468 Undergraduate Education
interests: “mental measurement” by James McKeen Cattell at
Pennsylvania, “psychological basis of religious faith” by
William James at Harvard, and “pedagogical psychology” by
Harry Kirke Wolfe at Nebraska.
A common developmental pattern of future psychology
curricula was captured by the Pennsylvania catalog of 1890.
Unlike other universities, Penn had its own psychology de-
partment; it was not a subset of philosophy or some other
area. A sequence of courses was listed. Psychology 1 was a
lecture course titled Elementary Psychology. Psychology 3
(no Psychology 2 was listed) was titled Experimental Psy-
chology with lectures and laboratory work. Psychology 4 was
titled Mental Measurement with lectures, reports, and ad-
vanced work in the laboratory. “Course 4 is open only to those
who have taken course 3, and will be different each year, for
a series of years. Advanced Physiological Psychology is pro-
posed for 1891–92, and Comparative, Social, and Abnormal
Psychology for 1892–3” (University of Pennsylvania Cata-
logue and Announcements 1890–1891, p. 96).
McGovern (1992b) found that by 1900, at Berkeley,
Brown, Cincinnati, Columbia, Cornell, George Washington,
Indiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Wellesley, Wis-
consin, and Yale, the first course was followed by an “experi-
mental psychology” course. Laboratory work was required in
either this course or in an additional course sometimes titled
“laboratory in psychology.” Courses titled “advanced psy-
chology” or “advanced experimental” fostered students’indi-
vidual research with faculty supervision. The 1900–1901
Brown catalog stated, “The aim is to make original contribu-
tions to scientific knowledge in psychology and to publish the

results” (Brown University Catalogue, 1900–1901, p. 57).
Courses in abnormal, comparative, genetic, systematic,
and psychological theory began to appear, as did more special
topics courses. At Nebraska, a course in “race psychology”
was listed.AtWisconsin, there was a course in “mental evolu-
tion”; Part I emphasized comparative psychology and Part II
emphasized anthropology. At Amherst, Cornell, and Yale, the
first course in the philosophy department was an interdiscipli-
nary offering that covered psychology, logic, and ethics.
One of the most extensive curricula was listed at Colum-
bia University in the Department of Philosophy, Psychology,
Anthropology, and Education. Fifteen separate “Courses in
Psychology” were listed, taught by an interdisciplinary fac-
ulty. The following introductory offerings were then fol-
lowed by 13 topic courses, laboratory courses, or supervised
research courses:
A. Elements of psychology—James’s Principles of Psychol-
ogy—Discussions, practical exercises, and recitations. 3
hours. First half-year, given in 4 sections.
Professor Lord. A parallel course is given by Dr. Thorndike at
Teachers College.
1. Introduction to psychology. 2 hours, lectures and demon-
strations.
Professors Butler, Cattell, Boas, Starr, and Hyslop, Drs. Far-
rand and Thorndike, and Mr. Strong.
The object of this course is to give a summary view of the
subject-matter and methods of modern psychology. The ground
covered is as follows:
A. Prolegomena to psychology, including a sketch of the history
of psychology. Six lectures. Professor Butler.

B. Physiological psychology. Eight lectures. Dr. Farrand.
C. Experimental psychology. Eight lectures. Professor Cattell.
D. Genetic psychology. Seven lectures. Dr. Thorndike.
E. Comparative psychology. Seven lectures. Dr. Boas.
F. Pathological psychology. Three lectures. Dr. Starr.
G. General psychology. Eight lectures. Professor Hyslop.
H. Philosophy of mind. Six lectures. Mr. Strong.
Requisite: Psychology A, previously or simultaneously.
(Columbia University in the City of New York Catalogue, 1900–
1901, p. 176)
Rice’s (2000) analysis of reviews of this period by Garvey
(1929) and Ruckmich (1912) suggested that five stages of
institutional development for psychology departments were
evident by 1900. In Stage 1, mental science or mental philos-
ophy courses were being taught. In Stage 2, institutions were
offering one or more courses labeled “psychology.” Stage 3
had institutions with psychological laboratories. Stage 4 de-
partments were offering the PhD in psychology. Stage 5 rep-
resented an independent department; Rice suggested that
Clark, Columbia, Illinois, and Chicago were the only institu-
tions at this level.
The APA-sponsored reports by Calkins, Sanford,
Seashore, and Whipple in 1910, and Henry’s (1938) exami-
nation of 157 catalogs will take the reader almost to midcen-
tury in describing the courses taught to undergraduate
psychology students. Lux and Daniel (1978) consolidated
these portraits with a table of the 30 most frequent under-
graduate courses offered in 1947, 1961, 1969, and 1975.
Perlman and McCann (1999a, p. 179) continued this tradition
by identifying the 30 most frequently offered undergraduate

courses, and the percentages of colleges requiring them, in
their study of 400 catalogs for 1996–1997.
Scholars from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advance-
ment of Teaching (1977) aptly described the post–World
War II period of curricular expansion as “the academic shop-
ping center” (p. 5). Keeping in mind Veysey’s (1973) analysis
of the eras of expansion and their external stimuli, psychol-
ogy was benefiting from the utilitarian demands from more
Teaching 469
and different types of students and from the expansion of sci-
entific programs at the graduate level that influenced teachers
at the undergraduate level. Whether one looks at catalogs
from 1900 or more recently, a common denominator is that
new faculty, after a period of apprenticeship at an institution,
create new courses that get absorbed into a department’s cur-
riculum. For example, F. H. Sanford and Fleishman (1950)
found 261 different course titles in their study. Lux and Daniel
(1978) found 1,356 different course titles and concluded:
“Thus, we have a ‘course title inflation’ of 519%, or about
19% per year on the average, from 1947 to 1975” (p. 178).An
expanded breadth of psychology course titles accompanied
expansion in American higher education during this time.
Nevertheless, a parallel conservative force operates on the
curriculum frominside theinstitution as well. Rudolph (1977)
reminded us of “the academic truism that changing a curricu-
lum is harder than moving the graveyard” (p. 3). As a histo-
rian, he knew that such resistance is a complex interaction of
internal (departmental faculty and institutional priorities) and
external forces (disciplinary groups and community/public
constituencies). For psychology, Perlman and McCann

(1999a) were led to conclude:
Many frequently offered courses have been found for decades
and 13 such courses first listed by Henry (1938) are in the pre-
sent Top 30. Some courses are slowly being replaced. Thus, the
curriculum reflects both continuity and slow change, perhaps
due to the time it takes for theory, research, and discourse to de-
fine new subdiscipline areas or perhaps due to department inertia
and resistance to modifying the curriculum. (p. 181)
In the next section, we focus on the concepts of conti-
nuity and change in the curriculum, but with an eye to the
boundary-setting agendas of disciplinary groups.
The Discipline: Recommendations from the Experts
Discipline-based curricula are a social construction developed by
academics. Over time, knowledge has been organized into key
terms, concepts, models, and modes of inquiry. Academics add
to and test these knowledge constructs using their disciplinary
associations as means of verbal and written communication. Cur-
ricular change is conditioned by the role of the disciplines in con-
serving and transmitting their organization and representation of
what is worth knowing, why, and how. (Ratcliff, 1997, p. 15)
In this section, we review various statements made by psy-
chologists after World War II about what was “worth know-
ing, why, and how” in the study of undergraduate psychology.
Such statements carried added weight by virtue of discipli-
nary association (APA) or sponsorship in process (national
conferences and studies) and outcome (publication in jour-
nals such as the American Psychologist). When departmental
psychologists engaged in voluntary or required curriculum
review projects, they looked to these reports for guidance
(Korn, Sweetman, & Nodine, 1996).

At the 14th meeting of the American Psychological Asso-
ciation, E. C. Sanford (1906) offered a “sketch of a begin-
ner’s course in psychology.” He suggested that we first build
on the knowledge that students bring with them into this
course; second, that we offer a wide base of psychological
facts; third, “a genuine interest in science for its own sake is
a late development in knowledge of any kind” (p. 59). He
then suggested seven broad topics and an organizational se-
quence within which to teach them: Learning and Acquisi-
tion; Truth and Error; Emotion; Personality and Character;
Facts of the Interdependence of Mind and Body; Psychogen-
esis; and Systematic Psychology (pp. 59–60). In 1908, the
APA appointed the Committee on Methods of Teaching Psy-
chology, which decided to inventory goals and teaching prac-
tices for the elementary course (Goodwin, 1992).
Synthesizing the responses from 32 universities with
laboratories, E. C. Sanford (1910) reported that institutions
were teaching the first course in sections of 200, 300, and
400 students; Whipple (1910) reported a mean enrollment of
107 students, according to his 100 normal school respon-
dents. In institutions with laboratories, Sanford reported that
25% of the instructors saw the course as a gateway to the
study of philosophy; more than 50% wanted students to study
science for its own sake and also to appreciate the concrete
applications of psychology to life. Calkins (1910) summa-
rized the responses she received from 47 institutions with no
laboratories in this way:
First, teach psychology primarily as you would if it were an end
in itself. Second, eschew altogether the method of recitation;
lecture in order to sum up and to illustrate different topics of

study, but lecture sparingly; and cultivate constructive discussion.
Third, bar out the possibility of memorizing text-books by requir-
ing students to precede text-book study by the solution of con-
crete problems. Finally, do not tolerate inexact thinking. (p. 53)
Seashore’s (1910) summary included three aims: teach psy-
chology (i.e., not philosophy) as a science with incidental
treatment of its application; train students in observation and
the explanation of mental facts; offer a balanced survey of all
topics that psychologists study with an in-depth examination
of a few. He urged that the elementary course be taught to
sophomores in a two-semester sequence, preferably preceded
by a course in animal biology. More than for any other disci-
pline of that day, the teacher of psychology should have an ex-
ceptionally thorough preparation (because of the breadth of
topics), be one of the most mature members of the department
470 Undergraduate Education
(because of the direct personal influence that psychology may
have on its students), and possess both practical ingenuity and
philosophical insight (because of the complex pedagogy
required for the course). In short, “the teacher is everything”
(p. 91). Wolfle (1942) reviewed more than 100 studies on the
first course in psychology, published after the 1910 reports,
and concluded: “Now, 30-odd years later, we are still debating
many of the same issues and being embarrassed by the same
difficulties. Many of the same recommendations considered
necessary in 1909 are still necessary in 1942” (p. 686).
Intradisciplinary concerns were often matched by interdis-
ciplinary conflicts. Wolfe’s (1895) commentary on resource
allocation in the sciences for “the new psychology in under-
graduate work” (p. 382) predicted this competitive struggle

on campuses. Hill (1929) described the conflicts over control
of psychology personnel and curricular decisions in state uni-
versities. In 1945, James B. Conant, president of Harvard,
appointed six psychologists and six nonpsychologists from
university faculties, corporations, and research institutes to a
University Commission to Advise on the Future of Psychol-
ogy at Harvard. Wolfle (1948), as secretary of the APA,
reviewed The Place of Psychology in an Ideal University
(Gregg et al., 1947/1970) and said: “By all means read this
book Psychologists have been a vigorous, sometimes
belligerent, but never well united group. . . . This scattering of
psychologists all over the campus is bound to be puzzling”
(p. 61). In his presidential address for the APA Division on
the Teaching of Psychology, Pressey (1949) juxtaposed the
prestige accorded psychology in the Gregg et al. report with
an observation about Harvard’s Redbook: “Psychology ap-
pears to have no recognized place in the program presented in
General Education in a Free Society” (p. 149). Thus, on the
eve of the post–World War II boom in higher education, psy-
chology was still “getting its act together” on institutional
status and curricular coherence.
Ratcliff’s (1997) analysis of curricula focused on the con-
cept of a discipline:
A discipline is literally what the term implies. . . . Disciplines can
provide a conceptual framework for understanding what knowl-
edge is and how it is acquired. Disciplinary learning provides a
logical structure to relationships between concepts, propositions,
common paradigms, and organizing principles. Disciplines de-
velop themes, canons, and grand narratives to join different
streams of research in the field and to provide meaningful con-

ceptualizations and frameworks for further analysis. (p. 14)
Since 1950, psychologists have written several reports about
building the discipline and translating its principles and
methods into coherent undergraduate educational programs.
Lloyd and Brewer (1992) reviewed the national confer-
ences and comprehensive reports on undergraduate psychol-
ogy: Cornell Conference (Buxton et al., 1952); Michigan
Conference (McKeachie & Milholland, 1961); Kulik, 1973;
Scheirer and Rogers, 1985; APA/Association of American
Colleges Project on Liberal Learning, Study-in-Depth, and
the Arts and Sciences Major (McGovern, Furumoto, Halpern,
Kimble, & McKeachie, 1991); and the St. Mary’s College of
Maryland Conference held in 1991. We will briefly review
the Cornell, Michigan, and St. Mary’s College of Maryland
conferences’ accomplishments as part of the continuing nar-
rative elements for this chapter—courses, discipline, out-
comes, assessment, and how service activities delivered these
findings to widening circles of psychologists.
In 1951, the Carnegie Foundation of New York and the
Grant Foundation sponsored a study group of psycholo-
gists—six primary authors and 11 consultants—to meet at
Cornell University and to conduct “an audit to determine the
objectives, examine the content, and appraise the results of
the instruction we have been giving. Against the background
of such an audit, we can then attempt to build a better cur-
riculum” (Buxton et al., 1952, p. v). Their report identified
the objectives of undergraduate psychology as:
(1) Intellectual development and a liberal education; (2) a knowl-
edge of psychology, its research findings, its major problems,
its theoretical integrations, and its contributions; (3) personal

growth and an increased ability to meet personal and social
adjustment problems adequately; (4) desirable attitudes and
habits of thought, such as the stimulation of intellectual curios-
ity, respect for others, and a feeling of social responsibility.
(pp. 2–3)
In an interview with Jane Halonen (1992), McKeachie
commented about the conference:
We came up with the idea of sequencing, which is why
Dael Wolfle really brought us together. He thought we were
teaching all of our courses at about one level beyond the intro-
ductory and covering the same thing in the advanced course in
order to bring people up to some common base so they could
go on to the latter part of the course. I think that was important.
(pp. 251–252)
The study group agreed on one recommended curriculum
model. The introductory course was to be followed by five in-
termediate or core courses (statistics, motivation, perception,
thinking and language, and ability), then advanced courses
in specialized areas (e.g., social, learning, comparative, phys-
iological, personnel, etc.), and finally capstone courses in
personality and history and systems. All courses should be
Teaching 471
taught as “experimental psychology” courses. The authors
wrote separate chapters on personal adjustment courses,
technical training, implementation problems based on institu-
tional differences, and the need for a research agenda to mea-
sure the effectiveness of undergraduate education.
A similar study group approach, the Michigan Confer-
ence, was sponsored by the National Science Foundation
10 years later and was reported in McKeachie and Milholland

(1961). This group began with data from a survey of 548 de-
partments to which 411 responded; 274 had revised their cur-
riculum since the earlier Cornell report. They found that 69%
of the respondents used the earlier recommendations. An im-
portant point to note is that the Michigan group of six psy-
chologists framed their recommendations in the context of
two critical external forces affecting psychology. First, the
demographics of higher education were changing both in
terms of increased numbers and increased diversity (specifi-
cally in age and vocational goals). Second, “more serious
than the problem of sheer numbers is the fact that teaching is
not a prestigeful occupation in psychology these days. The
research man is the status figure” (p. 6).
A compelling integration of Veysey’s (1973) three
forces—utilitarian demands, scientific advances, and values
of a liberal education—form a subtext for this entire report.
McKeachie and Milholland (1961) asserted that the psychol-
ogy curriculum “would be firmly anchored in the liberal
arts, rejecting undergraduate vocational training as a pri-
mary goal” (p. 33). This principle is operationalized in great
detail in two chapters: “The Beginning Course” and “The
Experimental-Statistical Area.” The greatest value lay in
“teaching psychology as an organized body of scientific
knowledge and method with its own internal structure for de-
termining the admissibility of materials to be taught” (p. 59).
The authors were unequivocal in their commitment to
teaching psychology as a continually advancing science,
reaffirming the Cornell group’s objectives: content knowl-
edge, rigorous habits of thought, and values and attitudes.
They expanded these general goals with a set of 16 objec-

tives, many of which are similar to statements about “critical
thinking” that emerged as part of identifying liberal arts out-
comes when assessment initiatives became so influential in
the mid-1980s and after. The Michigan authors sketched
three different curricular models because they could not
agree on a single one. In what was a utilitarian and prescient
comment, they concluded, “What is ideal, we now believe,
depends on the staff, the students, the total college curricu-
lum, and other factors” (p. 103). Into the 1990s, “staff,” “stu-
dents,” and the “total college curriculum” would play an in-
creasing role in shaping how individual institutions
communicated the discipline. “Other factors”—all external
to the discipline and to campuses—would play an even more
important role in setting the timetables and parameters for
changes in the curriculum.
The 1991 St. Mary’s College of Maryland Conference had
a long history in development, an ambitious agenda, and di-
versity in its participants. Its processes and outcomes reflect
the continuing evolution of the discipline’s attention to un-
dergraduate education. A resolution introduced to the APA
Council of Representatives by the Massachusetts Psycho-
logical Association asked the Committee on Undergraduate
Education (CUE) to examine
(1) the role and purpose of the undergraduate psychology major
in relation to traditional liberal arts education (and prepara-
tion for graduate school in psychology) and preparation for
a bachelor-degree-level job in a psychology-related field, and
(2) whether APA should set forth guidelines for curriculum mod-
els in undergraduate psychology (with an accompanying ratio-
nale). (As cited in Lloyd & Brewer, 1992, pp. 272–273)

The CUE formulated a response, approved by the Council of
Representatives in August 1985, that reaffirmed the psychol-
ogy baccalaureate as a liberal arts degree, that no prescribed
curriculum should be developed, but that guidelines or mod-
els could be considered based on continuing, periodic sur-
veys of undergraduate education. Continuing discussion led
to a conference proposal. Sixty psychologists met for one
week in a highly structured group dynamic designed to pro-
duce draft chapters of a handbook on seven topics: assess-
ment, advising, recruitment and retention of ethnic minority
faculty and students, faculty development, faculty networks,
curriculum, and active learning practices. Among the 60 par-
ticipants at St. Mary’s, 28 (47%) were women and 11 (18%)
were ethnic minority persons (neither the 1951 nor the 1960
conference had such representation). In addition to partici-
pants from liberal arts colleges and universities, there were
five faculty members from community colleges, two from
high school psychology programs, and two representatives
from Canada and Puerto Rico. As planned, a comprehensive
handbook was produced (McGovern, 1993); at the urging of
Ludy T. Benjamin, a Quality Principles document was also
produced by the steering committee and eventually approved
as APA policy by the Council of Representatives (McGovern
& Reich, 1996).
In their chapter on the curriculum, Brewer et al. (1993)
reaffirmed the importance of psychology as a liberal arts dis-
cipline. “The fundamental goal of education in psychology,
from which all the others follow, is to teach students to
think as scientists about behavior” (p. 168). They amplified
this statement with six specific goals: attention to human

472 Undergraduate Education
diversity, breadth and depth of knowledge, methodological
competence, practical experience and applications, commu-
nications skills, and sensitivity to ethical issues. To accom-
plish these goals, a sequence of four levels of courses was
recommended: introductory course, methodology courses,
content courses, and an integrative or capstone experience.
Content courses should be balanced between the natural sci-
ence and social science knowledge bases of an increasingly
complex discipline. A special section was devoted to the inte-
gration of the community college curriculum with upper-
division courses in the major taken at another institution.
Perlman and McCann’s (1999b) review of the structures
of the undergraduate curriculum in 500 catalogs indicated
that the St. Mary’s Conference, like its predecessors, had
some intended consequences and specific areas of minimal
influence. Although a senior capstone experience has been
advocated since the Cornell Conference, this recommenda-
tion has gone unheeded, particularly in doctoral institutions.
The same is true for the teaching of psychometric methods as
part of a core methodology trio of courses with statistics and
experimental psychology. Fiscal, staffing, and space prob-
lems were often cited as obstacles to the development and
maintenance of laboratory facilities. These authors drew the
following overall conclusions about the status of the curricu-
lum at the end of the twentieth century:
The Cornell report’s (Buxton et al., 1952) emphasis on teaching
psychology as a scientific discipline in the liberal arts tradition
remains current. The required core as recommended by the
St. Mary’s report (Brewer et al., 1993) as implemented by de-

partments seems to cover “both natural science and social sci-
ence aspects of psychology.” (p. 439, pp. 175–176)
We now turn to the ways in which psychologists evaluated
the effectiveness of their undergraduate programs.
SCHOLARSHIP
Ratcliff (1997) labeled a second curricular model as analyti-
cal. Variables in the curriculum that affect student develop-
ment are identified, measured, and evaluated to determine
their effectiveness. McGovern (1993) described an analytical
model for psychology as:
What kind of outcomes can be achieved with
What kind of students taught by
What kind of faculty using
What kind of teaching methods as part of
What kind of curriculum? (p. 218, emphases in original)
In this section on scholarship, we first focus on faculty efforts
to identify common outcomes from the earliest days of a
single course to the contemporary “Top 30” described by
Perlman and McCann (1999a). Second, we focus on the as-
sessment of these outcomes by the faculty, but more often
mandated by external constituencies in the interests of ac-
creditation or public accountability.
Defining the Outcomes of Undergraduate Psychology
In response to E. C. Sanford’s (1906) description of an ideal
beginner’s course, Walter T. Marvin (1906) suggested the
following:
The chief problem in any course is: What precisely does the
teacher wish the student to learn, as distinguished from all the
illustration, exposition, etc. that may be found helpful? In short,
every course should include a body of definite and precise

information to be thoroughly learned, hard as it may be to secure
such information in psychology as compared with the exact
sciences Perhaps one of the special habits we can form in the
brightest pupils is reading interesting books on psychology.
(p. 61)
Calkins (1910) was more specific:
Psychology is psychology whatever the use to be made of it.
First courses in psychology should therefore be essentially the
same in content and in method, whether they introduce the
student to advanced work in psychology or to the different prob-
lems of pedagogy, of ethics or of metaphysics. The [sic] imme-
diate purpose of every course in psychology is to make the
student expert in the study of himself: to lead him to isolate, an-
alyze, to classify, and (in the scientific, not in the metaphysical
sense) to explain his own perceiving, remembering, thinking,
feeling, and willing. (p. 45, emphasis in original)
These two psychologists’ perspectives must be understood in
historical context—the field was still in the process of distin-
guishing its content and methods from its philosophical an-
tecedents. Wolfle (1942), in his review of the literature on the
first course since the 1910 studies, identified four prevailing
objectives: teach facts and principles, develop scientific
method or habits of critical thought, prepare students for later
courses or interest in psychology, and eliminate popular su-
perstition. However, his evaluation of more than 100 studies
suggested to him the following synthesis of major objectives:
The first is to acquaint the student with the most important and
most generally accepted facts, principles, and hypotheses of psy-
chology. The attainment of this objective will contribute to the
student’s general cultural education and will increase his ability

to recognize and to deal intelligently with the psychological
problems of modern society. The second objective to be stressed
Scholarship 473
is to develop the habit of critical and objective analysis of psy-
chological problems which arise and of the data or hypotheses
available to help solve them. The third important objective
depends on the attainment of the first two and consists of the im-
provement of the student’s ability to understand his own per-
sonal problems and to achieve personally and socially desirable
solutions of those problems. (pp. 706–707)
This ideal synthesis was accomplished after the first 50 years
of the new discipline’s history. Recalling Veysey’s (1973)
themes, psychology was inthedisciplinary mainstream in pro-
viding for the utilitarian needs of society, affirming a respect
for science, and espousing the value of liberal arts education.
For 25 years after World War II, psychologists continually
refined their understanding and pedagogy for these three ob-
jectives. As it had done in the first part of the twentieth cen-
tury, the knowledge base addressed in Wolfle’s (1942) first
objective would continually expand, so much so as to suggest
that the discipline had splintered. However, as we discussed
in the introduction to the chapter, from the broader historical
perspective of American higher education, the period after
World War II would bring many different students to the cam-
pus with many different objectives. The “psychological prob-
lems of modern society” and students’ “personal problems”
of Wolfle’s objectives became more complex, and faculty
confronted them firsthand in their classrooms.
In a paper prepared for the APA Committee on Undergrad-
uate Education,Buxton (1956)asked: “Whois responsible for

determining the objectives, and the means for reaching them,
in liberal education?” (p. 84). He espoused control by each
local institution’s faculty but recommended a balance be-
tween student-centered (intellectual and personal adjustment)
and teacher-centered (content and method) curricular and
course objectives. His answer to the question “To what degree
should curricular offerings, courses, or requirements be
adapted to the student populations served?” (p. 90) focused
solely on differences in major fields and career orientations.
The student-centered versus teacher-centered curriculum
had been debated at length by the Cornell Conference group
(Buxton et al., 1952). It would be echoed by the Michigan
Conference group (McKeachie & Milholland, 1961), but their
response derived from the direct experience of increasingly
heterogeneous student populations. In describing three differ-
ent types of “first course”—elementary, introductory and “ex-
igential, or functionally oriented” (p. 47 ff.)—these authors
asserted:
The term liberal education has traditionally implied a quest for
underlying abstract principles rather than a concern with specific
problems. . . . Teaching not bound by practical concerns might
produce minds not adjusted to life as it is now lived and poorly
suited to meet in a practical way the tasks that every citizen
knows how to define. But it could also produce products who
could break up these problems and approach them from a point
of view off the cultural map commonly believed in.
Kulik’s (1973) national survey of undergraduate departments
and their highly diverse curricula led him to conclude:
It is an empirical question whether curricula like those of liberal
arts colleges best meet the ideals of liberal education. Is it con-

ceivable that for some students, occupationally oriented pro-
grams may provide a better road to personal soundness than the
traditional curricula of liberal arts colleges? (p. 202)
Developing courses that incorporated the expanding
knowledge base and met the needs of changing student
populations led to “academic shopping center” curricula
(Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching,
1977, p. 5). The upside was that our discipline caught the
imagination of so many of the new students, especially
women, who came to higher education during the 1960s and
1970s. Faculty charged with thinking about undergraduate
education from a national (versus local) perspective made
every effort to transform the “shopping center” of courses
into a coherent discipline. Kulik’s (1973) conclusion was an
insightful one and would become an important agenda into
the 1990s: “The diverse goals of students in psychology
courses suggest that pluralism may be a valuable concept in
the design of programs in psychology” (p. 203).
As 1 of 12 learned-society task forces in the Association
of American Colleges project on the arts and sciences major,
McGovern et al. (1991) identified objectives for undergradu-
ate psychology. The authors proposed eight common goals
for the diversity of settings, students, and courses that char-
acterized psychology:
1. Knowledge base.
2. Thinking skills.
3. Language skills.
4. Information gathering and synthesis skills.
5. Research methods and statistical skills.
6. Interpersonal skills.

7. History of psychology.
8. Ethics and values.
Assessing the Outcomes of Undergraduate Psychology
As we noted in the beginning of this section on scholarship,
the desire to identify what students need to learn in their
474 Undergraduate Education
psychology courses andthen to evaluate thatlearninghas been
manifested throughout the twentieth century. For most of the
century, this need derived from psychologists’ scientific cu-
riosity and values as wellastheirpenchantfor testing and eval-
uating programs. Psychologists evaluated vocabulary terms
elementary psychology students needed to know (Jensen,
1933; Thornton & Thornton, 1942)anda more comprehensive
“psychological literacy” for the entire major (Boneau, 1990).
Almost 50 years before the current assessment mandates, the
APA’s Council of Representatives charged a “Committee on
the Preparation of Examination Questions in Psychology”
(1941): “(1) to explore the need and desire for comprehensive
examinations in psychology, and (2) to find out the extent to
which questions or items now exist that may be drawn upon in
constructing comprehensive examinations” (p. 838). Seventy
percent of the411respondents to asurveyfrom this committee
favored such an effort, and almost 50% reported that they
would use such examinations in their programs.
Since the mid-1980s, the external forces of regional ac-
crediting associations and state legislatures have demanded
that all departments and campuses participate in regular self-
studies, a major component of which is the assessment of
student learning outcomes. Halpern et al. (1993) offered a
comprehensive outcomes assessment program for psychol-

ogy. They described the external forces calling for such ef-
forts and suggested that psychologists possess unique skills
for evaluating educational outcomes. They argued that the
desired outcomes for undergraduate psychology included a
knowledge base (e.g., content areas, methods, theory, and
history); intellectual skills (e.g., thinking, communication,
information gathering and synthesis skills, and quantitative,
scientific and technological skills); and personal characteris-
tics (e.g., interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, motiva-
tion, ethics, and sensitivity to people and cultures). The
authors advocated a multimethod matrix approach, including
archival forms of assessment data, classroom assessment,
standardized testing, course-embedded assessment, portfolio
analysis, interviews, external examiners, performance-based
assessment strategies, and assessment of critical thinking.
Since the St. Mary’s Conference, articles regularly ap-
peared demonstrating how departments used this Halpern
et al. (1993) blueprint for assessment activities. The Quality
Principles (McGovern & Reich, 1996), endorsed as APA pol-
icy, included this statement:
Faculty establish mechanisms to assess the curriculum. Essential
elements of an assessment program include
a. clearly stated and achievable outcomes for the curriculum
and other program-related experiences.
b. multiple measures of students’ learning.
c. planned opportunities for systematic feedback to students on
their progress.
d. specific plans to use data assessment to improve individual
course instruction and the overall curriculum.
e. opportunities to communicate assessment results to multiple

constituencies of undergraduate psychology. (p. 255)
In the next section, we focus on service—how psycholo-
gists, through their communications and activities with one
another at national and regional meetings—achieved greater
sophistication and effectiveness in their pedagogy and a dis-
tinctive disciplinary character for our undergraduate acade-
mic programs.
SERVICE
A consistent problem was evident for most of the twentieth
century:
What has been the result, after 30 years, of the 1951 recommen-
dation that we give primary emphasis, in the undergraduate cur-
riculum, to the contribution psychology can make to a liberal
education, to Renaissance persons? Few contemporary psychol-
ogists, beyond those actively involved in the conferences or in
national committees explicitly charged with undergraduate edu-
cation, have an awareness that the conferences were even held,
let alone awareness of the recommendations made.Amajor chal-
lenge for undergraduate education in the next decade is to involve
a greater proportion of leading psychologists in discussion of
the issues in developing and maintaining effective undergraduate
education in a rapidly changing environment. (Fretz, 1982, p. 55)
Fretz’s observation in a special issue on curriculum of the
journal Teaching of Psychology should not be limited just
to one historical period; recall similar comments made by
E. C. Sanford (1910) and Wolfle (1942). However, in the last
decades of the twentieth century, there has been ample evi-
dence that a “greater proportion of leading psychologists”
have become involved in networks of service activities in be-
half of undergraduate education.

In Teaching Psychology in America: A History (Puente,
Matthews, & Brewer, 1992), numerous authors documented
how organized groups advanced the teaching and scholarship
of the discipline via service activities at the regional, state,
and national levels. We urge the reader to review other his-
torical analyses to appreciate more fully how the teaching of
psychology was portrayed in psychological journals (Beins,
1992), in undergraduate textbooks (Morawski, 1992; Weiten
& Wight, 1992) and handbooks (Pate, 1992), or in experi-
mental laboratories (Benjamin, 2000; Capshew, 1992).
Past as Prologue for the Twenty-First Century 475
Goodwin (1992) suggested that “the APA’s involvement
with teaching was sporadic at best in the years prior to
1945 [T]he APA had other priorities during that time
(p.330) establishing disciplinary identity for psychology
and professional status for psychologists (p. 339).” In con-
trast, Nelson and Stricker (1992) made a persuasive case that
“the APA has demonstrated a clear commitment to issues of
teaching and the needs of teachers since 1945” (p. 346). An
Education and Training (E&T) Board became part of a reor-
ganized APA in 1951 so that “organized psychology not lose
sight of its responsibilities in addressing more fundamental
issues of education (i.e., in psychology as part of liberal edu-
cation)” (p. 348). The E&T Board was instrumental in spon-
soring the various conferences on undergraduate education
reviewed by Lloyd and Brewer (1992).
Brewer (1997) and Ernst and Petrossian (1996) also de-
scribed how the APA established in 1996 a continuing com-
mittee for Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools
(TOPSS). This action recognized that “an estimated 800,000

students take precollege psychology courses each year” and
that “approximately 15,000 students took the [AP] exam,
making psychology the fastest growing Advanced Placement
exam in the history of the ETS’s program” (Brewer, 1997,
p. 440).
Wight and Davis (1992) described the various stages that
Division 2, Teaching of Psychology (now the Society for the
Teaching of Psychology), went through in serving APA mem-
bers committed to learning not just about scientific method-
ologies and results from one another but about the pedagogy
by which the discipline might be more effectively communi-
cated to its students. Daniel (1992) described the evolution of
the division’s journal, Teaching of Psychology, which serves
similar needs and functions in the description, evaluation,
and dissemination of innovative pedagogical and program-
matic practice. Focusing on regional service activities, Davis
and Smith (1992) described a plethora of conferences for
teachers and students of psychology. Focusing on how psy-
chologists have gathered students to learn more about the dis-
cipline at the college and community college campus levels,
Cousins, Tracy, and Giordano (1992) described the histories
of Psi Chi and Psi Beta, the two national honor societies.
As the twentieth century came to a close, the APA Division
2, Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP), posted a
Web site (www.teachpsych.org) available to students and fac-
ulty members for information about the division, its journal,
national and regional teaching conferences, teaching awards,
a mentoring service, a departmental consulting service, news-
letters, and a moderated discussion group for psychology
teachers at all levels of instruction. The STP Office of Teach-

ing Resources in Psychology (OTRP Online) provides
information on course syllabi, bibliographical material on di-
versity and cross-cultural issues, ethical issues in teaching,
student advising issues and practices, scientific writing, and
electronic databases for the journal Teaching of Psychology.
As another manifestation of APA’s long-range commit-
ment to academic psychology programs articulated with the
initiation of the new Education Directorate in the early
1990s, 99 participants from high school, community college,
college and research university, and other professional set-
tings met at James Madison University in 1999 for the
Psychology Partnerships Project (P3). It was the most di-
verse assembly of psychology teachers to date, building on
the group dynamic approach used at the St. Mary’s Confer-
ence of Maryland a decade earlier. Nine issues groups—
advising, curriculum, faculty development, research, tech-
nology, assessment, diversity, partnerships, and service
learning—developed projects to create networks, materials,
and strategies for promoting the teaching of psychology and
the lifelong learning needs of students and faculty in the di-
verse, changing world of the twenty-first century.
As Weiten et al. (1993) noted, “teaching and learning are
communal activities” (p. 157). They described a portfolio of
case studies that demonstrated the movement of psycholo-
gists from isolation to increasing communication and colle-
giality. With the advent of the twenty-first century, the service
activities of psychologists have fostered increased colle-
giality in behalf of the teaching of psychology. Electronic
communication networks enable this collegiality to have un-
precedented depth and breadth.

PAST AS PROLOGUE FOR THE
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Psychology is not only with us, but swamping us. Its popularity
is so great as to arouse suspicions of superficiality, or even
quackery. It has become almost a fashion, so that publishers
claim that the word psychology on the title page of a book is suf-
ficient guarantee for a substantial sale. (p. 596)
Was this an editorial from a newspaper or a speech by a leg-
islator in the year 2000? A commentary from a church pulpit
in the 1950s? The quote is from an article by a faculty mem-
ber at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Max Schoen
(1926), writing about the purposes of elementary courses in
psychology in his era. In response to such popularity, the au-
thor suggested that the aims of psychology in colleges were
to “create an intelligent reading audience” and “to inculcate
in the student a tolerant, open-minded and broad attitude to-
wards human affairs and human problems” (p. 596).
476 Undergraduate Education
We suggest the following two dynamics for undergraduate
education in the future.
First, Veysey’s (1973) three catalytic forces, the external
demands on higher education, can be considered constant
after more than 200 years of influence—utilitarian needs of
American society, scientific discovery and an increasing re-
spect for empirical evidence in the construction and applica-
tions of knowledge, and the virtues of liberal education in
creating a responsible citizenry. Every generation must grap-
ple with how best to respond to these demands via curricula
and academic practices (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991).
Second, it is the responsibility of the disciplines and the

professions, the internal forces of higher education, to create
and then to communicate increasingly complex theories and
sophisticated applications, thereby enabling students to be
lifelong problem solvers, amiable skeptics, and citizens.
The discipline of psychology is well positioned as a socio-
cultural force in the broader society to address America’s util-
itarian needs, scientific knowledge, and liberal education
values. However, we need continuing scholarship, teaching,
and service for the discipline to be more analytical in its aca-
demic program efforts.Thus, wereturn toMcGovern’s (1993)
questions as a future teaching, research, and service agenda:
What kind of outcomes can be achieved with
What kind of students taught by
What kind of faculty using
What kind of teaching methods as part of
What kind of curriculum? (p. 218, emphases in original).
These questions need to be understood within the contexts of
external forces acting on the academy as well as internal
responses of the faculty and their institutions.
The outcomes expected of a baccalaureate education are
increasingly utilitarian. For example, consumers and sup-
porters of higher education consider the postgraduation
employment opportunities for specific majors to be very
important. This fact is especially critical for psychology to
understand, because we now award almost 75,000 baccalau-
reates annually, and the major’s popularity has not waned.
Research on alumni satisfaction is an essential element of
program evaluation (Borden & Rajecki, 2000; McGovern &
Carr, 1989). Moreover, departments’ program development
activities regularly include community employers and exter-

nal consultants (Korn et al., 1996; Walker, Newcomb, &
Hopkins, 1987).
The kinds of students taking undergraduate psychology
have changed, most notably in their gender and ethnic charac-
teristics (McGovern & Hawks, 1986, 1988). In a report titled
“The Changing Face ofAmerican Psychology,” Howard et al.
(1986) reported the growing percentages of women who re-
ceived baccalaureates in the discipline: 36.8% (1950), 41%
(1960), 46.4% (1972), 66.8% (1982). McGovern and Reich
(1996) reported 73% for 1992–1993. The percentages of doc-
torates achieved by women had similar percentage increases:
14.8% (1950), 17.5% (1960), 26.7% (1972), 50.1% (1984),
and 61% (1992–1993). Ten years after the Howard et al. re-
port, Pion et al. (1996) reported on the consequences of this
shifting gender composition, and they concluded:
Psychology, along with the majority of professions and scientific
disciplines, has undergone dramatic shifts in gender composition
over the past two decades. These changes have prompted con-
cern that this increased participation by women may lead to
erosion in the status of these occupations Societal and disci-
plinary trends are examined, along with data on the patterns of
men’s and women’s involvement in the educational pipeline and
workplace. The results provide little support for the concern over
the increasing representation of women and its impact on the
prestige of the discipline. (p. 509)
Denmark (1994) asserted, “Engendering psychology
refers to cultivating a psychology that is sensitive to issues of
gender and diversity. The increase in the number of female
psychologists does not guarantee that the discipline will be
responsive to those issues” (p. 329). In our historical review

of teaching, scholarship, and service activities, we discov-
ered significant changes in the rhetoric about women and the
discipline, but programmatic change continues to be difficult.
As McGovern et al. (1991) noted in their APA/AAC project
report:
Comments on an earlier draft of this article also pointed to dif-
ferent views on how best to integrate gender, ethnicity, culture,
and class into the study of psychology Most psychologists
would acknowledge that faculty members must challenge cam-
pus racism and sexism, but there is less agreement on how to do
so. Gender, ethnicity, culture, and class are seen by some teach-
ers as issues that challenge the contemporary curricula. Such a
challenge also questions traditional research methodologies that
are empirical, quantitative, and positivist, and may advocate al-
ternative psychological methods that are contextual, interpretive,
and more qualitative. Other psychologists believe that, although
these topics and the new knowledge generated by research have
legitimacy in the discipline, they should be subtopics best left to
treatments determined by an instructor’s sensitivities and com-
mitments. (pp. 599–600)
The above quotation captures the difficult conversations
that must be taking place in classrooms and in departmental
Past as Prologue for the Twenty-First Century 477
meetings about the very nature of the discipline, not just stu-
dents’ demographic characteristics. In their article “The
Diversification of Psychology: A Multicultural Revolution,”
Sue, Bingham, Porche-Burke, and Vasquez (1999) identified
four major approaches to teaching about multiculturalism
and diversity: “the separate course model, the area of con-
centration model, the interdisciplinary model, and the

integration model” (p. 1066), ultimately advocating the inte-
gration model as the one best suited for the depth and breadth
of learning they hope students will achieve. Puente et al.
(1993) used the metaphor of teaching a “psychology of vari-
ance” as the means to change the epistemology of students,
departments, the curriculum, and the discipline. Enns (1994)
advocated a similar approach to challenge the cultural rela-
tivism of psychological constructs. What is consistent across
reports from academia and from the external community is
that attention to diversity issues is no longer a matter of indi-
vidual faculty sensitivity but a utilitarian requirement for em-
ployment advancement in a changing workplace. The script
for how institutions and departments will address this expec-
tation will be written in the global twenty-first century.
For the first half of the twentieth century, psychology fac-
ulties were required to be excellent teachers. “The teacher is
everything” (Seashore, 1910, p. 91). Then, as we documented
in the first section of this chapter, research became more im-
portant in academic life after World War II.
“Teaching is not a prestigeful occupation in psychol-
ogy these days. The research man is the status figure”
(McKeachie & Milholland, 1961, p. 6). Ideally, these two ac-
tivities could be synergistic and rewarded accordingly,
whether the faculty member was affiliated with a liberal arts
college or a research university. However, as the century
ended, external forces demanded that the values and time
apportioned to teaching, research, and service activities be
reconsidered. Halpern et al. (1998) concluded that a new
definition of scholarship was required, one that would main-
tain traditional benchmarks for excellence (e.g., high level of

discipline-specific expertise and peer review), but one
that would integrate teaching and scholarly activities more.
Drawing on Boyer’s (1990) treatise, the authors proposed a
five-part, expansive definition for future scholarship in psy-
chology: original research, integration of knowledge, applica-
tion of knowledge, scholarship of pedagogy, and scholarship
of teaching inpsychology.In a collectionof essays in response
to the report from this STP Task Force on Defining Scholar-
ship in Psychology, Girgus (1999) and Korn (1999) advised
that institutional mission should be seen as an absolutely
essential context for definitions and standards. Korn echoed
the historical trends that we discovered in our analyses in
his critical response to the “new definitions”: “I contend,
however, that the activities of teaching can and should be dis-
tinguished from research, in order to give teaching the respect
it deserves”(p. 362). Likethe complex responses necessary to
meet the needs of changing students, changing demands on
faculty commitments will be debated into this century as well.
Teaching methods throughout the century included the lec-
ture, seminar or small-group discussion section, laboratory,
fieldwork and practica, and independent or supervised re-
search projects. Technological advances modestly influenced
each of these methods—better microphones, better audio-
visual systems, better textbooks and auxiliary materials, and
better observation and data-collection equipment. Then, in
the last 20 years of the twentieth century, information tech-
nology revolutionized how we conceptualize, deliver, and
evaluate teaching and learning inAmerican higher education.
Although we characterized the 1904 Wisconsin Idea of ex-
tended education as an early example of “distance learning,”

the dairy farmers of the Midwest who gathered with faculty
members from their state’s land-grant universities’ colleges
of agriculture probably did not envision twenty-first-century
models of “asynchronous learning” accomplished on laptop
computers in their living rooms. Despite such advances, how-
ever, we are confident in returning to a timeless formula: All
teaching is mediated learning. Regardless of the nature of
what is to be learned and how, a teacher first must listen to a
student, and then together they must construct the most effec-
tive mediation so that the student learns how to learn and to
become self-motivated and self-evaluating in that effort.
Calkins (1910) had it right: “Teach psychology primarily as
you would if it were an end in itself” (p. 53).
In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the new science
of psychology emerged from its philosophical roots and
began to develop a disciplinary identity. Curriculum devel-
opment was the means by which this identity was repeatedly
communicated and modified. As we have tried to demon-
strate in our historical review of American higher education
in general, and of psychology in particular, a driving force in-
side and outside the academy was how best to define the lib-
eral arts. Although the trivium and the quadrivium no longer
define the essence of a university education, in what ways do
the goals of that medieval curriculum differ from those
proposed for a liberal arts psychology curriculum by Brewer
et al. (1993), Halpern et al. (1993), or McGovern et al.
(1991)? There were two special issues of the journal Teach-
ing of Psychology in the 1990s; one was devoted to the teach-
ing of writing across the curriculum (Nodine, 1990) and the
other to teaching critical thinking across the curriculum

(Halpern & Nummedal, 1995). We believe that higher educa-
tion’s and psychology’s responses to defining the liberal arts
not only will shape the curriculum but should guide all of our
478 Undergraduate Education
discussions about outcomes, kinds of students and their
needs, faculty priorities, and teaching approaches.
The teaching, scholarship, and service of American under-
graduate psychology remain a vibrant player in Whitehead’s
(1929/1952) “adventure.” When we feel an urge to boast
about our public popularity or our intellectual accomplish-
ments, we should remember his admonition:
Knowledge does not keep any better than fish. (p. 106)
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CHAPTER 24
Ethnic Minorities
483
THE HUMANIZING OF PSYCHOLOGY 483
Adelbert M. Jenkins
CONFRONTATIONS AND CHANGE 486
George W. Albee
MINORITY PSYCHOLOGISTS IN THE COMMUNITY 488
Vera S. Paster
ORGANIZATION EFFORTS BY ASIAN AMERICANS
IN PSYCHOLOGY 490
Stanley Sue
THE CHALLENGE OF CHANGE: FORMATION OF
THE ASSOCIATION OF BLACK PSYCHOLOGISTS 492
David B. Baker
COLORS AND LETTERS: THE DEVELOPMENT
OF AN ETHNIC MINORITY PSYCHOLOGICAL
PUBLICATION 495
Lillian Comas-Diaz
HISPANIC ETHNICITY IN PSYCHOLOGY:
A CUBAN-AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE 497
Antonio E. Puente
ETHNIC MINORITIES IN RESEARCH

AND ORGANIZATION 499
Richard M. Suinn
TREATING ETHNIC MINORITY CLIENTS 501
A. Toy Caldwell-Colbert and Velma M. Williams
UPDATING MODELS OF RACIAL AND ETHNIC
IDENTITY: ON THE ORIGINS OF AN ECOLOGICAL
FRAMEWORK OF IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT 503
Maria P. P. Root
REFERENCES 505
This chapter differs from the others in form and format.
Instead of having a continuous history of the field, we have
elected to present historical issues from the perspectives
of 10 authors, representing various ethnic orientations, with
views on their thoughts and experiences in dealing with eth-
nic issues in the field of psychology.
Some of these vignettes are very personal and some reflect
on important turning points in the history of psychology re-
lating to ethnic minorities. Each of the brief essays tells an
aspect of the story that should be remembered as the science
and profession of psychology moves into the twenty-first
century.
D. K. F.
The Humanizing of Psychology
ADELBERT M. JENKINS
In the nearly 40-year period of my professional career,
which began in the early 1960s, I have been privileged to
witness important social and political changes in American
society. While important to the nation generally, the events
of this period provided a context for changes within the
discipline of psychology, as well. An important expression

of these times was the civil rights movement in America.
The dynamics emerging from this crusade required psychol-
ogy to reexamine its descriptive stance toward African
Americans and people of color generally. Prior to the 1960s
if mainstream twentieth century social science turned its at-
tention to African Americans, it tended to stress the ineffec-
tualness of the adaptive abilities of ethnic minority people
(Thomas & Sillen, 1972). Typical were such comments as
those of the psychiatrists Kardiner and Ovesey (1951/1962).
Impressed with the debilitating psychological effects that
centuries of American racism had on African Americans,
they concluded that the “Negro has no possible basis for a
healthy self-esteem” (p. 297). Crain and Weisman (1972) in
their large scale study of northern Black adults noted their
484 Ethnic Minorities
view that segregation had possibly robbed the Black person
of “some vital aspect of his personality” leaving him
deficient for adapting effectively. The prevailing picture
presented was one of human beings who were able only to
react to their environments rather than take charge of their
destinies.
Now, there is no question that African Americans as a
group have been continuously and disproportionately num-
bered among the poor, and that they suffer and have suffered
personally and collectively in the United States. Indeed, at
times it does appear that African Americans have responded
as if “shaped” by the “contingencies” imposed upon them by
the racist society (Hayes, 1991). In many instances, this has
led to features in the African American personality which
could be called “adaptive inferiority” (Pugh, 1972). But we

know, too, from a closer reading of history and from personal
observation that this has not been all there is to the psycho-
logical story of African Americans. It has taken something
more to gain the level of personal growth that many African
Americans have reached against the kinds of odds they have
faced. Ironically, it seems that the scholars that have been best
able to capture these facts have tended to be those in the hu-
manities. Thus, the African American novelist and essayist,
Ralph Ellison, commented that he set himself the goal as a
writer to “commemorate in fiction that which I believe to
be enduring and abiding in our situation, especially those
human qualities which the American Negro has developed
despite and in rejection of the obstacles and meannesses
imposed upon us” (1964, p. 39; italics added). Furthermore
one of the brightest literary lights of the Harlem Renaissance
of the 1920s, Langston Hughes, proclaimed that this aspira-
tion was not just a characteristic of the literate and well-to-do.
In much of his work, he highlighted what he saw as the
attitude of triumphing over adversity that was part and parcel
of the African American’s everyday life. In one of his most
famous poems, he portrays a mother urging her son not to turn
back in his struggle for accomplishment, reminding him that
“I’se been a-climbin’ on and turnin’ corners” in spite of
the fact that “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” (1959,
p. 187).
In the face of the inability of social science to develop a
balanced understanding of African Americans, the mood of
the 1960s provided a new impetus for African American
psychologists to express their longstanding discontent with
American social science (Guthrie, 1998). Some in the new

generation of African American scholars chose to reject
Western perspectives altogether and move in new conceptual
directions. The development of the Afrocentric perspective in
psychology is a prime example, and a considerable body of
literature has come from this point of view (for example,
Akbar, 1991; L. J. Myers, 1988; Nobles, 1991; J. L. White &
Parham, 1990). For others of us, the difficulty with the char-
acterization of African Americans was not simply a concern
about racist trends in American social science. The problem
was also that the reigning model in American psychology in
general was a “mechanistic” one, a framework that portrayed
the individual as a passive being whose responses are primar-
ily determined either by environmental factors or by internal
physiological and constitutional states.
The behaviorist position had been most clearly identified
with the mechanistic tradition. However, even classical
psychoanalytic theory showed clear evidence of such a
direction, reflected in Freud’s early efforts to develop a
“metapsychology” that would describe the basic forces dri-
ving human functioning (Holt, 1972). Freud’s thinking about
his clinical observations led him to theorize in ways that ac-
tually were opposite to the prevailing scientific viewpoints of
the day (Cameron & Rychlak, 1985; Holt, 1972). Still, in the
first half of the twentieth century, especially, the mechanistic
perspectives in Freudian thought were a considerable influ-
ence on conceptualizations of the human being. The problem
for African Americans in this context has been that when
human beings in general are not seen as taking an active, cop-
ing stance in life, then the tendency not to see active and
creative features in the behavior of African Americans fol-

lows naturally. Thus, some of us felt that what was needed
was a broader philosophical and conceptual framework
within psychology as a whole.
Fortunately, during this time such a perspective was
beginning to develop. It was being expressed in independent
quarters and in varied language by experimentalists (Sarbin,
1977) and clinicians (Rychlak, 1968). Leona Tyler encapsu-
lated the spirit of the times in the opening pages of her book
on individuality (1978) by noting that “In psychology fresh
winds are blowing, sweeping away overly restrictive as-
sumptions, dusting off concepts that had been covered over
and neglected, picking up and juxtaposing separate ideas to
produce novel combinations Pluralism is the order of the
day” (p. 1). Counterposed against this notion of humankind
portrayed in the passive, mechanistic voice was a trend of
psychological scholarship that described the “humanistic”
view, one portraying the human individual as “an active,
responsible agent, not simply a helpless, powerless reagent,”
(Chein, 1972 p. 6). The human being in this active image is
one “who actively does something with regard to some of the
things that happen to him or her [and who] seeks to shape
[the] environment rather than passively permit [himself or
herself] to be shaped by the latter, a being, in short, who in-
sists on injecting [himself or herself] into the causal process
of the [surrounding] world” (p. 6).
The Humanizing of Psychology 485
A number of other psychologists were developing outlooks
with similar implications for the human image. Abraham
Maslow (1968) is familiar to us as one who stressed the need
for a “third force” in psychological theory which would sys-

tematically acknowledge the importance of human strivings
for personal growth and self-realization and would supplement
the psychoanalytic and behaviorist positions. Of particular in-
terest to me was the work of Harvard psychologist, Robert
White, who also leveled a critique at both experimental and
psychoanalytic psychologies. He wrote, “Something important
is left out when we make drives the operating forces in animal
and human behavior (1959, p. 297).” To bring back what is
“left out,” White developed his view that organisms, partic-
ularly the higher mammals, strive for “competence” in their
efforts to interact “effectively” with their environments. As I
became more familiar with how these newer currents touched
various facets of psychology, I came to feel that such “human-
istic” perspectives, broadly defined, offered promise for gain-
ing a fuller grasp of the human personality in general. It also
seemed to me that such a framework would be more suitable
for capturing the functioning of African Americans as well.
The trend of thinking that is opposed to a mechanistic view has
been growing considerably in the last 15 years, well beyond
the earlier terms of this discourse (see, for example, Faulconer
& Williams, 1985; Howard & Conway, 1986; Martin &
Sugarman, 1999; Messer, Sass, & Woolfolk, 1988; Polking-
horne, 1990; Richardson, Fowers, & Guignon, 1999; Robin-
son, 1991; Rychlak, 1994].)
In my efforts to find a corrective to the traditional psycho-
logical view of the African American (Jenkins, 1995), I have
drawn on the extensive theoretical and empirical work of
Joseph Rychlak and his students (1968, 1994). His frame-
work, which he originally called a psychology of “rigorous
humanism,” furnishes a detailed conceptual perspective on

how persons are able to inject themselves into the “causal
process” of the world around. In Rychlak’s view, an agent is a
being who can behave so as to go along with, add to, oppose,
or disregard sociocultural and/or biological stimulations
(Rychlak, 1988). Key ideas that elucidate this definition are,
first, that subjectively held intentions and purposes are as im-
portant as “objective” environmental contingencies in gov-
erning the way people behave. It is in this way that the human
individual is an important causal force in his or her own life.
As we try to understand the intentions that contribute to an
individual’s actions, we necessarily take an “introspective”
point of view on that person’s life that is, a view from the
actor’s perspective. This is a “teleological” or “telic” perspec-
tive on human behavior because it emphasizes that human
behavior is always governed in part by the goal or end (telos)
the actor has in mind. A second elucidating point is that the
agent’s mentality is actively structuring, not simply passively
reactive, as it “comes at” experience. We actively organize
the world into meaningful units and then relate mentally to the
“reality” that we have constructed. “While ‘real’ external
reality may be presumed to exist independently of its appre-
hension, it cannot be known except symbolically—as part
of psychic reality” (Edelson, 1971, p. 27). This is consistent
with recent “constructivist” approaches to knowledge
(Howard, 1991). Thus, people are very much engaged in the
process of coping with the world.
Third, and of particular importance in this framework,
“dialectical” thinking, the innate capacity to imagine alterna-
tive or opposing conceptions of life situations, is frequently
used by people to guide their behavior. With this capacity,

people have an independent ability to determine the meaning
of a given situation. In principle, they can fashion concep-
tions of a situation that are contradictory to those given by the
tradition of a particular authority. This mode of thought sup-
plements the capacity that we also have to define our con-
structions of the world in straightforward and unambiguous
terms in order to negotiate our circumstances (what might
be called “demonstrative” modes of thought, in Aristotelian
terms). The point here is that African Americans have sur-
vived their oppressive history in the United States because
they have actively and intentionally brought to their lives
conceptions of their competence that have been at variance
with the judgments made of them by the majority society.
Let’s pursue this perspective a bit further and conclude
with an illustration. Traditional psychological analysis has
tried to identify the factors, such as biological drives or other
kinds of contingent considerations, that necessarily deter-
mine behavior. The telic-humanistic perspective by contrast
is among those that argue that many human events happen
in a context of possibility rather than necessity (Slife &
Williams, 1995). That is to say, from a psychological point of
view many situations in our lives, even from birth, are full of
potentialities for action.
This quality of open alternatives in experience demands that the
human being affirm some meaning at the outset for the sake
of which behavior might then take place [Affirmation is]
one of those active roles assigned to mind by humanists because
which item of experience is singled out for identification
is up to the individual and not to the environment. (Rychlak,
1988, p. 295)

Such a conception highlights the place of choice and
responsibility in human action. By contrast, mechanistic
views try to account for behavior exclusively in terms of envi-
ronmental contingencies and/or constitutional drive factors.
486 Ethnic Minorities
They rule out independent volition and choice as important
contributors to behavior. It should be noted, however, that the
humanistic view is seen as complementing and extending
rather than replacing mechanistic frameworks. For the hu-
manist, the latter views are seen as incomplete as ways of
accounting for human experience. This is because the exercise
of choice and the conceptions guiding these choices are often
not always apparent from the external observer’s view of a
given set of behaviors.
This is illustrated in a passage from the opening pages of
Ellison’s important American novel, Invisible Man (1952). A
family is gathered around the deathbed of an old southern
Black man. In his dying words to his son the man says, “I
want you to overcome ’em with yeses, undermine ’em with
grins, agree ’em to death and destruction.” The family was
stunned. “They thought the old man had gone out of his mind.
He had been the meekest of men” (pp. 19–20, italics added).
Obviously this man was advocating, among other things,
lulling his white bosses into complacency in the hope that
their system would deteriorate and blacks would then be free
of it. His underlying intent—an intent which kept him
going—was hostile, quite at variance with his superficially
obsequious manner. In addition, referring back to our earlier
discussion of meaning, this old man had taken a “dialectic”
perspective on his situation throughout his life without any-

one being quite aware of it, and he was now advocating such
a view explicitly to his family. That is to say, recognizing
fully the nature of his oppressive circumstances, this old man
had acted one way, but at the same time he had quite the op-
posite mental perspective on the racial situation. This was his
way of sustaining his human qualities “despite and in rejec-
tion of the obstacles and meannesses” that had been imposed
upon him. And he was urgently trying to pass that strategy on
to his family as a part of his legacy.
Thus, we cannot understand this man’s behavior unless we
take an “introspective” or “first-person” view. And so it is
with African Americans: If we are to have “true to life” psy-
chological descriptions, in addition to our more “objective”
descriptions, we must learn to conceptualize and align our-
selves with the inner worlds—the subjectivity—of people of
color if our theory and practice is to be relevant to their expe-
rience. This is the opportunity that the “fresh winds” in psy-
chology have brought us—the possibility of including into
our discipline a more proactive conception of the human
being that will contribute to the understanding and advance-
ment of people in all of their plurality.
CONFRONTATIONS AND CHANGE
GEORGE W. ALBEE
Opportunities in psychology were slim for African American,
Hispanic American, Asian American, Native American, and
other minorities, before the middle of the twentieth century.
Since its founding in 1892, American psychology had al-
ways been a white, male, experimentally-oriented academic
discipline. Its association, the American Psychological Asso-
ciation (APA), was run by presidents, boards, and council

members from Academe and non-academic applied psychol-
ogists were not numerous. Most of those calling themselves
“clinical psychologists” worked in schools and, occasionally,
in state mental hospitals and in institutions for the retarded
and epileptic.
Doctoral programs in psychology supplied new (white
male) faculty members for universities as replacements
were needed. Recruitment involved an “Old Boy” system of
phone calls to colleagues. Jobs in universities were rarely ad-
vertised. College jobs often asked for “Christian gentlemen”
candidates (see “Positions Available” in the early years of the
American Psychologist). Psychology was a laboratory sci-
ence before World War II and not particularly popular with
undergraduates. Then World War II suddenly created a
demand for people with skills in testing, personnel classifica-
tion, and clinical interventions. These demands were multi-
plied after the war when many of the millions of veterans
were in need of treatment for “mental disorders.” I have told
this story in some detail (Albee, 1998). The post-war explo-
sion in numbers of clinical psychologist occurred in a context
of medical domination and the insistence by psychiatry on
the established medical model and traditional treatment in
medical-psychiatric clinics and hospitals.
Between 1920 and 1966, the 10 most prestigious depart-
ments of psychology in the United States awarded just eight
PhDs in psychology to Negro [sic] candidates while confer-
ring 3,767 doctorates. Six of these 10 departments had not
had a single Negro PhD. Of all programs, fewer than 1% of
the doctorates were awarded to minorities (Albee, 1969).
Confrontations and Change 487

The 1954 Supreme Court Brown vs. Board decision set in
motion a mammoth pattern of change. The late 1950s saw
Governor Faubus resist school integration in Little Rock,
Arkansas, and President Eisenhower reluctantly used federal
troops to uphold the court’s decision. School busing led to
riots in Boston.
The 1960s saw a continuation of great social ferment
and change in America. The Atlanta bus boycott, the lunch
counter sit-ins, the protest demonstrations, the freedom rid-
ers, the school desegregation actions of the federal govern-
ment, the marches led by Martin Luther King Jr. and others,
the whole civil rights movement, the Great Society, all com-
bined to change America, and in the process to change
psychology. The escalating protests against the Vietnam War
were occurring at the same time as the civil rights demonstra-
tions, often on the same campuses. Some of the goals of
African American students were the opposite of the goals
of the white students. The African American students wanted
more admissions, more scholarships, more socially-relevant
classes. The white students, like Students for a Democratic
Society, wanted an endto ROTC and to support for thewar in-
cluding the military draft and the increasing military presence
in Vietnam. They (the white protestors) were often willing to
close the universities. In the late-1960s, the new Association
of Black Psychologists (ABPsi) began pushing for changes
in APA that would lead to support for moreAfricanAmerican
admissions to graduate schools and to a sharing of power in
the APA governance.
At APA’s 1968 convention in San Francisco, ABPsi pre-
sented a “Statement of Concerns” to the APA Council. At that

same time, all watched on TV the “police riot” at the Democ-
ratic party’s presidential nominating convention in Chicago.
As a direct result, the APA Council voted to move the 1969
APA convention out of Chicago. The ABPsi invited APA to
meet inWatts, a section of Los Angeles, and there was actually
some talk of this possibility, but logisticalconsiderations led to
the choice of Washington, DC, despite threats of a lawsuit by
Chicago venders over contract violations.Actually, because of
the fortuitous August timing, APA was the first of many
national organizations to shun Chicago for meetings.
Also at the 1968 San Francisco convention, there was a
momentous confrontation. On the last day of the convention,
Tuesday afternoon, the APA board of directors was meeting,
discussing the many issues raised by the move of the next
convention, but also the increasing demands from ABPsi,
(and from radical groups like Psychologists for a Democratic
Society and Psychologists for Social Action) pushing for
increased civil rights, an end to segregation and support for
a stronger minority presence in psychology. During the
meeting, the door opened and in walked the entire board of
directors of ABPsi. They were well-prepared with the clear
facts about racism in psychology and with specific demands
for changes in APA and for changes in admissions policies
in colleges and universities that had long excluded African
Americans and other minorities. (The long-time exclusion of
women from psychology training was to assume a major
focus a year later.)
The APA board expressed general support for the issues
raised by ABPsi but argued that it could not dictate to educa-
tional institutions, and that changes in APAgovernance would

require by-law changes voted on by the membership. Mem-
bers of ABPsi were impatient with what they saw as conven-
tional stalling tactics. By the end of the day, it was agreed that
APA would host a “conference on recruitment of black and
other minority students and faculty” at the APA headquarters
building in Washington, DC. The conference was held April
18 to 20, 1969. TheAPAboardnominated nine white male par-
ticipants and ABPsi nominated eight black male participants
(mostly from black colleges and universities) and Ernestine
Thomas (who was active in helping organize the Black Stu-
dent Psychological Association and who was administrative
office manager at the psychology department at Case Western
Reserve University where I was then Chair).
Also invited to the conference (that I chaired) were men
from the Behavioral Science Training Branch of the National
Institute of Mental Health and male resource people from
APA’s Office of Educational Affairs and Executive Office.
(See Albee, G. W., 1969, for a complete list of participants
and a detailed report on the Conference.) The council was
urged, along with APAboards and committees to “expand op-
portunities for black and other minority group students and
faculty to enter the mainstream of psychology.” Advice was
offered to the Conference of Graduate Department Chairmen
[sic], and to other APA groups like the Committee on Sub-
doctoral Education in Psychology. Looking back with the
wisdom of hindsight, the recommendations seem mostly
bland. Among the concrete results were ensuring that there be
nondiscrimination in APA Central Office hiring and staffing,
and that a new Central Office position be created with a focus
on relating psychology and social problems, especially

including racism.
The report of this Conference was published in the
American Psychologist in August, 1969 just before the con-
vention in Washington, DC. Then things exploded! For the
first time in its 77-year history, APA meetings were physi-
cally disrupted. A group of black graduate students appeared
in force at George Miller’s presidential address, prepared to
demonstrate. After negotiation, they agreed to leave in ex-
change for an invitation to present their case to the APA coun-
cil the following day.
488 Ethnic Minorities
Twenty-four African American students stood shoulder
to shoulder the next day in front of the council while their
statement was read. They allowed the council 24 hours to
respond. Robert Lee Green, president of ABPsi also spoke.
He demanded that APA assess each member $50.00 to aid the
black psychology cause. He also demanded that psychology
stop using the black ghetto as a research colony.
Green and I were invited guests on the Today Show that
week. Our brief exposure, broadcast from Washington, was
seen by an estimated 19 million TV viewers. We were both
nervous participants!
The black student group’s statement focused on increasing
the number of black undergraduates, graduate students, and
faculty and on establishing training programs for black
students in the black community. The Council adopted “in
principle” the black student statement and appointed George
Miller and me as a committee to negotiate with the black
students and to develop a more specific set of proposals to
present to the October council meeting. We invited the BSPA

to send negotiators to Washington to meet with us. No way.
We were invited to come to Watts, a black conclave in Los
Angeles, to negotiate. Miller and I flew to Los Angeles where
we were met at the airport and each taken to a host family in
Watts. I stayed in the home of Charles Thomas, a major fig-
ure in black psychology. We met with students for a couple
days in a small neighborhood church. Our meals were pre-
pared and served by a black “ladies group.” Discussions were
spirited, but friendly. Our evening meal was accompanied by
unlimited quantities of Cold Duck, and during the evening
numbers of black students and black psychologists joined the
group for informal, light-hearted interactions. We took back
to APA several proposed by-laws changes (that were quickly
passed by the required 2/3 majority of those voting) and
recommendations for Central Office staffing changes to
help new committees ensure priority for minority-increasing
efforts. APA agreed to provide space for a new BSPA suite of
offices and to lend money to staff them. Ernestine Thomas
moved to Washington to provide staffing support.
By the end of the 1960s, a majority of APA members were
sympathetic to the black demands. The country had wit-
nessed a decade of struggle against the defenders of segrega-
tion, Jim Crow, and racial injustice. The parallel struggle
against the Vietnam war was ongoing. The climate for change
was favorable.
During the same 1969 APA convention in Washington
there were anti-war demonstrations by psychologists. I led a
march of some 300 psychologists (many from Psychologists
for Social Action) down Connecticut Avenue to Lafayette
Park, across from the White House, where I. F. Stone and I

spoke against the war. Later in the week, a sunrise service
was held at the Lincoln Memorial when Molly Harrower,
B. F. Skinner, and I spoke against the war. Many of these
events were recorded by Bryce Nelson (1969) in Science. (In
this same issue is a report from the Department of Health,
Education and Welfare on the safety of the oral contraceptive
pill saying that the benefits outweigh the risks; and another
article on the risks of pesticides, but no restrictions yet on the
private use of DDT.) It is also worth noting that Americans
had just landed on the moon. It was clearly a decade of major
change.
Kenneth B. Clark was elected in 1969, the first African
American APA president. At the 1970 APA convention in
Miami Beach, the APA board was confronted by a militant
Association for Women in Psychology with demands for
major financialreparations fromAPA for yearsof unequalpay,
discrimination in hiring and in graduate admissions, and for
blatant sexism. The registration form for the convention asked
for member’s name and wife’s name, even though 30 percent
of the APA membership was female. Texts in psychology re-
ferred to “men and girls” and sexual harassment was rife.
All of this was to change, but someone else will tell that
story.
Minority Psychologists in the Community
VERA S. PASTER
The shifting status of African American people in this coun-
try has been mirrored by our changing positions in the pro-
fession of psychology. It was not until the Emancipation in
1865 that enslaved persons could be taught to read except
under penalty of imprisonment, flogging, or other severe

punishments. In the south, schools for slaves were out of the
question, and colleges were unthinkable. In the free states,
there were a handful of colleges, including Berea and
Oberlin, that opened their doors to black persons. After the
Emancipation, in the former slave-owning states, colleges for
African Americans began to be established by missionary
groups (historically black colleges). Later, in 1890, the
Minority Psychologists in the Community 489
government land grant acts provided states throughout the
country with funds for colleges for their students. Many of
these admitted African Americans. But except for the histori-
cally black colleges which were located mostly in the south,
African Americans have always had to struggle to gain an
education in this country.
Even though psychology is a relatively recent scholarly
subject in academia, it has been a prominent contributor to
the country’s complex struggle with its attitudes about race.
An index of the difficulties is the fact that between 1920
and 1966, the APA reported, the 10 highest ranking gradu-
ate departments of psychology awarded just eight PhDs to
African Americans, while during the same period of time
these universities granted over 3,700 PhDs to others (Wispe
et al., 1969). During the first part of the twentieth century,
there were no welcome mats for African Americans at
the psychology department doors of the major universities
(Jay, 1971).
Further, “respected” psychological research and the best
trained psychologists used their studies, tests, and theories to
“prove,” in turn, that African American, Hispanic, Asian,
Mediterranean, and Irish peoples were socially undesirable,

mentally inferior, and corrupting of the nation’s potential
for advancement. This “science” included using African
Americans as guinea pigs in the Tuskegee study, sterilizing
“undesirable” young women, relegating members of some
racial/ethnic groups to an “uneducable” category, and similar
oppressions.
Considering this history, it is not a surprise that the influ-
ences of the racial/ethnic psychologists are directed toward
challenging traditional “rules” like those for research that
lead to invidious comparisons of African Americans to
Euroamerican. Ethnic-minority influence also includes prac-
tices that emphasize serving the unserved, understanding the
stereotyped, and expanding the scope of the theoretical in-
quiry. Following are two examples of contributions, led or
inspired, by these previously excluded people of color.
The first example is a primary prevention focus for a men-
tal health center. The center was developed in a poor, work-
ing class, mostly African American and Latino section of
New York City. The idea was to use professionals and trained
community residents to provide treatment and other services
according to community need and priority. Some examples:
dialogues between neighborhood supermarket managers and
householders; legal advice sessions with volunteer attorneys;
counseling older people at the sites of senior housing; tenant
organization to force landlords to provide needed services
like heat and sanitation; advocacy for children with the
schools, and liaisons with the police. The management of the
center was open to everyone who lived in the community
through their participation in monthly governance meetings,
termed the council. The council votes for the members of the

board of directors. They also advocate for program priorities.
For example, many members complained about the crowds
hanging out day and night in front of a neighborhood single-
room occupancy “hotel,” considered to be a menacing eye-
sore. It turned out that public agencies placed people in these
dwellings upon their release from jails, prisons, and mental
hospitals. It was housing of last resort for the troubled who
were down on their luck.
With the help of city hall, the mental health center assem-
bled the directors of the area’s city departments for the police,
fire, sanitation, health, and welfare, to improve the situation.
It was the first time they met as a group. Identifying viola-
tions on the property and sending summons to the landlord,
the building was made safer and cleaner, and an array of
services were brought into the building to engage and serve
the tenants. All of this functioned under the leadership of
the mental health center, which also assigned a multidisci-
pline team to the effort. There was an outpouring of pride at
the center and a sense of competence in the neighborhood
with the clearing of that notorious block!
The second example of the influence of African Ameri-
can leadership is one that occurred within the large child
guidance clinic of the New York City public school system.
During the 50 years since the service was established, it
functioned according to a traditional model of referring to
the school social worker or school psychologist difficult to
manage children and those who seemed to have learning
difficulties. More boys than girls were referred for behavior
problems, restlessness, rebellion, fighting, and the like, and
more minority children were referred both for behavior

and “mental retardation.” Nevertheless, the concentration of
staff was assigned to the “good” schools, meaning the
schools where the students were whiter and somewhat more
affluent. These students were more likely to receive psy-
chotherapy when needed, since the families were considered
to be more cooperative and less suspicious of a child guid-
ance referral, and to be more available and less likely to be
working or to have a job that would be jeopardized by ab-
sences for school visits. The result was a grossly inequitable
distribution of care.
When the author was awarded the directorship of the
agency, she set about changing these practices and attitudes.
She followed certain principles of continuing education: The
prospective students,adult professionals all,should have max-
imum influence over how and what should be taught, based on
clearly stated agency goals; the work should be based on the
strengths of the workers; and what is learned should be re-
warded with moresuccessfulpractice.The underlying premise
490 Ethnic Minorities
was that professionals need to feel competent, thus they will
practice in areas of competence and avoid areas of actual or
anticipated failure.
To implement an overall change, the director was awarded
a generous grant from NIMH for a three-year continuing ed-
ucation program for providing school mental health services
in schools with poor, ethnically and racially diverse students.
Concomitantly, the staff was redistributed so as to be more
equitably available throughout the city. The combination of
encouragement through training, mandate through agency
directive, and greater satisfaction for the professional

through practice of greater variety, resulted in a positive out-
come. The changes were favorably received by school
personnel and led to a fairer availability of help to all of the
city’s children.
The field of psychology has been a part of the country’s
whole, including its sad racial past. It is now only 81 years
since the first doctoral degree was awarded to an African
American, 136 years since the ending of slavery. The period
then and later has been earmarked by cruel discriminations
againstAfricanAmericans, and thesupport of suchoppression
by psychologists with bogus “science.” But as the number and
influence of African American and other ethnic minority
psychologists has grown, so too has psychology’s reach into
previously unserved communities, and its positive influences
on the community at large.A promising start?
Organization Efforts by Asian Americans in Psychology
STANLEY SUE
During the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, I was a graduate stu-
dent at UCLAintent on becominga clinical psychologist treat-
ing patients with schizophrenia.At this time, I was exposed to
the civil rights movement and protests against the Vietnam
War. My consciousness was raised over the injustices and op-
pression faced by African Americans, Latinos, and Native
Americans. The ideas of Martin Luther King, Caesar Chavez,
and Malcolm X were provocative and challenging. With re-
spect toAsianAmericans,notmuch was knownabout the pop-
ulation. The prevailing belief was that Asian Americans were
successful in education and occupational status, relatively
unobtrusive, and free of problems. Yet, many of us who were
familiar with Asian Americans felt that most of the issues and

problems besettingother ethnic groupswere applicable.Asian
Americans had suffered the same kinds of historical and con-
temporary mistreatment as other groups (e.g., discriminatory
laws, hate crimes, inability to become citizens). Other Asian
American students complained of ethnic identity conflicts,
feelings of marginality, and difficulties in adjustment.
It was during the last two years of my graduate work that I
became interested in the psychological study of Asian Amer-
icans and other ethnic minority groups. I began to read the
works of Gordon Allport, Tom Pettigrew, and Kenneth Clark
because there was little literature on Asian Americans. What
really peaked my interest in Asian Americans was Harry
Kitano’s article (1969) on Japanese American mental illness.
The effect of this article on me was profound. I was able to re-
late personally to the cultural analysis, the reluctance ofAsian
Americans to use mental health services, and the problems in
the delivery of effective services. Although other psychologi-
cal research has stimulated me either intellectually or person-
ally, Kitano’s article did both. I felt that I could contribute
something to this area of research and began my career at the
Psychology Department at the University of Washington.
It was not easy to conduct research on Asian Americans.
One major problem was the lack of other Asian Americans in
the field of psychology and of researchers interested in this
population. For example, I was told that in 1971, I was the
only tenure track Chinese American faculty in an APA ac-
credited clinical psychology program in the United States.
Collegial support and stimulation from other researchers or
from other Asian Americans were largely unavailable. Unlike
today, APA conventions did not involve many ethnic minori-

ties in general or Asian Americans in particular.
Those of us interested in Asian American research tried to
collaborate with other ethnic minority scholars. I was able to
work with Carolyn Attneave, Guy Seymour, Amado Padilla,
and Art Ruiz, to name a few. The alliances with other ethnic
scholars were very important in helping to forge collaborative
relationships and friendships.We wereable to defineethnic is-
sues andto find commonality and differences inthe issues fac-
ing Asian Americans as opposed to other ethnic groups.
Fortunately, my brother Derald, who was also a psycholo-
gist, had similar research interests. We could test ideas out on
each other, and my first publication was a coauthored paper
(Sue & Sue, 1971). At the University of Washington, where I
Organization Efforts by Asian Americans in Psychology 491
spent the first 10 years of my academic career, the director of
the Clinical Psychology Program, Ned Wagner, encouraged
me to conduct research on Asian Americans. This encourage-
ment was critical because in the early 1970s, it was not alto-
gether clear that academic careers could be built on the study
of Asian Americans.
Was the study of Asian Americans “legitimate”? Research
on Asian Americans is based on a population rather than a
phenomenon or psychological process, such as learning, mem-
ory, schizophrenia, or marital interactions. Furthermore, eth-
nic research has also been characterized as being political,
applied, or pejorative rather than scientific in nature. Although
many of us approached the work as scientists and advocates,
it was difficult to convince some researchers that ethnic re-
search was within the domain of science. Additional research
problems that we encountered included the relatively small

numbers of Asian Americans and the diversity within Asian
American groups, which made it difficult to find adequate
samples on which to base studies. We were also uncertain
about the validity of many research instruments because they
had not been validated on an Asian American population.
ASIAN AMERICAN ORGANIZATIONAL EFFORTS
The problems encountered with respect to ethnic research in
general and Asian American research in particular forced us
to struggle. However, we felt strongly that Asian American
research could not only yield much needed knowledge about
this population and have policy and program implications,
but also it could provide insight into human beings in gen-
eral. It became clear that Asian American researchers would
have to systematize efforts and to have some clout. Derald
and I, along with two graduate students, decided to start the
Asian American Psychological Association (AAPA) in 1972.
We began by finding out how much interest there might be in
such an association. We looked through the thousands of
names in the APA Directory and tried to identify the Asian-
sounding names. This was a laborious task but we did not
know how else to proceed. Nearly 200 names were identified
in this manner. Letters were sent to find out if they might
be interested in joining an organization focusing on Asian
Americans. About 50 responded with interest, including a
few who indicated that despite their Asian-sounding name,
they were not Asians.
For the first several years, we did not ask for association
dues, because we were not sure how strong the membership
base was. A quarterly newsletter was sent to members. How-
ever, we needed money because of the expenses (which

several of us initially bore). At the suggestion of Robert Chin,
who was a past president of the Society for the Psychological
Study of Social Issues (SPSSI, APA Division 9) and one of
the first to join AAPA, we approached the Division and asked
for, and received, $300 to support the association. We were
quite impressed with SPSSI’s willingness to help. Over time,
more individuals became involved—Rodger Lum, Pat
Okura, Reiko True, and Marion Tinloy. Interestingly, many
who helped to start the association were later to become na-
tionally prominent for their work with Asian Americans.
Derald served as the first president and was followed by
others such as Robert Chin, Albert Yee, Harry Yamaguchi,
Herbert Wong, Kats Sakamoto, David Goh, Andy Chen,
Nolan Zane, Chris Hall, Reiko True, and Gayle Iwamasa.
Organizers of AAPA felt that it was critical to achieve
several goals:
• Attaining influence in the American Psychological Asso-
ciation. We felt it was necessary to have Asian Ameri-
cans on governance structures (e.g., boards, committees,
and elected offices) of APA. We tried to help elect those
who were concerned about Asian Americans to APA
boards and committees so that APA would have to deal
with Asian American issues. Because it was necessary to
convince APA that AAPA had a solid constituency, in the
early days, we told APA that we had over 300 members,
but we did not say that most of the members were not
dues paying! Recently, AAPA has been able to celebrate
its involvement with APA by noting the prominence
of some of its members such as Richard Suinn (past
president of APA) and Alice Chang (past board of direc-

tors member of APA).
• Publications in journals. Publications are important not
only for developing research careers, but also for inform-
ing others of Asian American research and issues. Some
AAPA members felt that journals were not interested in
publishing papers on Asian Americans and did not have
qualified reviewers to evaluate Asian American papers.
Therefore, anothergoal was to try tohaveAsianAmericans
scholars named to editorial boards or as reviewers for
journals.
• Research grants. We needed money to conduct research.
We wanted to have input into funding priorities of funding
agencies (such as NIMH and NSF), to encourage grant
applications on Asian Americans, and to have some of
our members serve on research review groups for the
agencies. Research on ethnics was largely directed to
African Americans and Latino Americans. We felt left out.
While AAPA made it clear that funding for all ethnic
groups should be increased, we were particularly
concerned about the situation with Asian Americans.
492 Ethnic Minorities
Fortunately, one of our members, Pat Okura, was execu-
tive assistant to the director of NIMH, Bertram Brown. Pat
gave us very valuable suggestions and help.
• Research. There was little information and knowledge
about Asian Americans. No large-scale epidemiological
studies of the prevalence of mental disorders had ever been
conducted. It was not until the mid-1990s that funding
been received from NIMH to conduct the first large-scale
study of the prevalence and correlates of mental disorders

in anAsianAmerican population (the study was conducted
by the National Research Center on Asian American
Mental Health). Funding for such research was difficult
because of the popular belief that Asian Americans were
well adjusted and relatively free of mental disorders
and such studies were unnecessary—a belief we had to
combat.
• Practice. We felt that mental health services were not
adequate to meet the needs of Asian Americans. Widely
documented was the severe lack of utilization of mental
health services on the part of Asian Americans. AAPA
tried to encourage the development of more culturally-
responsive services to Asian Americans and strategies to
increase utilization.
• Training. There were very few Asian Americans in psy-
chology, and we needed a critical mass of individuals to
achieve our goals.AAPAhelped to sponsor a 1976 training
conference funded by NIMH to make recommendations
for the training of students for future roles in research,
teaching, and practice with Asian Americans.
• Networking. Also important to AAPA was networking—
providing opportunities for Asian Americans to meet and
collaborate.
Because the achievements of AAPA and its members have
been distributed over a 30-year period, it is sometimes
difficult to draw lessons from our organizational efforts.
However, there are several considerations that had a signifi-
cant effect on our growth and effectiveness:
1. A small, dedicated, and persistent group can accomplish
much. While we initially spent a great deal of time trying

to increase membership in AAPA, it was clear that a
few dedicated members would have to do most of the
work in communicating with members, writing the
newsletter, and advocating the interests of Asian
Americans to national organizations and funding agen-
cies, and so on. Time was also spent deciding courses of
action when members had grievances (complaints about
racial discrimination, documenting instances of stereo-
types, etc.), sought advice (e.g., about submitting manu-
scripts for publications), and made requests of one kind
or another.
2. Alliances must be made with members of other ethnic
groups, Whites, key leaders, and organizations.
3. The influence of a small, dedicated, and persistent group
cannot be underestimated. We had many instances of
having a few individuals taking initiative and succeeding.
4. Those who become involved in ethnic issues must realize
that such issues are unlike those typically found in psy-
chology. Ethnic issues can become very emotional and
personal, as well as intellectual. You can be subjected to
personal attacks involving whether actions help or hurt
the ethnic community. On other hand, work on Asian
Americans can be gratifying, not only professionally but
also personally.
Happily, AAPA is ready to celebrate its 30th anniversary.
It includes the involvement of hundreds of psychologists and
psychology students. It has an annual convention, a news-
letter, and an Internet listserve for members to communicate
with each other. Many of us feel a tremendous sense of pride
over AAPA’s accomplishments over the years.

The Challenge of Change: Formation of the Association of Black Psychologists
DAVID B. BAKER
In January 2001, the National Multicultural Conference and
Summit II was convened in Santa Barbara, California. The
sold-out event hosted by four divisions of the American Psy-
chological Association had as its subtitle “The Psychology of
Race/Ethnicity, Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Disability:
Intersections, Divergence, and Convergence.” Clearly, the
umbrella of inclusion is now large enough to include many
who had been marginalized, excluded, or otherwise made
invisible in psychology. In recognizing diversity as a value, it
is instructive to remember that not all that long ago there was
little celebration and plenty of struggle.
The social movements of the 1960s were about many
things, civil rights being chief among them. Civil rights based
on demographics such as age, gender, and race/ethnicity had