ACM Professional Biography
March, 1990
Arthur C. MacKinney
I was struck by Stagner's (1981) comments about the
role of chance in determining his respondents' entry into the field of I/0
Psychology.1 It certainly was true in my case! I had just enrolled in
a course in Economics when I was an undergraduate at William Jewell College. The
year was 1948 or 1949. I had taken one previous course under the professor who
was scheduled to offer the course, and I respected his abilities and
professionalism. Unfortunately, however, he received a late‑breaking job
offer and departed the scene. The substitute instructor was educated in a
different field and commented at his first session that he knew little about the
subject. I immediately began searching for an alternative.
Purely by
chance, there was a course called "Psychology of Advertising" offered
at precisely the same hour as the Economics course I had enrolled for. Since I
had already taken Introductory Psychology, did moderately well in it, and found
it to be passably interesting, I made the switch. I guess it isn't very
necessary to note that I was captivated by the subject matter, did very well in
the course, and went on to take other psychology courses.
This chance event clearly set one of the themes in my
professional life: the study of psychology. But there were also other themes,
both earlier and later.
Elementary
School
-A second theme began to emerge quite early in my
life, the satisfaction of assuming a leadership role. I recall incidents from my
earliest years of schooling that involved being given leader roles in various
school and playtime activities. These went on to become more formal, resulting
from elected offices and school assignments. I recall frequently being a class
officer, being a spokesperson for one event or another, working at "safety
patrol" and the like.
I recall one incident that occurred during a class
visit to the State Capitol in Jefferson City, Missouri. At the last minute
before meeting the Governor, our teacher remembered that no one had thought to
designate a spokesperson to thank the Governor for meeting with us. I got the
assignment, without warning and without any opportunity for preparation of any
kind. I was a scared kid, and when the Governor appeared I stammered out
something inane. But the Governor was gracious, shook hands, thanked me for my
comments, and then addressed the class with his hand on my shoulder. My interest
in taking responsibility didn't suffer from the incident.
As time went on, I was fortunate to be given other
leadership roles which provided opportunity for learning more about the management
of human enterprise. I like the centrality of it, the problem solving that is
intrinsic to it, the strong interpersonal elements, and I suppose there are some
power needs involved also. As for the political elements, there is anxiety, of
course, but also challenge. Being in a position of responsibility, and
especially with being a practicing manager, became a central theme in my life.
It seems clear to me now that I/0 Psychology is in
part a merger of the two themes explored so far, psychology and leadership. I
think of higher education management as one kind of professional practice in I/0
psychology.
High
School
The beginning of my high school years coincided with
the start of World War II, and the beginning of major changes in my family life.
What had formerly been a fairly limited sphere of operation suddenly grew by a
continent. I was switched to a large junior high in a different city, and
suffered the typical traumas of adjustment to new everything. I was faced,
of course, with the need to carve out a new niche, but without any real
sense of how to go about it.
One of the important things that happened during
these years, and only because an assistant principal said it should, was that I
got exposed to good science instruction for the first time. I recall vividly my
first science course; it was called "General Science" and it was
fascinating. I liked the substance, but I also found the methods impressive.
This was the beginning of a profound respect for what was known and how it came
to be known.
That first course in General Science taught me things
about diverse subjects as weather, rocks, plants, mechanical devices, the human
body. I also began to gain a genuine appreciation for the fact that one didn't
have to depend on reason and logic, or authority, for what is known. I began to
sense that there was a world of empiricism "out there" although I
didn't gain insight into how it operated until later. I did recognize that I
wanted more and consequently went on to other high school science courses.
It is not clear to me now what lead me into debate.
But I found high school debate competition to be an interesting combination of
work and satisfaction. I remember the euphoria of winning, and the extreme
importance of studying the subject from all sides so as to anticipate the
arguments of the opposition. I discovered early that I could have no success in
debate without working hard to know the subject. And the satisfaction came from
using words to influence opinions and gain points.
Although I felt anxiety at the start of debate
competition, once underway and into the substance of the arguments, confidence
grew and I felt something akin to thrill with the competition. In my senior year
of high school, my partner and I won second in the state competition debating
both sides of whether the U.S. should join the United Nations.
In the hindsight resulting from intervening years, I
see these high school experiences as adding several themes to my life. One of
these was an interest in empirical science. A second was an interest in the
power of language. And a third was the importance of examining ideas in verbal
interaction.
Military
During my first year of college, I thought I wanted
to study medicine. In fact, during that year, I thought seriously about only two
career choices: medicine and engineering. But I realize now that I mistakenly
thought that engineering and Civil Engineering were synonymous, and that
interest never amounted to much. I knew positively that I didn't want to study
for the ministry; my Father was a protestant minister and an attorney (later, a
judge) and I found most of what he did in his career to be uninteresting to me.
And I knew I didn't want to be a retailer; my Grandfather was a food store owner
and I spent deadly dull days trying to find something interesting and exciting
about the grocery business. The only thing I liked about working at the grocery
store was driving the delivery truck. I liked planning routes, and making
deliveries. In fact, planning a route to minimize time and miles, and to avoid
backtracking, was a challenge. I liked that. I also liked that Dodge pickup with
its "C" gasoline rationing sticker. That truck was a wonderful friend
during the war years.
But the GI Bill was expiring, my parents had limited
means, and I saw in the military a chance to gain a paid education, get away
from home, and add some excitement to my life. Indeed, it was all these things!
I spent about a year and a half in the Army during 1946 and 1947 (I was later to
spend another year during the Korean War), most of it in Japan. This experience
was wonderful. Just the fact that it was foreign travel with some exposure to
another culture was enough in itself. But it also exposed me to personnel work.
My main duty assignment during this stint was as a
personnel NCO; I gradually worked up to Sergeant with some limited
responsibility. I did a lot of mindless stuff like morning reports and duty
rosters, but I also got a beginning acquaintance with subjects like personnel
records, classification, and performance evaluation. Although I had no insight
into the matter at all at the time, I now believe that this experience was one
of the reasons that I gravitated to the I/0 specialty in psychology. I began
to see the potential of enormous organizational gains to be realized from proper
utilization of people resources.
College
With some military experience behind me, I found I
really liked college! I attended William Jewell College, a small liberal arts
institution near Kansas City, Missouri. With some exceptions here and there, I
enjoyed my work. Even the required courses, such as religion, were interesting.
Some turned out to be challenging. So, I did some work, and earned a respectable
but not outstanding academic record.
I was into a lot of things during these years. In
addition to a regular course load, I worked on the yearbook, got deeply involved
in student government, held various offices including president of my
fraternity, worked a few hours a week as an undergrad TA and as a dorm
counselor, MC'd some shows, worked on many committees, attended dozens of
parties, etc. I had a real ball!
My fraternity experience was not only unique, it was
my first real management responsibility. I had to budget, exercise financial
control, appoint people to jobs, make sure they did them, plan, work all the
political angles, settle disputes. It was fascinating intrinsically, and it
was also wonderful experience.
My college years significantly influenced my decision
to go on with the study of psychology. My first course, as noted earlier, was
Psychology of Advertising, taught by a University of Minnesota graduate,
Constance Nelson. She was excellent, and she was very complimentary about the
U of M. My desire to attend Minnesota dates from that very first course in
psychology.
But it was more than that. Our small Department of
Psychology was a close one. The majors and the three faculty members did a lot
of educational things together in addition to regular course work. There was the
Psychology Club, which became a Psi
Chi chapter later on. And there were regular field trips at the rate of five or
six a year. We visited all kinds of places that applied psychology. And there
were regular special events in‑house. The Kansas City area in the 1950s
was rich in such opportunities. I recall a practicing clinician who was doing
research with group psychotherapy, clinicians from Menniger who were
reclassifying behavior disorders, dedicated professionals who worked with mental
retardation, personnel people from local industry, a clinical researcher who was
working on weight control, and another who was researching implosive therapy.
There was a banquet speaker whose doctoral study was on psychodrama. So, it was
an intellectually rich environment, both in class and outside. While training in
the hard science and methodological aspects of our field were limited, we had a
lot of exposure to the glamorous applied stuff. I finished a B.A. degree pretty
well convinced that I wanted to be a Clinical Psychologist.
But the Army intervened again, and I couldn't plan
ahead well enough to apply for clinical programs. So when I was discharged on
rather short notice in the fall of 1951, I quickly applied to the University of
Minnesota for admission to graduate school. I was accepted, but their acceptance
was heavily influenced by faculty recommendations from William Jewell. My
undergraduate grades and my test scores weren't bad, but they weren't at the
levels typical for the U of M Department of Psychology. But I got admitted,
loaded up my '47 Chevy Fleetline, and headed north.
Graduate
School
When I got to Minnesota, I discovered
"real" psychology and "real" statistics. Let me review my
first quarter there. First, there was a course on Motivation Theory, taught by a
Spence graduate from Iowa, Wallace Russell. That was my first good exposure to
S‑R theory, and I learned a lot about "motes" and
"excitatory potentials". I didn't like it much, but I learned a lot.
Second, there was a course from Donald G. Patterson called "Individual
Differences" (we called it "I.D.'s") and it was at the same
time fascinating and impossible. I found it impossible to memorize all that
stuff he knew and thought everyone should also know. But apparently no one else
memorized it either so I got an A. I learned a tremendous amount about human
behavioral differences and where they come from. I also found in Donald
Patterson my favorite professor of all time. Third, there was a course in
Abnormal Psychology, a topic I thought I knew a lot about already, taught by
Charles Bird. I found out that I had only scratched the surface to that point. I
also learned I couldn't diagnose worth a darn and did not want to be a Clinical
Psychologist. And finally, there was biostatistics, taken in the School of
Public Health. It was a whole different world. I found extraordinarily useful
stuff that was extraordinarily difficult to pound through my nonquantitative
head. I made a B in Stat.
It went on from there through the typical rewards as
well as tribulations of a graduate school experience. Jim Jenkins, who was then
an assistant professor, got me involved in my first true research project during
that first year. It was a readability study that resulted in publication in the Journal
of Applied Psychology. I got darned weary of counting words and syllables,
but it was a good intro, and set me on the course of future research and
publication. Here was realization of that junior high interest in empirical
science.
As noted above, I abandoned the clinical aspiration
about as soon as I started at Minnesota, and latched on to I/0 right away. My
study in I/0 was heavily differential and measurement in orientation. I had lots
of work in statistics, experimental and other basic science courses, vocational
and personnel psychology, and human factors. (There were no courses in
organizational or social in my programl although I later spent quite a lot of
time studying on‑my own in those fields.) And I took a collateral field in
Industrial Relations, getting acquainted with such people as Dale Yoder and Herb
Heneman.
I was appointed a TA at Minnesota, and did all the
departmental routine work required of TA's in those days. I ran an IBM scoring
machine for, literally, thousands of intro psychology answer sheets. But when I
finished my Master's degree at the end of two years of graduate study, I was
made an instructor and assigned to teach two sections of Intro Experimental
Psychology. All the instructors used the same text and tests, but otherwise we
had a lot of freedom. I found another theme in this experience; I really liked
to teach. it was clear then, as it is today, that my future was tied to academic
institutions.
My dissertation was suggested to me by Jim Jenkins,
and it was a field experiment evaluating tachistoscopic training for clerical
workers. The question was whether perceptual training via tachistoscopic
projection would improve perception and thus clerical performance. It improved
perceptual speed and accuracy okay, but these improvements didn't transfer to
the job. Nevertheless, it was a great experience to do a true experiment, using
both experimental and control groups, in a field setting. Such field experiments
weren't all that common in those days, in spite of earlier famous examples.
But that study, like dozens I carried out later,
dropped into the bottomless abyss called the psychological literature, and most
were never heard from again. In fact, the studies I have done that attracted
any attention were the ones I regard as the most pedestrian; studies in
personnel selection and training, and longitudinal studies of student attrition.
The studies I regard as my most innovative and important, such as studies of
psychological scaling and of factor structure changes with experience, have
never been heard of since.
General
Motors
When I finished my degree in 1955, I interviewed with
several organizations and accepted a job with Orlo Crissey at the General Motors
Institute in Flint, Michigan. I spent two years there, doing some fairly routine
personnel evaluations, but also carrying out some interesting studies of
supervisory job design and performance measurement. Along the line I had
acquired a continuing interest in the dependent variable side of I/0 research,
and this consumed much of my professional activity during this period. The GM
folks, Orlo, and others such as Bill Chew, Dutch Landen, and Harry O'Neill
(Harry was later killed in a plane crash), were accommodating to my research
interests. But I came to realize that I really valued the investigative
freedom that came with University work, and I made a move back toward academe.
In addition to research, as noted earlier, I really liked to teach.
Iowa
State University
I was invited to join the faculty at ISU in the Fall,
1957. Bill Owens was then Department Head, and he became one of my valued
colleagues and friends. Except for three retired former members, the total
faculty at that time was four persons including Bill. That fall, three new
people were added; myself, Lee Wolins, a Quantitative Psychologist holding a
joint appointment in Statistics, and Ed Lewis, a Counseling Psychologist,
holding a joint appointment with the Counseling Service. Both were Ohio State
graduates and excellent professionals. Both became close friends and
colleagues as well as research collaborators. I later published papers with both
of them, and we did organizational consulting together. It was a very happy
set of associations which continued for 13 years.
In 1957, Iowa State was broadening from the original
A & M role and scope, into a comprehensive university. At that time, it was **PAGE
13 from hardcopy is missing**
course,
many models around the U.S. We put together a proposal, and in early 1966 the
Industrial Relations Center was approved with authorization for the M.S. degree
and a hunting license to seek outside funding. Mainly through the efforts of Ed
Jakubauskas, a Labor Economist, we received a substantial Department of Labor
grant, began accepting students, and we were in business. Of course, my efforts
within the Department of Psychology continued unabated at the same time.
In 1967, I was appointed Head of the Department of
Psychology. I had been Assistant Chair under Bill Layton for several years prior
to that time, concentrating my administrative time on managing the burgeoning
graduate program in the department. This new appointment fit my interests in
management and leadership, as well as my commitment to higher education and
research. It set me on the road to further higher ed management roles to come.
Visiting
Professorships
Before
commenting further about my higher ed management experiences, it is important to
report other associated events, or series of events, that accompanied my tenure
at Iowa State University. The first deals with visiting appointments. In 1960, I
was invited to spend the summer at the University of Minnesota, Industrial
Relations Center, and teach a course in personnel psychology. The teaching
experience was largely forgettable, but the associations with Marv Dunnette,
Rene Dawis, Bill England, and Herb Heneman were memorable. Roger Bellows was
also there that summer and I got acquainted with him. I also got time during
those short weeks to do a lot of writing, and to experience the professional
stimulation of a visiting appointment.
In 1962, I was invited to the University of
California, Berkeley, for the Fall Semester. Like the Minnesota experience, it
was an incredibly stimulating experience, with the extra bonus of ample free
time for writing. The memory is still vivid of how excellent the UC students
were, and, of course, having the opportunity to interact with Ed Ghiselli, Mason
Haire, and Lyman Porter was rare and wonderful. I learned a very great deal from
them, and from their students, one of whom was Ed Lawler.
Consulting
Another significant aspect of the Iowa State years
was the development of an active consulting business. Our first two clients were
Meredith Publishing and The Maytag Company, for whom we did large scale
selection/validation studies. In general, with exceptions of course, the
approach was an applied research one, with which an empirical solution to one or
more problems was identified, systems for application of findings were put in
place, and employees were trained in their use. This has been the general tone
of most of the consulting I have done; I think of it as research on company
identified issues. Many of the projects I have worked on have resulted in
publications.
Over the years, I worked with a variety of
organizations including publishing, insurance, and manufacturing industries,
privately held utilities, and government agencies. Probably the predominant type
of work was the selection and validation kind mentioned above, but there were
other projects touching on attitude measurement, training, and assessment. I
have always felt best about the projects that were based on research, and that
resulted in empirically proven outcomes.
The
Owens-Illinois Study
In the latter half of the 1960s, Lee Wolins, Bill
Layton, and I began the search for a research grant for a longitudinal study to
investigate the nature of change in managerial performance as job experience is
accrued. This was to be a basic research endeavor, with implications for
application but quite fundamental in nature. In any event, our searches led to
a substantial commitment from the Owens-Illinois Company, primarily in the
person of John Rapparlie, not only to support the study financially but to
provide a pool of second level managers as subjects. It was a large commitment
on their part.
The study continued into the early 1970s, a number of
publications resulted from it, and since the data set is still very much in
tact, it might be thought of as still open and viable. However, the principals
all went on to other things, and the full realization of the data remain
underdeveloped. We regard the main hypothesis as still largely untested,
although the indications point in the direction of performance being
qualitatively different at different levels of experience. It is of tangential
but important note that Mike Kavanagh was the key RA on this project during his
doctoral study at Iowa State.
Accreditation
It
was in the late 1960s, that I first became involved in accreditation work,
leading to still another theme in my life. At that time, I was invited to make a
site visit for APA to the University of Minnesota. This was to be the first of
many site visits, first for APA, but somewhat later for the North Central
Association
The
former was program oriented, of course, and the latter institution wide. I found
all my accreditation work, which continues today and has covered an enormously
wide range of programs and institutions, to be incredible learning experiences
for someone deeply immersed in academic administration.
In the 1969‑71 period, I was asked to serve on
a special APA task force on accreditation, during which time we
re‑examined the association's policies governing accreditation. I was
subsequently asked to Chair the task force and in that role wrote the final
report. Several, but not all, of the recommendations found their way into APA
policies and procedures. And, as a sort of a repeat, I was asked to serve on
another accreditation task force in the mid‑1980s. This latest excursion
into APA accreditation policy is the Task Force on the Scope and Criteria for
Accreditation which continues today.
In 1971, I
first got involved in institutional accreditation with the North Central
Association through my work as Dean of the Graduate School at Wright State
University. Wright State was then on a fiveyear review cycle with NCA and a
scheduled review was upcoming. I chaired the University's efforts in this
regard, the review turned out well, and I subsequently was invited to become an
evaluator for NCA. This lead to perhaps 25 or 30 site visits, a five year term
on the Commission for Institutions of Higher Education of the NCA, and just
within the last few months, election to the Board of the Council on
Postsecondary Accreditation (COPA). Clearly accreditation became and continues
to be a major life theme.
Division
14
As I
recall, it was as early as the late 1950s that I was first invited to get
involved in Division 14 committee work. I was appointed to the Education and
Training Committee by, I believe, Ray Katzell, with Dick Barrett as chairman. I
don't recall too much about the work of the Committee during that year, but
subsequent years are vivid memories because I became chair of the E & T
Committee, appointed first by Orlo Crissey, and subsequently by others. It was
during this time, when Lyman Porter was on the Committee and I was a visitor at
Berkeley, that we published in the American Psychologist the first
published version of the Division 14 guidelines for doctoral education in
industrial psychology. There were other official position papers growing out
of that effort, and, of course, there have been several subsequent versions of
the guidelines done by subsequent committees. But I recall that first published
version, building on other unpublished recommendations and committee drafts,
initially drafted by Porter and me. At one time or another, Jack Bartlett, Ben
Schneider, and various other later Division 14 luminaries worked with me on that
committee.
I suppose it was because of those years of working on
E & T that I was elected to the Council of Division 14, and was still later
appointed Editor of TIP. TIP was in bad shape. It appeared only
irregularly and it had very little of substance in it when it did appear. So, I
began the building job, getting information together, getting contributors of
articles, finding advertisers, writing, etc. I must have written 100 or more
feature stories during my four years as editor, none with a by‑line. And I
did all the scut work. I did the before printing trips to the printer, I did the
paste‑ups, I picked up the printed newsletters and delivered them to the
mail room. There weren't many individual subscriptions in those days, but I
handled those too. I constantly searched for sources of revenue, and managed
thereby to defray a substantial amount of the cost. I also squeezed everywhere I
could to hold each issue to 28 pages and thus keep costs down. I really enjoyed
those four years with TIP. It was gratifying to turn it into something
attractive and useful, and set it on the course it is on today.
And, I suppose it is obvious, TIP is the reason I was
elected President of Division 14. It certainly wasn't my published research that
did it.
University
Administration
One of
the colloquium speakers we had at Iowa State was our former student, Dave
Campbell. He spoke about his work with the Strong, and asked all of us to retake
it for his research. We did so, in return for our profiles. When Dave visited,
one of his comments to me was, "So you want to be a Dean!" He was
right, of course.
I became a Dean of Arts and Sciences at
Wisconsin‑Parkside in 1970, but that job was not to last. I got caught in
the middle of a power struggle between an authoritarian Chancellor and a weak
but obstinate faculty. So, chaulking it up to experience, which it clearly was,
I moved the next year to Ohio. I became Dean of the Graduate School at Wright
State University, Dayton, where I spent the next five very enjoyable and useful
years.
It was a satisfying experience. Wright State was then
a new university, very much in a growth mode. Most of the growth during my time
there was at the graduate level, so I got to preside over many new Master's
programs, plus contributing to development of new schools of medicine and
professional psychology. I learned a great deal about management and politics
during those years, and Wright State's programming moved ahead several
important notches. Working with the other institutions in the state system and
with the state‑level higher education authorities was a difficult but
valuable preparation for later work.
In 1976, I was invited to become Vice Chancellor for
Academic Affairs at the University of Missouri at St. Louis. UM St. Louis, like
Wright State, was a relatively new campus, serving a grossly underserved area,
and with high aspirations to do a lot more and do it well. As typical for such
situations, the resistances to doing more under conditions of scarce resources
is always challenging and sometimes crazy. But we forged ahead, and added
quite a number of new programs and emphasis areas. As I look back, though, my
sense is that the most fundamental change in that institution during the ten
years I was there, and over which I had only marginal influence, was in quality.
UM St. Louis was a good place in 1976 and an even better one in 1986. 1 hope I
had something to do with that, but it's hard to say.
Psi
Chi
In
1983, 1 was invited by Paul Lloyd, then President of Psi Chi, to accept
appointment as the Psi Chi Historian for one year. That was the beginning of yet
another substantial managerial commitment. After one year as Historian, I was
elected Midwestern Vice President, and subsequently to the three year rotation
of Presidentelect, President, and Past President. It turned out to be a six
year tour that I found personally rewarding, and an opportunity to do something
useful for the organization. Psi Chi was and is clearly in a major transition on
several dimensions, including examination of mission, modification of
organizational form, rotation of leadership, relocation of the Central Office,
and so on. That transition continues as these words are being written with the
imminent retirement of long‑term Executive Secretary Ruth Cousins, with
the consequent changes that will bring. Psi Chi has been an organization that
has contributed significantly to psychology, and the potential for additional
future contribution continues to be substantial. What new forms that will take
remain under consideration.
Tulsa
In
1986, when a new Chancellor was appointed at UM St. Louis, I resolved that I
should move on to something different. I wanted to give the new Chanellor an
opportunity to appoint a new staff, but I wasn't satisfied with leaving
administration. An entirely different and quite unexpected opportunity came
along.
In the spring of that year, someone stuck my name in
the hopper for CEO of an unknown consortium in Tulsa organized to bring some
public higher ed opportunity to that grossly underserved community. After Wright
State and St. Louis, and based on dozens of conversations with Tulsa community
leaders, I came to the conclusion that maybe I could handle another development
job. I became President and CEO of the University Center at Tulsa.
UCT, where I am today, is a four public university
consortium, offering upper division and graduate programs. Development and
growth are the watchwords, often against substantial resistances from outside
the community. Resources are very short. Suspicions are very high. But student
response is strong and we continue to experience heavy growth rates. We have a
new campus, beautifully designed and well located, paid for by a City of Tulsa
initiative. Given a modicum of state support, and continuation of the wonderful
community support experienced so far, the future can only be positive. I am
deeply immersed in it and I look forward to continuing.
UCT is a difficult concept for many people to grasp,
because it doesn't fit the traditional modes. It is significant to note that
while most urban areas in the U.S. received attention from the state higher
education establishments during the two decades after World War Ii, a few did
not. And Tulsa is perhaps the largest and most obvious example. In 1982, largely
through political pressure from the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce, it was decided to
make a push for a state university in Tulsa. When it was determined that
passing a free‑standing university was not politically possible, a
consortium was established as a compromise. However, it wasn't a typical
toothless consortium run by the participants. This one had its own Board of
Trustees with defined authorities, and the participating universities were
assigned programmatic responsibilities. There are many unresolved policy and
operational issues yet today, but by and large the venture has been a success in
bringing the initial set of 80 undergraduate and graduate programs to Tulsa. A
major issue now underway is how to bring the additional 80 or so that are needed
but not yet available.
The political issues are central in the UCT
development, probably to no one's surprise. The rural influences fear that urban
developments, including this one, will detract from their already limited
programs. The other higher education institutions, particularly those in smaller
communities, fear that growth here will limit their growth and resources. The
conservative elements fear anything that appears to have potential for costing
significant amounts of tax revenue in the future. And so it goes. There are
fears and resistances, but the need is compelling and gradually progress is
being made in addressing it.
Somewhat to my surprise, but very much to my
subsequent satisfaction, a new personal dimension has emerged from the Tulsa
experience. When I first began talking and thinking about moving to UCT, one of
the main elements of the new position was to be community affairs, community
relations, and community involvement. I had always had a modicum of involvement
in various community service activities, but they had never been central and
never before defined as part of my job description. Everything I learned about
Tulsa pointed to the fact, subsequently confirmed, that it was a community that
welcomed people interested and willing to get into things.
It has been nearly four years now of direct and
highly interesting community activities. Soon after I arrived I accepted
election to a local community action agency. It went on from there into the
Urban League, United Way, a local psychiatric center, the Salvation Army,
various arts and cultural groups, and the like. Coming at this stage in my
career, these organizational involvements, while difficult to merge into a
schedule, have added an important dimension to my life.
It is my hope that these and similar activities can continue indefinitely
regardless of what my job description says.
Themes.
The
themes in my lifetime, with the insight of hindsight, look like this to me:
-psychology
-management
-research
-spoken and written language
-human resources
-teaching
-consulting
-accreditation
-professional involvement
-community involvement
It would be very pleasant to be able to say that the
history cited above has been "enough". I can't say that. The fact is
that I continue to be generally unsatisfied, but not dissatisfied, with the
record so far. My wish is to keep things running as long as possible. With
retirement in the formal sense in the not too distant future, one begins to
consider how to make that phase of life interesting and meaningful. My present
thought is to fill it with some combination of avocational activities and
professional work. Maybe it is time to reactivate my earlier interests in
teaching and consulting.
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