University of Nevada Las Vegas - Epilogue Yearbook (Las Vegas, NV)

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Educated 65

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T Everyone seems to be coming under more and more psychological stress. And I think our whole educational process, emphasis, every- thing is aimed more and more towards the social sciences in general, psychology in particular. away it seems, from technology at present. Behavior modification, the application of learning principles to changing behavior, modifying behavior, is the applied approach I ia- vor. This approach is being greatly felt in that we do have the means now to generally change behavior. And. often what are classified as psychological or behavioral problems simply means that a person is exhibiting behavior that is, by some standard, classified as other than normal; we can through learning principles change it to normal behav- ior. Behavior modification is the area that I'm concerned with as bene- ficial. People get frightened by it because the technique will allow the modification of behavior in any direction that the organism is capable of. So then, laymen suddenly think that the therapist wants to play God, and gets concerned about control. Behavior modification is no different from the traditional Freudian approach, except we get better results. When you do as poorly as we have traditionally. no one's con- cerned with the control, because you don't do very well anyway. I look as my role as beneficial to the purpose of the university. this university in particular, because I'm the only experimental psychologist in Southern Nevada. And a university by its nature should represent all approaches. If nothing else I'm presenting a viewpoint that students are just not going to receive otherwise. I think the main way in which my role is beneficial is probably in one-to-one interactions with stu- dents - not as a teaching device, but as a model. Most good learning probably comes about by modeling. and in doing research. one-to-one relationships. I think that any knowledge is good in and of itself. It does not have to be practical; it does not have to be applied. And, in fact, a good deal of our most practical knowledge was first gained, first discovered from a very basic kind of research that no one could see any applica- tion for. I think we're way overdoing directionality nowadays, the prac- tical approach. Everything has to be for this purpose or this purpose or this purpose. The students and faculty are mouthing words that what is needed are inter-disciplinary courses and particular kinds of interaction. Tradi- tional lecture methods are probably outmoded and this is nonsense. It may be true in certain cases, but there certainly are cases in which the traditional methods are more appropriate than newer ways. of do- ing things. This emphasizes goals rather than means. The problems facing us are almost all chemical. E2 There's no doubt about that. Even wars are fought ' i because of limited chemical resources of raw ma- terials or food supplies. The analysis and extent of pollution today is determined by chemical means. And of course the big problem, that is solving pol- lution problems and some ecological problems, all involve chemistry. As far as the most fundamental problem in the world today, I personally view it as over-population, but I don't think you could strictly call that a chemical problem. I think the study of chemistry is very pertinent to the world we have today. Not only that, many of the decisions involv- ing solutions of the so-called pressing problems are decisions which will have to be made involving chemical matters. 80 I think our students today. graduating from the program here in chemistry. are much better oft than I was. They're better equipped to deal with the real problems facing the world than I was when I graduated. Chemistry. per se, is not going to directly benefit the university. What chemistry does do for the university is supply the courses essential for the training of many people such as chemists, biologists, pre-meds, physicists, geolo- gists, and pharmacists. T l Robert Tarfe, Psychology

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A total of 660 students gradu- ated from the University of Ne- vada, Ias Vegas during the wee- kend. Here is a listing of the gradu- ates, their academic majors and degrees earned: Bachelor 0! Arts Patty Abraham, psychology; Lee Allen, soclal sciences; Jack R. Ande: son, sociolo- gy: V. Diane Anness. anthropology-socioio- 9y; Kathleen Atchley. English; Bert B. Babero, Jr., ueech arts; Eugene R. Bach, anthropology. Sharon L. larber. psychology; Michael Wayne Barozzi, political science; Larry A Baum, psychology; Bruce Arne Babb. English; Tony Bennett, anthropology; Rita