Founding of the I-O Program at UWaterloo
Written by Professor Emerita Pat Rowe
The University of Waterloo was founded in 1957 as a largely engineering institution. The first psychologist, Harold Bexton, was hired in 1958 and remained until 1963. Bexton was well-known in psychology as one of the researchers who participated in the legendary “social isolation” experiments at McGill. Two young psychologists, Muriel Vogel-Sprott and Robin Banks were hired by Bexton in 1961 and 1962, respectively. The real founding of the Psychology Department, however, occurred in 1963 with the hiring of Richard (Dick) Walters as Chair. Dick was given the resources to hire eight young PhDs (Phil Bryden, Graham Goddard, Herb Lefcourt, Ernie MacKinnon, Pat Rowe, Irwin Silverman, Dick Steffy, and Dick Thysell) who joined the other faculty members already there, and Bexton left. All of the faculty were under 30, except Dick Walters.
Dick Walters' mandate from the University was to establish a graduate program in Psychology, and in that first year he did this by attracting about 25 graduate students, many of them older than the faculty. A number of these students had previously earned master's degrees and worked as psychologists in hospitals and other settings, such as school boards and industry. But changes in the health system and in the registration of psychologists, was making the doctoral degree necessary, so many of them were interested in returning to university for further education. In those early years there were also a few graduate students that arrived immediately following their undergraduate degrees, notably in the case of the I-O program, Jim Miller, who arrived in 1964. Jim was one of several young men from Dartmouth that were encouraged to apply to Waterloo by a faculty member at Dartmouth. As it turned out Jim’s interests were in business and industry, so he ended up with Pat Rowe and the I-O program was started.
Graduate education in Psychology at most universities in this period was designed largely with the doctoral degree as the focus. As a result, courses at the master’s level tended to be limited to statistics or research design, a survey course in one’s area of interest, and a thesis. While this might be good training in preparation for doctoral studies, many students left after the master’s, either in need of earning money or for lack of ability in research, or simply anxious to join the workforce. And there were jobs for these people in a variety of applied settings, despite the fact that few of them had taken any relevant graduate courses.
Dick Walters recognized the need for psychology training beyond the bachelor’s degree but short of the PhD, and conceived the idea of a Master’s of Applied Science (MASc) degree in Psychology. The program would consist of a common core of subjects, including interviewing, intelligence testing, other psychological tests, applied research, statistics, etc. This would be supplemented by courses in more specialized applied areas, including industrial, educational, counselling, and addiction areas. Rather than a formal thesis, only a research paper was required, though some of these were actually accepted for publication. Moreover, drawing upon the concept of co-operative (co-op) education that is such an important part of Waterloo’s ethos, the program included one or two work terms in the area of the student’s special interest. This notion of a work term is not particularly novel in psychology, as McGill’s Psychology master’s program included a work period and clinical doctoral programs include internships, but ours was structured as a cooperative education work term which was very important to the acceptance of the program at Waterloo.
The program officially started in 1966, and in that first class with an interest in I-O Psychology were Paul Stanley and Warren Shepell. In addition, John Garwood was accepted into the Psychology graduate program as an MA student and like Miller, Shepell, and Stanley, chose to work with Pat Rowe on the selection interview. The faculty expanded as well, as Shoukry Saleh, one of Herzberg’s students, was working for the provincial government in Toronto, and joined the program in 1965, and then moved into the new Management Science Department in 1968. The early students were very successful in finding a first job after graduation. Warren Shepell joined CIBC and conducted management assessments and development, and Paul Stanley was in the search practice of a consulting firm, Peat Marwick. Jim Miller and John Garwood continued into the doctoral program; after earning his PhD, Jim returned to his native Minneapolis and took a position as a Market Analyst with Investors Diversified Services, a large financial services company, and John became an independent consultant. Eventually, Warren, Paul, and Jim founded their own consulting firms.
Expansion of the I-O Program
The late 1960s were a tumultuous time in universities in Canada and elsewhere. Students rioted and held anti-war protests, were at the forefront of the hippy culture, and attacked anything on campus that involved business and industry, including co-op work placements and I-O courses. As a result, enrollment in the I-O program suffered. Fortunately, attitudes changed towards industrial psychology and interest slowly picked up. In 1972, David Tucker and Wayne Johnson expressed interest in the graduate program, and with two candidates entering the graduate program in 1973 the I-O program really got started.
Dave and Wayne were both ROTP officers, and through that plan were supported through their undergraduate programs in return for several years of military service following graduation. Thus, both of them were a few years older than some of the other students, had work experience (Wayne was a Personnel Selection Officer), but left the armed forces to attend graduate school. As they both continued into doctoral studies, they were the mainstay of the program for several years, and the first of a number of military officers enrolled in the I-O program.
By the late 1970’s there were usually five or six students in the industrial part of the MASc program, all or nearly all of them students of Pat Rowe. As demands on faculty grew, both students and faculty felt they needed a critical mass and a diversity of experiences and interests for good discussion in class. In many ways the success of the program was dependent upon students independently seeking new knowledge and sharing that knowledge to help others learn. In a student survey, many confirmed the importance of the friendships they formed and the knowledge they learned from others.
By the 1980s the program was attracting students from across Canada and was no longer so dependent on enrolling military students, though they continued to apply to the program and be accepted. The numbers and quality of applicants led to the department hiring another I-O psychologist, Steve Cronshaw, in 1984, and Jay Michaela in 1989. Jay brought his background in social psychology and expertise in statistics to bear on issues in organizational psychology, an area that had been largely neglected. As a result, there was added diversity of research interests and course offerings available to Waterloo students.
From 1981 to 1990, more than two dozen MASc students and four PhD students graduated from the I-O program. For the first time there were PhD graduates taking academic positions, usually in the business schools of the institutions. Despite a somewhat troubled economy, most of the MASc graduates found appropriate positions in government, business, or consulting, and in the case of the military students, returned to the armed forces. The program was clearly well-established, and Waterloo was drawing students from across the country, and even a few international students.
By the 1990s, other universities became more interested in developing I-O graduate programs, and as a result Waterloo faced more competition in attracting students from those parts of the country. New programs at Western, Calgary, St Mary’s, UQAM, and Montreal in Psychology departments, and in a number of places, including Toronto and Ottawa in business schools were established. Waterloo graduates are faculty members in a number of those institutions. This increasing interest by other universities also made the Canadian Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology a larger, more vibrant group and a strong voice for I-O Psychology at the national level. Its annual meetings became an important place for both students and faculty to connect with others who shared their interests.
Over the following years, several young faculty members joined Ramona and Jay: Doug Brown from Akron, Wendi Adair from Northwestern and Cornell, and James Beck and Winny Shen from Minnesota, which meant that students were offered a program whose faculty had a diverse set of research interests and strong backgrounds in a variety of areas of I-O psychology.
The I-O program at Waterloo began as a master’s only program, with less emphasis on research and more on practice than traditional programs, but it has also been evident almost from the beginning that some of the students were interested in obtaining doctoral degrees. A total of 33 students during the period from 1965 to 2004 went on to earn a PhD, 22 at Waterloo and 11 elsewhere, and some have completed other degrees (MD and MBA), or diplomas or certifications (CHERP, etc.) Not all of the PhDs were interested in academic positions; only nine became faculty members immediately after the PhD, several held academic positions as part of military service, and two became faculty members after several years as consultants; the other PhDs typically worked as consultants. Those that entered the workforce in the early years tended to be hired by large companies (e.g., Ontario Hydro, Bell Canada), government, typically the federal government, including the military, and after a few years gaining experience, some joined international consulting firms (e.g.,Deloitte, KPMG, SPB, Ernst & Young, etc ). In later years even new graduates were hired by consulting firms, both large and small.