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Interview with Carrie Margolin

Recent Teaching History
Diaspora, A Journey Toward Destiny; 2000-1
Statistics and Research Methods for Psychology and other Social Sciences; Summer 1998
Science of Mind; 1997-98; Fall 1995
Masculine/Feminine; 1996-97
Foundations of Modern Psychology; Spring 1996
Where No One has Gone Before, Intermediate level program in popular culture and concepts of science; 1994-95
Individual Contracts

Recent and Current Areas of Interest

I find myself very busy with academic and program materials and the like. I often connect up with student projects in which they are interested. I can identify a lot of different topics in mainstream cognitive psychology projects that I have been interested in over the years, but I haven't started many new projects of late. My main interests in cognitive psychology are in memory and attention - divided attention. But now as I do my own work I find I am doing more and more applied work, applied experimental, not necessarily cognitive psychology. One example is a project about excuses. I had an interest in what people think about the excuses they make - why people make excuses - how effective they think they are. I was interested in the question of "What makes an excuse effective?" in the sense that it was seen as believable and that it got the results a student was asking for. I wanted to know how this might differ between the student and the faculty. And finally if there were any developmental differences between older and younger students. This has to do with my teaching style in as much as I have had to listen to a lot of excuses over the years and I don't respond well to them. Excuses don't actually get the work done, but instead it makes me take on the burden of the student.
Cognitive psychology is interesting to me because we are dealing with the mind. We are dealing with something that has its own physical reality of the brain, but which has its own reality being separate from the brain. We are talking of something that is hard to define. Thus simple but profound questions about consciousness, about self knowledge are phenomenal. Where does consciousness come from? How can the mind do that? There is something there that will always capture my interest. I originally thought in graduate school that my goal was to come to the place where we could take a physical trace from the brain and by visually inspecting it we would be able to know what was going on. I don't think this is very likely to happen, but it is something that keeps me thinking. Cognitive psychologists work well with neuro-psychologists and biologists, because we are interested in the mind, while they are interested in the brain and we need to be talking together. If I were interested in the brain I would be trying to understand the structure of the brain, eg. where is memory, where is perception located. Basically I would want to know the structure and physiology of the brain. What we are finding of course is that these functions in the brain are are more diffuse and more global. So from my interest in the mind, I have to give up on the hope of a simple correlation between a physical reality and a mental function, instead I have to ask how can I construct a reasonable model of these functions not a simple physical structure.

Are there particular authors/artists/thinkers whose work you interested and which you often ask students to examine?

There a number of important people. Ulrich Neisser has been at this forever and has done some recent work on memory. Saul Sternberg is another person who is important. As students learn about cognitive psychology they begin to discover that the work of Wilhem Wundt who set up the first psychology laboratories in the 1870s looks an awful lot like what we are doing in the 1990's. The idea of trying to quantify mental phenomena and the techniques we use to do that have a lot of important parallels. Cognitive psychology emerged as a field in the 1950's as a reaction to the work of B.F. Skinner who wanted to not enquire into the workings of the mind and the brain. Cognitive psychology wanted, like Skinner, to make things observable and quantifiable, but they wanted to understand the mind and brain. When we did that we went back to many of the ideas that Wundt was interested in. A critical modern author is Elizabeth Loftus, whose training is in classic cognitive psychology, but she has expanded it and put it in fields of common knowledge such as eyewitness testimony, and repressed memory.

Are there specific areas of interest or issues you want to work with students on in the current year?

I am always interested in working with students who have interest in questions of memory and attention. I have a project I would like to do dealing with eyewitness testimony about how people can identify a face that ages.

Specific Skills, Competence, Techniques:

Teaching statistics is a major interest of mine. I am particularly interested in working with students who are "math phobic." I have had a great deal of success in my summer Statistics and Research Methods class with those students in conveying both the general concepts and some facility with the actual mathematics of applying statistical measures.
In terms of library research in psychology I really stress working with modern reference tools like Psych Lit, Science and Social Science Citation Indexes in order that they can get into the journals and periodical literature of psychology. Students need to learn APA, American Psychological Association, style of writing and documentation.

I want students to have good word processing skills and e-mail skills if they are going to do college level work with me.

What are key qualities you look for in student work? What techniques do you use to assess their work? How do you help students assess their work?

For me good written work first has something to do with mechanics. I find mechanics impossible to ignore, especially spelling. There is a way in which I see failure to deal with this material as failure of respect both for me and, in a sense, for themselves and their work. When I get past this material I can work on the ideas. I am very interested in basic clarity and attention to who the audience is. This means they have to be clear about their assumptions. They need to recognize the difference between written and spoken English. Ultimately I want to see the student reaching for ideas. I want to see them take a risk, grasp at an idea. I want to see them getting beyond the given and asking their own questions. I really like to have them reading other research and begin to enter the conversation that is going on in the scientific community. I like to see them follow the conversation and add to it.
Students will know when they are really doing this when it begins to feel shaky, and where they are consciously taking a risk and trying to support their position with real evidence.

Teaching Style:How would you characterize yourself as a teacher?

To some degree this depends on the setting. I am a different person in lectures than I am in seminars. When I do lectures I usually have lot of information I want to give and see myself as an information provider. I like to do that however, with some aspect of a workshop: I like to provide some hands-on demonstration that I can then talk about in the lecture. I don't see this as an attempt to venture into new territory, but as a place to convey some reasonably well understood ideas.
Seminar is an entity unto itself. I have to be flexible and always trying out new ways of doing things. I see seminar as a primarily student seminar, which means I take a lesser role and I often would like students to see me as another participant, because that is the way I often feel. I often feel that I am a co-learner with the students. I can do a good job of facilitation, but I would rather be a participant than a leader. The benefit of a seminar is an opportunity to reflect with others on a text and it is an opportunity to hear yourself and others think out loud. Thus seminar should be a building process that creates new ideas and questions.

I like to do serious project work in the spring quarter. I love working in one on one and small group settings. I can bring all my skills to bear and I can come up with ideas of authors or research design and the like that will help students see the problem and figure out how to find answers. I really like the part of teaching that has to do with helping students find answers for the problems they create.

I talk a hard line, but I don't always walk it. I say what I want, but I can be flexible and I can make accommodations.

What types of students tend to do well with you?

In my summer statistics I love the math phobics, the ones who are very nervous and scared, because they are working on all these false assumptions. It is so rewarding to show those students that they do know what they are doing and that they can get past that fear and open those doors.
More generally I like students who are really product-oriented. In other words there is a goal in sight and they are going to get there. I like students who are self-motivated, who have enough confidence to take some risks, who are detail persons, and who can know what they have done and where they are going.

I really like a student to have a question that is real or at least a reasonably coherent interest.

What types of students have a hard time with you?

I have problems with students who just flake out on work. My attitude is that you are here to do some thing, to be a student, to be a worker. It isn't going to be done for you. I also have problems with students who get into trouble somehow, either with the material or some outside situation, and simply disappear. As much as I say I don't want to hear people's excuses, I worry about a situation like that; I am a mom too.

What do your student evaluations say about the way you come across to students?

They find me accessible and easy to talk to. They some times have an initial sense of intimidation. I get mixed reviews in seminar. For some students they are very appreciative of my standing back and not taking over seminar. Others want me to be the leader. My teaching of research and statistics is always seen as an important resource.

Expectations about Contracts, Internships, and Evaluations
What qualities do you look for in a student who comes to you for work in a contract?

Since contracts are above and beyond normal load, I want students who are going to make it reasonably easy for me to supervise their work. This goes back to organization and self- motivation. I need a student to know what they want to do, have a plan, better yet a schedule that they are going to be happy to work mostly on their own. Because I don't have time to work them as much as I would like.
I usually want to see a draft of the contract and a reading list.

Other: Well, it doesn't happen often, but I won't tolerate any behavior that violates the social contract.I will come down real hard on students for that. I will not have a situation in seminar group where peoples' beliefs or prejudices are a problem for others. I am sensitive to that and I ask people to speak gently and respectfully when they venture into sensitive areas.

No Excuses/ No Whining!!

Interviewer: Matt Smith

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Last Updated: March 15, 2007