Keith Allen, Ph.D., has been at conferences where friends and peers would lament to him about the cutthroat nature of academia, about the battle for resources and about constant intra- and interdepartmental competition.
In 30 years in the psychology department at MMI, he’s never experienced that. And as he takes over as the new director of the department, he’d like to make sure that he never will.
Dr. Allen has been at MMI since he received his Ph.D. from West Virginia, recruited by his predecessor, Joe Evans, Ph.D. Dr. Evans set a tone for the department that has remained constant, Dr. Allen said.
“The sort of people he brought into the department were people who bought into a collegial, kind of family atmosphere,” he said. “Not competitive, but wanting to achieve — everyone is driven to achieve and be successful, but not at the expense of other people.”
Also, as the department has grown — from five people when Dr. Allen arrived to its current roster of 21 faculty — that sense of family has remained. And the arrival of new MMI director Karoly Mirnics, M.D., Ph.D., has only strengthened it, Dr. Allen said.
“Karoly comes in with a very collaborative, collegial vision,” he said. “For example, wanting to connect with the community. As a department, we’ve been interested in connecting with the community for a long time. So to have somebody at the top who has a vision and will continue to creatively pursue that, that’s something you want to be a part of. And somebody who’s interested in sharing resources equitably and making sure we’re working together toward a common vision, you want to be a part of that, as well.”
Going forward, Dr. Allen hopes to expand the department’s reach throughout the state.
“We’re reaching the limits of our ability to do that with people, but we can continue to pursue that goal of increasing access to care with telemedicine,” he said. “That’s going to be the next frontier for us as a department — extending our reach into the other underserved areas of the state, not just with live bodies but through telemedicine.”
Other ventures include a joint Applied Behavior Analysis master’s degree program with the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
“We’ve been doing this collaboratively, but it hasn’t been jointly owned by us,” he said. “Once it is, we’ll have more teaching responsibilities. That will be a big change for us in terms of owning that program, and then fitting that in with the clinical education and clinical research we do. There will be some challenges with making that work, but we feel like we’re up to the task.”
One big upcoming challenge will be matching the prolific grant-generating skills of the retiring Dr. Evans.
“We’ve depended a lot on various forms of training grants, and Joe was the generator of those grants,” Dr. Allen said. “We have some younger faculty who are working hard on finding ways for us to create new sources of funding in both training interns and post-docs and research.”
The challenges and opportunities are one of the reasons Dr. Allen has been in his department and at MMI for 30 years.
“There aren’t many places like this in the country,” he said.