After six years of planning, the Academic Senate officially approved the combination of SF State's Physiological Psychology Master's Program and the Psychological Research Program.

Tuesday's meeting - between the Academic Senate and Coordinator of the Physiological Psychology Master's Program Mark Geisler and Chair of the Psychology Department Kathleen Mosier - was the second consecutive meeting that discussed the repercussions of combining two programs, which Geisler has confirmed to be minimal.

"No one is being let go, no one is being fired - literally. The students that come into the program, most of them have been entered under the Psychological Research concentration, which has an 80 - 90 percent overlap with the physiology psychology," said Geisler.

The psychology department started to debate integrating the two programs when the duties of the Physiological Psychology Master's Program became impossible to handle after Geisler was forced to conduct the program by himself.

"I think we didn't know what direction the department wanted to go in," said Mosier. "We left the program on the books, so it was still available to be revived. We weren't sure if we were going to beef up the program."

This may sound like a problem for students who are focusing on obtaining their master's degrees in physiology psychology and are planning to pursue their studies further and get a Ph.D. later on, but Geisler guarantees that the combining of the two programs will not harm a student's chance to receive a degree in physiological psychology.

Currently the 2005 - 2006 bulletin provides a section for the Physiological Psychology Program but directs students to enroll in Psychology Research. Although the psychology department has already been enforcing the integration of the two programs, Geisler explains that it was still necessary for the department to receive the green light from the Academic Council Committee.

"In order to make it official, even though we've been doing this forever, when you discontinue something just as I wanted to create a whole new program, I would have to do all the justification, get it approved through all the levels, and that is the same process to create something as it is something to end a program" said Geisler.

The approval from the Academic Council Committee will remove the physiologcal psychology section in the 2006- 2007 bulletin and will instead display only the Psychological Research Program.

Marija Dregic, a third year psychology international graduate student, was planning to enroll in the Physiological Psychology Program when the school bulletin referred her to register for the Psychological Research Program.

"This program supports the ideas of us who are always struggling with the main area of study. This will benefit the program, since all other psychology departments are very specific, it is very good to have one that it is more general," said Dregic.

Mosier has high hopes for the future and is confident that this move help facilitate the psychology department.

"This will strengthen the overall master level that we are offering. The more integration, the stronger we are."