More recently, the October 1996 issue of the APS Observer advertised 18 positions in cognition and/or cognitive science, including openings at Berkeley, Emory University, the University of Montana, SUNY-Buffalo, UNC-Greensboro, the University of Virginia, and Rice University. An additional 16 positions in closely related areas were advertised: 1 position in psycholinguistics; 2 positions in perceptual processes; 3 positions each in areas specifying social cognition or cognitive development, and 7 positions in cognitive neuroscience. In that same month, the APA Monitor listed an additional 16 positions in cognition/cognitive science, including 2 NIMH post-doctoral fellowships at Carnegie-Mellon University. Closely related areas accounted for another 11 non-overlapping job announcements. And in computer science journals and web sites for the same month, additional positions were advertised at schools such as North Carolina State, the University of Texas, and the Colorado School of Mines.

Positions advertised as of October 1996 also included openings in industry. Applications for people with backgrounds in cognitive science or a closely related area were being solicited by corporations such as Texas Instruments, ADIA Technical Services, CDI Information Services, and the Mei Technology Corporation.

In general, the field of Cognitive Science is doing very well in scientific, educational and practical terms. The increasing emphasis on man-machine interaction has led to many job opportunities for our graduates. As an extreme case, Don Norman has gone from being a Professor of Cognitive Science (at UCSD) to Vice-President for Advanced Development at Apple. (letter from Jerome A. Feldman, Professor at Berkeley and Director, International Computer Science Institute; see Appendix G)

By obtaining an advanced degree and training at the Ph.D. level, USL graduates will be able to respond to such demands on a competitive basis.

Graduates will have the opportunity for employment outside academia. A knowledge of cognitive science will be beneficial to teachers and learning consultants. In the legal profession, there is a demand for experts on jury reasoning, eye-witness identification, comprehension of legal instructions, and memory. (One person involved in this program regularly consults nationwide with lawyers on these issues.) The inability of many Americans to understand tax forms is notorious; research projects by cognitive scientists examine how to present instructions in a manner easy to understand, particularly under high-arousal conditions (such as jury deliberation and emergency fire exit instructions). Many private hospitals will benefit from experts knowledgeable about the cognitive processes of closed-head-injury patients, Alzheimer’s patients, or other amnesiacs. Many private businesses seek software that requires the contribution of people familiar with cognitive science.

These examples of cognitive science-related employment opportunities could easily be multiplied. They are not limited to the State of Louisiana, although employment for people in cognitive science is available here. In the current Information Age, specialists on information will fill new job descriptions.

A Ph.D. program in cognitive science at USL will attract students not only from Louisiana (for example, from the developing undergraduate cognitive science emphasis at Centenary College) but also from neighboring states. Without the program, most of these students would enroll in programs elsewhere in the country. Moreover, offering advanced courses in cognitive science will stimulate interest in applications: ‘Users’ of cognitive science in other disciplines, including those in engineering, architecture, industrial design, robotics, computer science, education and communicative disorders, will be able to receive formal and systematic instruction in cognitive topics relevant to their needs. There is much practical ‘spin-off’ from such a program.

In addition to practical spin-off, however, the program will enable establishing cooperative research programs involving various disciplines. For example, we anticipate forging strong links with people such as Jeanette Parker in the College of Education to apply cognitive science methods and models to research issues concerning teaching and learning in the classroom.

The program also has the potential for the cross-fertilization of ideas across areas that might, at first blush, seem far-removed from cognitive science:

I have been watching and - to the extent my own training and knowledge will allow - participating in and, most especially, profiting from the work of the Cognitive Science group at USL. What I myself have learned has been significantly helpful both in my teaching and in my own research... There will of course be more and more such academic cross-pollination, not only aiding and improving all of our work but, even more importantly, the training of our students... in our various departments. That is, the academic benefits of programs like this are pervasive: they spread into, and distinctly improve, all sorts of academic activity. (letter from Prof. Burton Raffel, Eminent Scholar and Professor of English at USL; winner of the French-American Foundation 1991 Translation Prize for his translation of Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel; see Appendix G)

I know that in tight budget times there are always more proposals than money to fund them, but I truly believe that this program would bring a significant amount of attention to USL in a growing and very important area of scientific research. I should also mention that as a field Cognitive Science typically generates more grant funding than other disciplines in the behavioral sciences. ( Michael Tomasello, Associate Editor, Child Development and Journal of Comparative Psychology; Professor of Psychology at Emory University; see Appendix G)

The program as currently envisioned is distinctive, interdisciplinary, and unusually well integrated. The faculty expertise, facilities, and program philosophy will immediately position it at the cutting edge of some of the most important contemporary issues in cognitive science. Being familiar with the credentials of many of the participants I am confident that the program already represents a critical intellectual mass with the kind of viability that will be conducive to achieving national distinction and eventually considerable prominence. I should also note that the presence of a comparative cognition component to this program, coupled with the excellent primate research facilities at the New Iberia Research Center, will make it not only unique among cognitive science programs throughout the country, but will almost certainly attract an unusually large number of distinctive and highly qualified doctoral students from many diverse backgrounds. (letter from Gordon G. Gallup, Jr., Professor of Psychology, State University of New York at Albany; see Appendix G).