By Alex Rake (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: March 11, 2015
Prof Talk is The Cascade’s oral history series, featuring the people best qualified to talk about what UFV has been like over the course of its first few decades: its professors. Each week we’ll interview a professor from a different department, asking them what UFV was like before it was UFV, and how they expect things will continue to change here.
Candace Taylor is a psychology professor at UFV. She has been a full-time professor here for 12 years, and her teaching focus is on the personality. Included among her listed research interests are normal narcissism, self-disclosure and attraction, and mate attraction and selection strategies.
What brought you to UFV?
I required a job. When I graduated from UBC, there weren’t a whole lot of jobs available, tenure track or otherwise, so I was just doing the usual sessional stuff here and there. Then — I was actually at Douglas — the head of the department said there were a couple of courses opening here and I should consider applying for them. I was a sessional for — gee willikers, I don’t know — three or four years, and then became full-time.
What kind of changes have you noticed in the culture at UFV?
I don’t think I’ve observed any really drastic changes, except, I suppose, the one that’s most noticeable to me: largely because our provincial government undervalues post-secondary education, the cut-backs have been brutal. That will have, and has had to a certain degree, an impact on the university, service delivery, and ultimately students. That, I think, is a crying shame.
I haven’t noticed a lot of difference in the character or quality of the students. This school has always been different in the sense that there are many more students who attend school and work in the real world, [compared] to UBC and other places like that. I have noticed relatively fewer mature students in the last five years; I used to see older students.
How do the courses you teach now differ from the courses you taught at first?
The content changes as a function of the research findings, of course, because psychology is a science — albeit a social one — so I’m constantly updating presentations.
I’m teaching a new course, one I created here: Evolutionary Psychology, which is a relatively new, burgeoning area.
The content of my Personality Theory course has changed somewhat. Personality Theory is sometimes called “a walk through the graveyard”: a bunch of old, dead, white men who developed most of the theories. I’m focusing on more and more recent things: research, findings, new ideas about the structure of personality.
Have there been any colleagues or students who have been particularly helpful or influential on what you do as a teacher?
I’ve had a couple of students. One in particular acted as a volunteer research assistant. I think he’s going on to graduate school soon and I’d be happy to write for him when he does.
Someone who’s no longer here: Jackie Snodgrass. She was very helpful to me.
Most people have been, but I haven’t had a mentor as such. Colleagues here are pretty free and easy in terms of sharing information. If we see something we know is of particular interest to another individual, then we’ll inform them about it. It’s a pretty collegial atmosphere in the psych department, I think.
What kinds of projects are you involved with at UFV?
When you’re required to teach full-time and you don’t have a teaching assistant to assist with grading, you don’t have time to do a lot of research. So I’ve been running subjects periodically, but that’s about it.
At other universities, like UBC for example, people often have minimal teaching loads but they’re expected to do a tremendous amount of research — but they have the time to do it. They don’t have to teach seven or eight courses a year, that’s all.
How would you describe what you’ve gotten out of your time at UFV?
While I was in graduate school I wished to be a teacher of psychology, and over my years here I’ve certainly determined that I like it. It’s meaningful, and I think I’m not too bad at it — or at least, so students say. I think I have indeed found my calling in some fundamental sense, and I guess UFV has given me that.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
