Associate Provost MaryLou D’Allegro and Provost Nicholas Hunt-Bull believe a new psychology program will bring more students to Paul Smith’s College. They are seated with a statue of Paul Smith at the college. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

PAUL SMITHS — Paul Smith’s College is offering a new psychology program in the fall, blending a study of psychology with the school’s general environmental focus.

The bachelor’s degree program will feature 11 new courses, nearly doubling the current number of psychology-centered classes offered at the college.

The program has been in planning phases since December 2015 and has a two-fold purpose of increasing enrollment while offering students a useful and popular degree. Attendance at Paul Smith’s has dropped in recent years, from 1,007 in 2010 to around 800 in the past few years.

The addition of one of the top 10 most popular majors in the U.S. should expand the college’s market, according to Provost Nicholas Hunt-Bull.

One factor in the decision to add the program is college administrators noticing employers recruiting at career fairs in fields for which psychology is an ideal major, such as social services or public relations.

“It looks like there is actually a demand for graduates from this kind of area,” Hunt-Bull said. “With things like the opioid crisis, there is a need for graduates who can help with the very great social service needs in the North Country.”

The program was initially set to become available in the fall semester of 2018, but due to a quick approval by the state this March, students will be able to enroll in the major for this fall. It will not begin to attract potential students until next year, after the college promotes it at high schools and college fairs.

Mind and nature

The school’s environmental focus will add another layer to students’ study of psychology, looking at the relationship between the mind and the environment.

“Part of understanding the environment is understanding the human place in the environment, and we’ve talked about that scientifically but we haven’t really talked about that psychologically yet,” Hunt-Bull said.

This combined study could look at humans’ perception of the environment through history, specifically how we view climate change and our impact on the world. It also researches the effects of the environment on human behavior and emotion.

Environmental psychologists “study human responses to natural and technological hazards and examine the influence of different environments, such as offices, homes and urban areas, on loneliness and stress,” according to the American Psychological Association.

Studying the relationship between the environment and human psychology has become increasingly popular since two professors at the University of Michigan, Rachel and Stephen Kaplan, began exploring it in the 1970s.

The Paul Smith’s program will feature classes including therapeutic recreation for elderly people, positive psychology for application in everyday life and brain injury research.

Pros, cons of being small

Paul Smith’s small size has both benefits and challenges. The small class size allows for unique research opportunities.

“We have a well-developed culture of undergraduate science where the students get to study directly with the faculty,” Hunt-Bull said.

The Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences program is the largest at the college, but even it is not great in number, leading to financial struggles. Administrators hope a mainstream degree path will get more students on campus, letting them experience the Adirondack surroundings other colleges cannot offer.

“Once students walk on this campus, oftentimes, there’s a fit,” Vice President for Enrollment Peter Burns said.

Optimism and caution

For many colleges, including Syracuse University and SUNY Albany, the psychology program is one of the largest on campus.

“A psychology degree is actually a pretty easy degree to deliver; it doesn’t really have any special equipment and lab space,” said Scott Shannon, the associate provost and dean of graduate school, instruction and graduate studies at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

At Paul Smith’s, 15 students are expected to enroll in the major this first year, before it is officially advertised to potential students, and 40 to 50 are predicted to be in it by its third year.

“I don’t know of any school that projects out enrollment, particularly at the program level, beyond a couple of years,” Associate Provost MaryLou D’Allegro said. “We also deal with humans, so it can be quite unpredictable.”

Paul Smith’s already has several faculty members academically qualified to teach psychology courses, including D’Allegro, and it hired an industrial organizational psychologist heading into this year. The college plans to hire another in January and considers bringing more professors into the program in the future.

As students get ready to move into campus dorms on Sept. 1, administrators are waiting to see the results of adding a mainstream degree path.

“We are realistic, and we know one program isn’t going to change everything,” Hunt-Bull said.

But they also believe it’s a good move.

“It enhances the campus overall,” Burns said. “We are training people or educating people to become professionals in an area that’s badly needed.”