The faculty count for Sacramento State’s psychology department has reached the lowest level in five years – creating challenges for both the department and students.

Total faculty count for the psychology department decreased from 42 to 28 members between 2008-10 according to the fall 2011 Office of Institutional Research Fact Book for psychology.

“Right now we have 17 full-time faculty and approximately 1,600 majors,” said Marya Endriga, professor and chair of the psychology department. “The amount of part-time faculty shifts per semester depending on the budget.”

Department-wide, the student-to-faculty ratio for the spring 2011 semester was approximately 65 lower division students per faculty member and 37 upper division students per faculty member. This takes into account both tenured and non-tenured faculty, according to Fact Book for psychology.

Psychology is not the only impacted major dealing with a reduction in faculty. University-wide, the campus is having to face the challenges carried by budget limitations.

Criminal justice, another impacted major, lost six faculty members from 2009 to 2010, dropping the total faculty number of the department to 40 members, according to the fall 2011 criminal justice Fact Book. As of spring 2011, criminal justice had 49 lower division students and 32 upper division students per faculty member.

Endriga said the budget dictates how many new hires a department can sustain. Even after retirement, a professor’s position is not guaranteed to be filled. In the last year, four full-time faculty members retired with only one new hire.

“We are at 120 percent of capacity right now,” Endriga said. “Impaction is one way of managing our enrollment problems.”

Impaction requires both new and continuing students who are not already psychology majors to fill out supplemental applications before declaring the impacted major. Endriga said her department is now in the process of reviewing the applicants. The department declared impaction for the fall 2012 and spring 2013 semesters.

“I think it is responsible a department (does) not take in more students (it) can serve,” Endriga said. “We want to have the students to be able to complete the major once we’ve committed to them.”

Endriga said about 300 students graduate from the psychology department per year – which can create bottlenecks if enrollment exceeds this amount.

“Eventually we will probably move toward making sure we’re not taking in more students than we graduate, but we’re not there yet,” Endriga said.

Fewer faculty members in the psychology department also means psychology courses will be less accessible to those pursuing general education, minors in the field or those who take interest in psychology courses.

“The CSU system has always felt strongly about access,” Endriga said. “We want to be able to teach those students too, but the problem is we have trouble moving our own majors through in a timely fashion. We obviously want students to choose what interests them … so it wasn’t easy to decide to go under impaction.”

Endriga said the percentage of instruction by full-time faculty is also on the decline. This examines the weighted teaching unit, or faculty workload, per full-time faculty member.

“From spring 2010 to fall 2011, there has been a 30 percent decrease of instruction by full-time faculty,” Endriga said. “As full-time faculty shrinks, in order to cover classes, we need to hire more part-time faculty. The problem is that is shrinking as well. Overall, our numbers of instructors and course sections are going down compared to the number of students…which is why students are having trouble getting the classes they need.”

Sac State Professor Emeritus of Psychology George Parrott said having more part-time faculty acquiring classes normally taught by full-time faculty may be problematic for students.

Parrott said hiring part-time faculty members may be cheaper for the university, but hinders students’ access to labs and expertise part-time faculty might not be able to offer.

Parrott said he was hired to teach an undergraduate psychology methods course as part of his course load. He said these positions are now being handed to part-time faculty members who have little time to prepare.

“The methods assignment demands statistics and experience in research training … (this is) completely alien to most of the people in the part-time pool,” Parrott said. “The quality of experience we were able to offer 10 to 20 years ago has massively declined.”

Parrott said due to staffing restrictions within the last year, the department is revamping the major and reducing lab time.

“I had as many as eight students with papers accepted at regional conventions … without labs all of that will disappear,” he said. “I am a graduate of the CSU system … and I never had any of my upper division classes by part-time faculty.”

Another problem Parrott has with having fewer faculty members is bigger class sizes.

“In current budget restraints, classes that used to have 40 students now have 100 students,” Parrott said.

Senior psychology major Sara House said she has encountered this problem in her classes.

“The only trouble I have had was crashing classes that were waitlisted,” House said. “One psychology professor told me this semester that the program is now even more impacted than before. There has been some (classes) where students have had to sit on the floor because there was no room.”

John Tamblyn, part-time psychology and health science professor, said he feels the university’s process of notifying faculty of their teaching schedules is flawed.

“I don’t know at this point what my schedule will be in the fall in both departments,” Tamblyn said.

He said he will probably know in a few weeks, but that time makes a difference.

“Our budgets cannot be finalized until it becomes very late … which means late notice is given in terms of employment,” he said. “There doesn’t seem to be appropriate expediency to alert people of what they’re going to be doing.”

Tamblyn said the budget limitations are the reason for this delay.

“There are all sorts of candidates out there that would love to be working,” he said. “There are just limitations on the amount of money available. Unfortunately, that’s the nature of our times.”

An overabundance of students may result in loss of one-on-one time with professors.

“(Students) may not matter as much,” he said. “They’re out there somewhere, but nobody is connecting with them.”

Tamblyn said changes must be made in the classroom to adapt to the increasing amount of students.

“One has to make accommodations,” he said. “Changes to teaching styles and strategies have to be made to accommodate the number of students. This means more multiple choice instead of essay questions, fewer assigned papers and students’ inability to get classes.”

Alex Slavas can be reached at [email protected].