The University of Alabama Psychology Department began in 1937 when Donald Ramsdell was hired from Harvard and began teaching Psych courses in the School of Education. 

FROM THIS LINK: Peter Owen Whitmer, a psychologist who for a time was Timothy Leary's biographer, would say later, "I'm not sure of the extent of the relationship with Ramsdell. I do know that Tim used him as his therapist when he was at Alabama. I've read Tim's letters in which he talks about having Thanksgiving at the Ramsdell house and talking to Ramsdell about the wound of West Point and how to heal it and also about homosexuality. Ramsdell was fairly openly gay. When I talked to his wife she was not terribly articulate and his daughter was outrageously guarded. So we don't know what happened there." Tim soon discovered that many of the best professors on campus were former northern academic stars who had migrated to Alabama because of its gay infrastructure. https://books.google.com/books?id=of4J.dbKvMoC&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=Ramsdell+%22not+sure+of+the+extent%22+Ramsdell&source=bl&ots=EPvpmMLmf8&sig=ACfU3U037ohz7uHlv9S2QJGluVzwNWJ70A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjE5LuPjf3rAhUmmeAKHUAvBRcQ6AEwAHoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=Ramsdell%20%22not%20sure%20of%20the%20extent%22%20Ramsdell&f=false