ANDP Survey - Graduate Education

7. Undergraduate Programs

Based on information available from 51 member programs, 8 (16%) founded their programs before 1980, 13 (25%) founded them between 1980 and 1989, and 30 (59%) founded them after 1989. Roughly the same distribution was seen among the 24 programs that participated in the survey. Thus, the existence of undergraduate programs in Neuroscience is a relatively recent phenomenon, and a representative mix of older and newer programs participated in the 2000 survey. Nonetheless, these results must be considered preliminary because of the relatively small size of the obtained sample, and the absence of previous information to which the new data could be compared.

The responses are organized in the sequence of the first six questions in the survey.

i. Institutional Affiliation. Half (12) of the 24 programs were located in undergraduate colleges that did not have a Ph.D. program in Neuroscience, whereas the other 12 programs were at universities that did have at least one graduate program in Neuroscience.

ii. Administrative Structure. Two-thirds (16) of the 24 programs were interdisciplinary in nature, and offered a B.S. or B.A. degree in Neuroscience. Four programs offered a B.S. or B.A. degree either in Biology or Psychology, with a specialization in Neuroscience. Only four programs were located in Departments of Neuroscience or Behavioral Neuroscience.

iii. Faculty Hiring. Ten of the 24 programs did not hire faculty for their program, whereas 14 did. The latter response (57%) is comparable to that in graduate training programs (54%).

iv. Faculty Appointments. The total number of faculty with tenure-stream positions in the 24 programs increased by 3% from 1997-98 to 1998-99, and by 13% from 1997-98 to 1999-2000. In each of the 3 years there was 5-10% turnover of tenure-stream positions (i.e., faculty leaving and arriving as a percent of the total number of faculty affiliated with a program).

Many fewer faculty positions were nontenure-stream than were tenure-stream: 11% as many in 1997-98, 15% as many in 1998-99, and 20% as many in 1999-2000. Although the absolute numbers of nontenure-stream positions in these 24 programs are still relatively low, they increased by 44% from 1997-98 to 1998-99, and by 111% from 1997-98 to 1999-2000. Note that the turnover of faculty with nontenure-stream positions was much higher (30-50%) than those of faculty with tenure-stream positions, as might be expected.

v. Faculty. In 1999-2000, the distribution of faculty with tenure-stream positions according to rank was 20% assistant professors, 20% associate professors, and 60% full professors. At each faculty rank, women occupied 20-30% of the tenure-stream positions. They also held 53% of the nontenure-stream faculty positions. All of these numbers are similar to those of faculty in graduate Neuroscience programs. The total number of faculty in these programs, on average, were ~8 tenure-stream and ~1.5 nontenure-stream faculty members per program.

Among faculty with tenure-stream positions, 95% were Caucasian and only 5% were U.S. racial and ethnic minorities; less than 1% were not U.S. citizens. (Note that data from the two Canadian institutions were not included here.)

vi. Undergraduate Students. The number of undergraduate students with Neuroscience majors in these 24 programs increased substantially during the past three years, by 36% from 1997-98 to 1998-99, and by 88% from 1997-98 to 1999-2000. On average, there were now 54 Neuroscience majors per program, although the number per program varied widely (range = 4 to 272), and 45% of the programs still had 20 or fewer students. There were approximately equal numbers of males and females among the undergraduate students with majors in Neuroscience during each of the past three years (48-52% each). These numbers are consistent with a similar representation of males and females among predoctoral trainees.

February 22, 2007