Preamble to Charter
Several recent reports on the future of jobs in the United States (and elsewhere in the world) come to a similar conclusion: job growth in health care and related human services is predicted to be higher than in any other sector of the economy. This area of job growth relates in large part to the “graying” of the population, the increased concern for full and equitable treatment of all citizens, and the technical and behavioral breakthroughs in all of the health-related sciences.
We firmly believe that the innovative and highly practical graduate programs being envisioned at The Professional School of Psychology are directly aligned with these challenging conditions. PSP can contribute to cutting-edge developments in graduate professional education—developments that are needed if these new human service challenges are to be met successfully.
An Epistemological Revolution: New Ways of Knowing
During the 20th Century many disciplines grew increasingly autonomous, and with the rise of logical positivism and related empirically-oriented perspectives, practitioners in many physical and behavioral sciences tended to divorce themselves from all but the most seemingly “scientific” of disciplines. Using the so-called “scientific methods” of physics, astronomy and chemistry, practitioners in the fields of biology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics and political science confined themselves to rather trivial questions and constrained their observations of the world in order to remain “objective,” “detached” and “analytic.” These biological and behavioral science practitioners not only divorced themselves from the humanities and many of the professions, they also tended to be suspicious of one another, seeking to join physics, astronomy and chemistry at the top of the disciplinary pecking order.
Now, at the beginning of the 21st Century, there is an epistemological revolution that brings many of these estranged fields back into conversation with one another. This is occurring not only because many of the behavioral and biological sciences have themselves come to the end of the road with regard to the confining “scientific method,” but also because epistemology is itself undergoing profound change. There is the revolution of chaos and complexity in the physical and behavioral sciences, the introduction of radical concepts regarding time and causality in cosmology, the shattering of the analytic (“smashed rat”) tradition in the biological sciences, and the postmodern challenging of interpretative traditions in the humanities and behavioral sciences.
An Andralogical and Appreciative Approach to Graduate Education
The Professional School of Psychology offers andragogic, transformative and appreciative educational doors into this new world. As a portal, PSP exemplifies optimism about the future and a turning to appreciation and images of success and accomplishment when faced with the challenge of profound personal, organizational and societal transformation. As Martin Seligman notes in the opening article of the first issue of the American Psychologist in the 21st Century, this new century is a time for psychologists to investigate and grow wise about not only the fears and delusions of humankind (the primary task of 20th Century psychology), but also the hopes and dreams of humankind that enable men and women to sustain their efforts and search for a better life, despite their individual and collective fears and delusions.
The graduate degree programs of the Professional School of Psychology are intended for motivated mature learners who wish to expand their own conceptual horizons and to integrate greater self-understanding with a more profound appreciation for the complexity, unpredictability and turbulence of our contemporary world landscape. This is not a “university without walls.” Rather it is a “university with moveable walls.” It is the intent that those enrolled will design, in company with select faculty members, a specific program of scholarship, research and practice that is aligned with each participant’s own shifting career goals and life purposes.
The Mission and Desired Educational Outcomes of PSP
The Charter of PSP comes alive through its Mission Statment and through the Components that accompany this mission statement and Strategies that fully engage PSPs mission. As a graduate educational institution, PSP is guided by a set of Desired Educational Outcomes that enable its mission to be realized through the programs it offers.
