Stephen G. West,
Professor of Psychology

Introduction and General Philosophy
Today, much of the first-rate work in psychology is being done at the intersection of traditional specialty areas within the discipline. Other first-rate work crosses the boundaries of our traditional departments in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, with some making contact with work in other colleges such as Business, Education, Public Programs, and Engineering. New opportunities for young professionals often fall disproportionately in these emerging areas. Positions in the traditional specialty areas of psychology have become increasingly scarce with 100, 200, or more applicants for each position in some of these areas. In contrast, psychologists who have training in these newly developing areas are far more rare, and excellent opportunities for research-related careers exist in major research universities, the private sector, and government agencies. In these settings, young professionals can make important contributions toward solving some of the major physical and mental health issues of our nation today. But, to do so, they need good methodological skills, an understanding of the knowledge base of their own discipline, as well as an appreciation of the important contributions to the solution of problems that can be made by other disciplines.

During my career, I have sought to foster the training of graduate students to work in a variety of interdisciplinary contexts. In this effort, I have been influenced by one of the great methodologists of the social sciences, Donald Campbell. Campbell argued that scientific advances could best be achieved when students were not trained to be clones of their major professors, clustered at the center of their specialty area. Instead, he argued that scientific progress could best be achieved when students were trained in such a manner as to reduce boundaries between specialty areas and disciplines. Ideally, scholars so trained would be members of a multidisciplinary community of researchers. Each member of the research group should bring the in-depth knowledge of a unique specialty area to the project. At the same time, each member of the research group should have a more basic appreciation of other researchers' knowledge bases. This broader knowledge base is important if the unique contributions made to the project by researchers having other disciplinary affiliations are to be understood and respected.

In training students over my 25-year career, I sought to foster Campbell's ideal. In implementing Campbell's ideas, I have mentored graduate students who have devoted themselves to three classes of problems.

First, I have encouraged students to work on fundamental methodological problems that have developed in important multidisciplinary research contexts. These are naturally arising problems that occur in interdisciplinary research as traditional methods are applied to new research contexts. The students I have trained in this context have all initially worked on the design of large data collection efforts and the analysis of large data sets from major funded projects at ASU. In the course of this work, I have helped them identify important methodological problems confronted by researchers in the area. These students have then worked on solutions to these problems. Examples include evaluating alternative strategies for estimating treatment effects when subjects cannot be randomly assigned to treatment and control groups, and models for understanding patterns in which psychological symptoms develop in children. Graduate students develop the ability to solve some of the thorniest methodological problems confronted by large interdisciplinary research projects.

Second, I have encouraged another group of students to develop their own unique projects in both basic and applied substantive areas. I have helped them to find the resources necessary to complete the project, and have helped them to assemble dissertation committees in which each of the members brings a unique expertise to the focal research problem. Over the years, students have developed research projects in such areas as AIDS prevention, compliance with American Cancer Society guidelines for screening mammography, relationships between stress and child abuse, and conditions under which self and peer ratings of personality agree. This second tack has the advantage of giving the student full ownership of the project, but has the potential disadvantage of confronting the student with the difficult realities of assembling personal and faculty expertise as well as the resources needed to complete the project. Those highly independent students who have taken this tack have established distinct areas of expertise and have developed strong managerial skills that have served them well later in their careers.

Third, some students have needed considerably more structure to undertake interdisciplinary work. I have fostered graduate training in the context of several ongoing projects. For example, I am one of the founding principal investigators of ASU's Prevention Intervention Research Center (PIRC). This organization, which has now been continuously funded by the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) for over 12 years, is one of four such centers in the United States. Associated with the PIRC is an additional NIMH-funded training grant, expressly designed to support the education of researchers who will work in the multidisciplinary context of prevention research. The PIRC provides structured training opportunities for students in a large scale interdisciplinary context involving researchers from each of the specialty areas in psychology as well as other departments and colleges, including family studies, public programs, education, and business. As director of the methodology core at the PIRC and as a member of several of the substantive research teams, I have helped graduate students identify ways in which they can integrate some of their own research ideas into ongoing PIRC projects. The central issue here is to help students define projects that are important and over which they can have ownership within the existing PIRC structure.

Helping Students Find Their Voices
When students undertake a major research project in psychology, they are typically committing a minimum of one year of their lives to the project. The dissertation project has a special status in this regard; for many students the dissertation project will serve to define at least the first several years of their research careers. Thus, it is important that students have a strong role in the selection of their project. Throughout their graduate careers, I encourage students to read widely and suggest readings from diverse fields that are relevant to their interests. I also encourage students to seek out the broad expertise of other faculty, particularly those who have other perspectives on the problem area. The goal is always for each student to identify an important methodological, theoretical, basic, or applied research question to which he or she can make a contribution.

There are two central issues that must be confronted in this process. The first is to keep students focused on the final goal of identifying a specific research project. Towards this end, I negotiate specific step by step action plans with students, requiring them to gradually narrow the focus of their search. The second is to encourage students to choose a research question that is important and to which they can make a potential contribution. My broad training and extensive experience as a journal editor and grant reviewer is very helpful here in guiding these choices. In the course of the development of a project, I challenge students to develop a rationale for their choice of research question and their method of approaching the question. I also give students positive feedback for good choices. I join each student in consulting with other faculty who have expertise in the topic area and who provide further feedback on the student's research project. At the end of this process, students have a much better understanding of some of the diverse perspectives on the question. They also become familiar with the criteria that define an important project and how their specific project meets or does not meet those criteria. My students have undertaken projects that have made theoretical, empirical, methodological, and applied contributions. Some students have made contributions in several of these areas.

Basic Professional Skills
In addition to the exciting and challenging work of helping students choose and design first-rate research projects, I focus on the development of basic professional skills. Graduate students who are accepted by the psychology department are bright and highly motivated. But, not all students have developed the basic skills of written and oral presentation that will be critical to their later success. I work extensively with my graduate students on the writing of their theses and dissertations, articles, and conference presentations. We focus extensively on techniques for presenting complex material, organization, and clarity of presentation. This development starts with discussions, proceeds to outlines, and then continues with repeated drafts of the paper until it succeeds in clearly delivering its scientific message. Throughout the process, I encourage students to take the lead in writing up each project for publication. The result of this process is that students typically end up with several first authored publications during their graduate school careers. Many of these papers are coauthored with me, some are coauthored with other faculty members, and some are the graduate student's single authored papers. The important result is that students take responsibility for much of their writing and have considerable ownership of their project.

I do similar work with my students' oral presentations. I encourage my students to give oral presentations in the traditional formats of classroom lecture settings, research meetings, and at professional conventions. Some of my students have also given colloquia to the psychology department; for example, three different students have given well received presentations on state-of-the-art research methods. In each case, the student and I progressed through a series of stages: We began with initial discussions, and then progressed to outlines, to the creation of overheads and audiovisual materials, and finally to practice talks with feedback. Indeed, some of my students have returned from postdoctoral or internship positions elsewhere in the country to get similar feedback on their "job talks" prior to their interviews at other universities.

I also help students develop some of the specific professional skills they will need as faculty members. Reviewing manuscripts for professional journals and for colleagues is one of the most common responsibilities of academics, yet one to which graduate students are rarely exposed. Some of my classes include assignments that require the student to review manuscripts or published articles, following which the review of the specific manuscript and the general journal review and publication process are discussed. When appropriate to students' areas of interest, I invite them to serve as reviewers on submitted manuscripts. Each student and I review the manuscript independently and discuss our reviews; both reviews are sent to the journal editor. Some particularly good students have been subsequently sought after as regular reviewers by the editors. Another similar area is grant writing. In some of my courses, students review my own funded and unfunded proposals as well as those of colleagues at ASU and other universities who provide permission to review their proposals. In one class I have a full day, mock grant review panel in which graduate students review the proposals following the current grant review guidelines of the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse, and National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse. In another class, I work with a small number of graduate students and their advisors to help the students develop a draft of a grant proposal for a federal agency or private foundation. Outside of the class setting, I also work with my students and other students and their faculty advisors (and with our own young faculty) on grant development. Several students, in collaboration with their advisors, have been successful in getting small grants, or grants for postdoctoral work, funded. A few of the students who participated in the class have subsequently been successful in attaining major funding for their research.

Teaching
Graduate mentoring begins with good teaching in several ways. First, good teaching attracts students. For example, one of my areas of interest, research methods and statistics, is not a natural choice of graduate students in psychology. Perhaps two or three of 1000 graduate students in psychology arrive at graduate school with any interest in this topic area. Yet, because I have been able to offer a variety of well taught and useful classes, I have been one of the top faculty in the psychology department over the past 15 years in the number of students who have completed Ph.D. degrees under my direction. Second, many of the projects on which my students work require integration of substantive theory and knowledge and state-of-the-art research methods. My classes provide the necessary foundation in these areas which are critical for undertaking this work. Finally, many of the research projects in which I am involved cross narrow specialty areas or disciplinary boundaries. Students often arrive in graduate school with a strong sense of disciplinary chauvinism. While it is important for students to understand the strengths of and to be committed to their chosen discipline, it is particularly important in interdisciplinary work for students to understand the limitations of their own discipline and to respect the contributions of others having different perspectives. All of my classes have content that crosses traditional specialty areas within psychology and some classes (e.g., Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs; Program Evaluation) have a strong interdisciplinary character. Whenever space limitations permit, I encourage graduate students from other disciplines to enroll in my classes. For example, my Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs class traditionally includes about half psychology students, the other half coming from other social sciences, business, education, and public programs. These classroom experiences begin to give psychology students insights about the possibilities and strengths of interdisciplinary work, offering them a far broader perspective than is commonly found in most psychology departments.

Lifelong Education
To be successful in interdisciplinary work, one must continue to learn new approaches. I encourage my students to study and read widely both in psychology and in other areas related to their topic area throughout their graduate careers. I also try to attend at least one new class in psychology or another department at ASU each year. This gives me a base from which to more adequately advise my students regarding their interdisciplinary course work and to help them relate the material they are learning back to their home discipline of psychology. I take advantage of my sabbaticals to further increase the breadth of my knowledge: During my most recent sabbatical at UCLA, I sat in on six (6) classes-Psychology (1), Public Health (3), Economics (1), and Education (1). I also attended lecture series in social psychology, health psychology, and statistics. I bring this new knowledge back to ASU, using it to develop new courses and new research projects. I emphasize to my students the importance of continually learning new approaches and I try to serve as a role model in this regard.

Job Seeking and Post-Ph.D. Mentoring
Mentoring does not end with the Ph.D. research project. Students need to be given assistance in job seeking, and they need to be prepared for the job interview. Nearly all jobs in psychology are now advertised in professional newsletters. Much of the assistance simply consists of helping students identify those positions for which they may be especially qualified, whether they are advertised in psychology or in other related disciplines. Other assistance comes in the form of bringing unusually promising students to the attention of colleagues at other universities. Finally, my students all get extensive preparation for the job interview, including giving one or more practice job talks with typical questions at the end. I also try to schedule mock job interviews with faculty colleagues whom the student does not know well. The result of this preparation is that my students have a very good rate of success in getting job offers for the positions to which they have applied.

For students who accept academic jobs, it is particularly important to continue to encourage their professional development. I have helped former students through such activities as giving them feedback on manuscripts they were preparing for publication, on drafts of grant proposals, sponsoring grant proposals, and helping them with other professional opportunities. For example, I am currently one of the senior mentors of a "first award" from the National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse for one of our former graduates and I recently provided input for another recent Ph.D. for her grant submission to the W.T. Grant Foundation. I have helped other former students get book contracts and locate appropriate journals for their interdisciplinary manuscripts. Former students continue to seek my advice when they face important career decisions such as whether or not to seek a new position or the appropriate timing of their consideration for tenure.

Conclusion
Training graduate students is a privilege. Graduate students need to be given the basic skills, the knowledge, the theory and the methods to do first-rate work. They need to learn to think clearly about research questions and to learn the benefits of bringing multiple perspectives to bear on their own research questions. They need to come to understand the relationship between good teaching and good research, which, when at its best, raises the level of accomplishment in both areas to new heights. Finally, they need to come to know, as I have, the rewards of introducing the next generation of undergraduate and graduate students to the excitement of psychological research.