majors participate in research projects within faculty laboratories where they receive training at the bench ; this includes an unusually long-running (since 1989) Howard Hughes program that funds undergraduate research opportunities. Overall, the NS&B major is strong, but there are important issues that must be addressed in order for Wesleyan to provide the best neuroscience education to its students moving forward. Challenges: The program currently faces the following challenges that should be addressed: 1. Rapid growth of student interest. The student-to-faculty ratio in NS&B is too high to support the breadth of exposure necessary for a top-notch undergraduate program in Neuroscience and Behavior and to provide high quality individual contact with faculty that students at Wesleyan expect and deserve. The current count of majors is approximately 140 junior and senior students supported by 10 NS&B program faculty (ratio = 14:1), compared to the next highest enrolled science major, Psychology, with approximately 180 students supported by 14 faculty (ratio = 12.9:1). The student-to-faculty ratio is higher in NS&B than any other science major, with the ratios in both NS&B and Psychology much higher than all other science majors at Wesleyan. [note added by DB 5/11/2011: The external review committee mistakenly used the approximate number for current sophomore (64 ), junior (57 ) and senior (35 ) NS&B majors but only junior(94) and senior (72) Psychology majors in this comparison. Psychology is still the largest major in Div III.] The external review committee used the number for current sophomores, juniors and senior majors here, however the We anticipate that enrollments in NS&B courses and programs will continue to increase as part of a nationwide pattern of rapid growth in this highly integrative discipline. 2. Curricular skew towards biological over psychological approaches. The existing NS&B curriculum disproportionately represents traditional foundational courses for biology majors at many universities, namely introductory level biology, chemistry and physics courses. Additionally, there is mainly a biology perspective offered in the core Behavioral Neurobiology (NSB 213) course, and strength in advanced courses in biology compared to advanced courses in psychology that do not fit as well with the NS&B program s needs. Conversely, no psychology foundational courses (e.g., introductory psychology, statistics, experimental design) 2

3 are required, although statistics or research methods fulfills an NS&B elective. The core of the program involves only a single course (NS&B 213) that is not of sufficient depth and breadth to introduce the broad field of neuroscience and behavior, and in particular lacks sufficient coverage of cognitive and behavioral neuroscience. Cognitive neuroscience and behavioral neuroscience are two subfields of neuroscience where some of the most interesting and important advances have been made in the past ten years. Without foundational exposure to these topics, NS&B majors have a large hole in their neuroscience education. These issues compromise the balance of psychological and biological perspectives and the breadth and depth of the field covered by the program. 3. Underrepresentation of psychology faculty. Corresponding to the weaknesses in the curriculum, the representation of neuroscience in the faculty in the Psychology department is weak. Currently only one psychology faculty member is considered primarily a neuroscientist, and his research involves primarily cognitive rather than biological methods. The striking absence of neuroscience approaches within the psychology faculty creates a major gap between the psychological and biological perspectives in the available courses and in research opportunities for NS&B students. 4. Lack of advanced neuroscience courses in the psychology department. A related weakness is that the advanced courses offered by Psychology faculty lack middle level pre-requisites, and in particular do not require the core NS&B course. This leads to two major problems strongly voiced by the NS&B students. First, there is redundant teaching of basic neuroscience principles repeatedly presented at the outset of each courses. Second, the courses must be taught to the lowest common denominator, that is students with very weak biological or neuroscience background, thus limiting the extent to which the course can cover advanced material. The lack of truly advanced neuroscience courses offered by Psychology compromises the quality of the NS&B major. 5. Barriers to neuroscience hiring within psychology. A major challenge to inclusion of important areas in neuroscience are actions by some faculty whose aim is to prevent animal research within the Psychology faculty and at Wesleyan University in general. This position directly undermines Psychology departmental participation in the NS&B program and is, objectively, a major obstacle to the goal of exposing Wesleyan students to state-of-the art neuroscience research. We appreciate and respect the diversity of personal opinions about animal research and the sensitivity of the issues involved. Nevertheless, the committee has deep concerns that a small minority of Psychology faculty outside the NS&B program with strident and polarizing views representing a fringe position within the field of psychology that is opposed to research using animal models, has succeeded in shifting the policy of the entire Psychology department. This policy has had a direct deleterious effect on the NS&B program, and, unless it is corrected, will seriously hamper neuroscience education at Wesleyan. In addition to constraining future 3

4 hires within Psychology, this problem has a major negative impact on the extent to which the two departments can interact and cooperate within the program. Recommendations To address these issues, we make the following recommendations: 1. New hiring in behavioral, cognitive, and computational neuroscience. Multiple new faculty must be recruited to meet the large and increasing enrollments, to balance the psychology and biology representations of neuroscientists in the field, and to fill the current gap between biological and psychological perspectives in neuroscience. The new recruitment should be focused on areas where the gap is largest: in human cognitive neuroscience and animal behavioral neuroscience. Examples of areas in human cognitive neuroscience are functional brain imaging (if resources for this method can be identified) or EEG/ERP electrophysiology in cognitive, social, emotional neuroscience or neuroeconomics, sleep, human behavioral genetics, developmental cognitive neuroscience, and psychophysiology. Areas of relevant animal behavioral neuroscience include behavioral pharmacology, behavioral genetics, motor coordination, sensory processing by cortical areas, the neurobiology of reward and/or emotion, learning and memory. An additional unrepresented area is computational neuroscience, which should be integrated into the curriculum and represented by faculty. To close the current gap in perspectives, it is most imperative that the recruited faculty include in their approach both strong behavioral and strong biological methods. Such faculty could at the same time satisfy other needs of the departments; for example, a developmental cognitive neuroscientist can satisfy the needs for additions in developmental psychology and NS&B and a behavioral geneticist can satisfy needs in genetics and NS&B. We recommend that the program retain its current name of Neuroscience and Behavior rather than changing it to Neuroscience and Cognition as suggested by the NS&B self study. The current name more fully embraces the range of fields and potential hires (see above) within the broadly integrative and comparative discipline of neuroscience/ behavioral neuroscience. 2. Hiring within the NS&B program, rather than in departments The much needed recruitments in behavioral/cognitive neuroscience are severely challenged by conflicts of interest by the Psychology department. It was evident to the committee that senior Psychology faculty are not comfortable with strongly biological approaches and consider neuroscience a minor priority within the overall departmental mission. This is clearly reflected in recent departmental hires. In addition, the aforementioned influential aversion to animal research prevents the recruitment of faculty to the Psychology department that use animal models to identify fundamental neuroscience principles, an approach that is integral to 4

5 building a nationally competitive educational program in neuroscience in the 21 st century. It was additionally clear to the committee that the Biology department has an apparent conflict of interest in recruitment to the NS&B program in that some faculty may believe that neuroscience is already overrepresented in the department and would prefer to hire in other areas of biology. Therefore, the interests of NS&B do not appear to be best served by entrusting either the Psychology or Biology faculty with future NS&B recruitments. The committee strongly recommends that the administration adopt a new model of faculty recruitment whereby a committee composed of NS&B faculty, all of whom have voting rights, make an appointment within the NS&B program. The recruitment should either be at a senior level, or if the appointment is junior, then the new hire should be guided and tenured by the tenured faculty of the NS&B program. In either case, given the aversion to animal research in the Psychology department, it is realistic to assume that any new NS&B faculty using animal models (which we recommend, see above) would have to be recruited through and granted tenure in the Biology department. The alternative would be to create a new tenure granting NS&B department, but this may not be a realistic move at this point in time (see below). 3. A Neuroscience and Behavior department? Recruitment of faculty into the NS&B program raises the question of whether a separate NS&B department should be created. This would simplify faculty recruitment and tenure decisions. Views of the committee were mixed on this proposal. On the one hand, the interests of NS&B students may be best served by a department whose primary focus is advancement of that program. On the other hand, the Psychology and Biology departments could well feel that they would lose key faculty to a NS&B department, at a time when both departments feel substantial pressures to serve their non-ns&b majors as well. Furthermore, the gaps in perspective by the current faculty may prevent a cohesive approach to neuroscience. These considerations lead us to conclude that the possibility of a separate department may not be tenable at this time, but should be reconsidered most prudently only after faculty hires address the existing gap. A possible compromise at this time would be to have existing NS&B faculty jointly appointed in NS&B and their current department, with a requirement that all their courses satisfy requirements of both NS&B and their department of origin. New NS&B faculty could be jointly appointed as well and, as negotiated upon hiring, would also be required to teach courses that satisfy the needs of both NS&B and either Psychology or Biology. The proportions of joint appointment, size of teaching load, participation in PhD programs, and other responsibilities should be negotiated individually as appropriate for each faculty member. 4. Major curricular changes. a. Cognate NS&B courses. The number of biology foundational courses should be reduced, modeled after those required for the Biology degree, which would include, for example, the two semester introductory biology sequence and a choice of one other chemistry or physics course. This flexibility would allow students and faculty advisors to tailor the NS&B 5

6 major to individual students depending on specific interests within neuroscience and behavior; for example, cognitive neuroscientists may benefit most from cognate coursework in physics, whereas neuropharmacologists may benefit from coursework in organic chemistry. Statistics should be added to the foundation requirement, because skill in this area is essential to all modern neuroscience and behavioral research. b. Core NS&B courses. The core should be extended to a two-course sequence. The first course should focus on the biology perspective, taught by a neurobiologist, as now reflected in NSB 213. The second course in the sequence should be a survey of cognitive neuroscience taught by a cognitive neuroscientist (appointed through either Biology or Psychology). This sequence would ensure that all NS&B students would have considerable exposure to a breadth of perspectives from molecular to cognitive neuroscience, in courses designed specifically for this program rather than for other departmental needs. c. Prerequisites for advanced work. One or both of the core courses should be prerequisites for every advanced NS&B course. The committee is aware that the advanced psychology courses also must serve psychology majors, many of whom have little background in neuroscience. We recommend that these courses be taught in alternate years as advanced NS&B courses and as courses without the prerequisites for Psychology students, in order to satisfy the needs of both Psychology and N&SB majors. Alternatively, psychology faculty may wish to categorize upper-level psychology courses into those that do not have a pre-requisite, and therefore should not fulfill the NS&B elective requirement, versus those that could benefit from such a prerequisite and therefore would be suitable for the NS&B program. d. Addition of laboratory courses where possible. We recommend that laboratory experiences be added to the core courses. These should optimally be project-based, so that students are trained in experimental design and writing skills in experimental reports. The HHMI supports funding for development of these laboratory courses and the committee recommends that the NS&B faculty apply for such funding e. Building on a successful capstone. The capstone experience, which strongly builds community, could be enhanced by an NS&B speaker series in which the senior students play a major role in inviting and hosting speakers and all NS&B students interact with the speaker. This will require increased program funding. Additional staffing may also allow an increase in the number of slots in capstone courses, so that the program can provide a culminating experience in the senior year for all NS&B majors. 5. Interface with university development office. Toward the above aims, the NS&B program should be connected to the university development office to support increases in the budget for the speaker series, research stipends, equipment, etc. 6

7 The NS&B program includes strong faculty who perform research on prevalent clinical problems such as schizophrenia, reading disorders, and epilepsy, and these faculty should be introduced to potential donor resources. 7