I am a full professor at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, a public, regional university with a century long heritage as a state teachers' college. It grew from an enrollment of 2,500 in the early 1960s to 11,000 students in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It continues to struggle in the 1990s to define its identity, values, and future.

I work in a department of psychology with 12 colleagues. Their professional identities vary from clinicians (I am a clinical psychologist) to experimentalists, cognitive psychologist to generalists. The department has 300 undergraduate majors. Our courses fulfill general education requirements as liberal arts subject matter for a liberal arts major, and as pre-professional and pre-applied education. Until two years ago I taught four courses a semester; I now teach three. In some institutions a teaching load of three courses per semester is considered heavy; at other institutions it is a light load.

My department offers an MS degree in Psychology with Industrial/Organizational, General-Experimental, and Clinical emphases. I have worked in the latter for 18 years. The applied master's training program in the clinical area is one reason I came to UWO, and it has provided me with much satisfaction.

In the Beginning

My career has been driven by fate and serendipity. I have found that this style of decision making is a better one for me than setting goals or two or five year plans.

I obtained my undergraduate education at Lawrence University, a small liberal arts school in Appleton, Wisconsin. It was a wonderful school in which I discovered that I loved ideas and the academic setting. I had no special interest in psychology when I began; I explored the liberal arts. My first psychology course was large by Lawrence's standards - 30 students - and if memory serves, it was boring. But I took more psychology and got to know two caring faculty (Drs. Bucklew and Hill). Their attention and support, more than the subject matter led me to choose psychology as a major.

Having decided on a major, I became fascinated by the subject matter and scientific inquiry of psychology. I spent three summers working in psychology and mental health preparing for graduate school admission, although I had little idea of what graduate school entailed: I spent one summer as a social work trainee on Chicago's Skid Row; I did research on an NSF grant at the University of Illinois a second year, and I worked at a 5,000 patient state mental hospital in Manteno, Illinois a third summer. Most of all, I enjoyed being a Lawrence upperclassman with a major I liked and a sense of purpose. I enjoyed running rats in the laboratory, working on courses, my senior project, and hanging out in the psychology department.

I chose to apply to doctoral programs because I had no other viable career plans. In retrospect, I realize that I chose clinical psychology because I wanted to make sense of who I was and who I wanted to be. At the time of application, I had no awareness of my needs for personal discovery, growth, and maturity. I was accepted to two of the six doctoral programs to which I had applied, the University of Illinois and Michigan State University. I chose MSU primarily because I knew a few students there.

Graduate School

Michigan State turned out to be an excellent choice for me. Its practicum experiences allowed me to work with clients and to connect with sensitive caring people who helped me to grow and learn. Of particular note are Bob Zucker, my mentor and now a friend, Marsha Worby, a clinical supervisor, and Dozier Thornton, my dissertation chair.

I am a baby boomer, and the Vietnam war had a major effect on my interest in and commitment to psychology. During my first year at MSU I was drafted. Five days after I obtained my master's degree I was a private in the US Army. I completed both basic and advanced infantry training and it took a great deal of effort and luck to obtain a military occupation specialty - a "social work-psychology specialist" - related to my graduate training. I spent a year at Fort Polk in Louisiana doing therapy, assessments and consultation outreach. The clinical experience was valuable; the setting depressing.

I then spent nine months in Viet Nam attached to two different infantry divisions, where I worked in mental health clinics at their base camps. I had to decide if soldiers after complaining they "could not take it anymore" were returned to the field or removed from combat situations, and had to make the same decisions for soldiers who had experienced prolonged combat and/or traumatic events who stated that they were "fine" when in fact their abilities to do their jobs had eroded. I also ran a drug treatment program and did crisis work with issues ranging from deaths in the family back home to "Dear John" letters. I was almost killed once: talking a US soldier out of a locked and loaded M-16. He was angry with his psychiatrist and found me, instead, at the clinic. The military taught me the critical importance of being empathetic with clients and understanding how they live.

I was confused when I returned to MSU, but I was open to change. When the automatic coping mechanism that kept me going in the military was no longer functioning, I fell apart. But my growth continued. Clinical practica, and faculty and peers, gently prodded me, and I finally had the courage to begin my own psychotherapy. I was accepted for local clinical internships and worked with expert clinical supervisors. After the military, hard work was relative; the coursework was easy compared to Viet Nam. With my dissertation nearly done, I needed a job. Fate intervened.

At that time, the job market was extremely tight. I declined an offer of a position at a maximum security prison in Wisconsin. This was not the work I wanted to do. In the spring of 1974, my major professor asked if I wanted to apply for a temporary assignment at MSU. Three faculty were going on sabbatical and the department needed a teacher and clinical supervisor. I jumped at the chance. (I am probably one of the few people in the country ever to have an "academic" post-doctoral experience.) For a year I taught and wrote. I had one committee assignment and was protected from the politics of academe. I loved the work! My office, which I still remember fondly, had high ceilings and several bookcases and tables. I could leave manuscripts, stacks of books and papers lie around for convenient perusal. The importance of having one's ideas out in plain sight cannot be overemphasized.

I learned more in that first year of my professional life than in any year which was to follow. I started to learn how to teach. My first course was an undergraduate summer school class in abnormal psychology with 150 students. I was to teach abnormal again, do clinical supervision of graduate students, and teach an applied undergraduate practica for seniors (which I may teach again next year for the first time in 20 years).

I wrote. The interest in ideas was internal and compelling. I did not do data based research but wrote several descriptive manuscripts.

The year went by far too quickly and I needed to find another job. At least I knew what kind of job I wanted -- to be an academician. I wanted a job in a doctoral institution such as MSU, but the job market was still tight. I found a job at a regional university - University of Wisconsin Oshkosh; it offered the graduate program and graduate teaching I wanted.

Leaving MSU was one of the most painful experiences in my life. Michigan State and East Lansing had become my home. I left fond memories, good friends and a gorgeous campus. Should I have left? I do not know. Had I stayed, I probably would not be an academician. I probably would have worked as a clinician in an area mental health center, established a private psychotherapy and clinical consulting practice, and done ad hoc teaching for MSU and other educational institutions. I will never know if I made the right choice.

The Early Years at UW Oshkosh, 1975 - 1979

I began at UWO in September, 1975; my salary was $14,300, and I was ecstatic to have a job. I was Graduate Coordinator and Director of Clinical Training. I had no experience with the terminal master's degree in psychology and had never talked with anyone who had training in such a program.

I have kept my yearly schedule books since 1975 and reread them for the first time when I began writing about my academic life. I am flabbergasted at those first few years. There was so much to do and learn.

Academe was a cacophony of students; ideas; teaching assignments; service to the department and university; developing courses, fine tuning them, tearing them apart; learning and more learning. This was a time of doing, not of quiet academic contemplation. I taught three courses per semester and received release time for my administrative work. I developed four graduate courses in my first year. In my first two years at UWO I served on 13 thesis committees, chairing nine, and received no teaching credit. This was before the days of personal computers, and all the administrative correspondence was done by typewriter. I loved all of it.

My Michigan State experience served me well in all aspects but one. At MSU I had done conceptual writing but no data based research; now I had to develop a research program and publish to earn tenure. But hard work and luck often go hand in hand. My interest in job satisfaction in mental health work settings dovetailed with the interests and expertise of a recently hired colleague. In 1979, Al Hartman and I received a $168,000, three year, National Institute of Mental Health research grant to study rural mental health administrators. It was one of the largest research grants ever awarded to the University.

In 1979, four years after I came to UWO, three major threads were being interwoven which would carry me to 1986 and beyond: the rural administrator grant, work in a terminal master's program with clinical training, and Faculty Development.

UWO is different from a first tier research or land grant doctoral institution in many ways. With its roots as a teachers' college, it struggles to develop an intellectual climate. Compared with many campuses I have been on and heard about, it is physically less attractive. The physical plant and grounds do not sustain one in day-to-day work, nor are there any symbols (no statue of Sparty like at MSU, no laboratory where a Nobel or other prize was won, etc.) to do so. Yet it is small enough so that one can make a difference, if one so strives. My forum was a nascent university-wide faculty development program.

Teaching is urgent on a campus. Students must be taught and classes must be held; these basic activities provide the visible fabric of the university. But for many faculty the pursuit of ideas is vital. In its transition from a small teachers' college to a regional university, UWO developed a faculty development program to support scholarship and administered by the faculty. One year after I came to UWO, the Graduate Dean, Betty Fitzgerald, who had worked at MSU, asked me to be her representative on this board. I agreed, not knowing what this meant for me.

The Early Years Continue, 1979 - 1986

In 1979, with three years of service on the UWO Faculty Development Board behind me, I began work on the NIMH grant. This point marked the beginning of my academic work in earnest. These years (1979-1986) make up a distinct chapter in my academic life. The grant provided relationships and experiences which endure. For example, this chapter grew out of my 1979 grant-related correspondence with the editor of this book. Al and I traveled to three states to interview 312 mental health administrators. We presented papers at every rural mental health and rural psychology forum in the country. We wrote a second grant proposal in 1982; it was more substantive and based on the first, and was accepted but not funded because federal grant monies had decreased in this area of mental health. We published journal articles and analyzed data for several more years, but we never wrote a book based on our grant research, nor did we seriously consider developing a consulting business to assist mental health administrators. Either course of action would have been a logical next step, either decision would have sent us in a new direction. Al and I probably know more about rural mental health administration and work today than anyone in the country. Work on that grant taught me that I engaged in scholarship because I enjoyed pursuing ideas, and getting to meet and know people. These provide the real satisfaction and give meaning to my work.

Regional universities focus more on teaching than tier one campuses. While doing the grant work, I taught two courses each semester and continued with extensive service to UWO. The time and culture did not support my becoming an academic cosmopolitan. I had no role models among colleagues at UWO such as I had at MSU: persons off campus a great deal of time active in national organizations. I was a local who wanted to be a cosmopolitan, a tension that I have never resolved.

The grant provided me with an opportunity for scholarship, and in 1982 I was awarded tenure. I had been anxious about obtaining tenure for years but once I had earned it, I found myself working harder instead of slowing down. I could now do what I chose; tenure provided a sense of freedom.

The other two threads in my academic life continued to influence me. I began a second research program to understand terminal clinical master's training. I felt uncomfortable recruiting students and asking them to commit to a training program and career that I did not understand. I undertook a series of research projects about the terminal master's clinical degree, and, in doing so, became a national expert in this area of training. The data supported the worth and work of our students and I felt comfortable in doing this graduate training.

The third thread in these years was faculty development. Doing this work fulfilled many of my needs. The Faculty Development Board, elicited and reviewed faculty proposals for work on and off campus in research/scholarship and teaching; being on this Board allowed me to champion faculty and help them gain support for their work. I had a marvelous teacher in administration at UWO, Jim Gueths, the best administrator with whom I have ever worked; I also worked with colleagues I respected and liked from all areas of the university.

When Jim left the Board to pursue other administrative responsibilities at UWO, I became the first faculty chair to serve without his guidance. The Board had a budget of $400,000, more discretionary money than all five academic deans on campus had at their disposal. For 3 1/2 years I chaired the Board, taught half time, and continued my research. In 1986, after 10 years of service, I decided it was time to move on and resigned from the Board. I did not know what would provide focus and meaning for me in the future. As fate wold have it, as one door closed, another opened.

I had worked in academia for 11 years, 10 of them at UWO. I had tenure, was a full professor, and had been awarded a prestigious Rosebush Professorship in recognition of my teaching and scholarship. I was keenly committed to graduate training and felt a deep sense of loss in leaving faculty development.

An Average Day, Week and Semester

Before I go further let me describe an average day, week, and semester, none of which has changed much over the years. The sentience of academic life for me has been the absence of "think houses", quiet places to be and contemplate. Time for thought and intellectual pursuits is hard won.

I am a morning person, so I am at work by 6:45 or 7 A.M.; if I want to reduce stress, I am here earlier. My office is located on a long corridor. I have no gatekeeper; anyone who wants my attention need only knock at my door. This physical arrangement makes it impossible to do sustained intellectual work on campus. By coming early I get an hour or more of quiet time before the hubbub begins. I use this time to write, or when I have an 8 A.M. class to go over the day's assignment and lecture notes. Sometimes I use a small desk lamp and lock my door so no one knows I am at work. A "Do Not Disturb" sign on my door has no effect on colleagues or students (it has been stolen at least twice). Each person coming to my door thinks he or she is the only person asking for a few minutes of my time that day. During my first few years of working I had nightmares of being on vacation and having a student walk up to me and say, "It will only take a few minutes, can I talk with you?"

Perhaps this inability to hide is a characteristic of a regional university. At Michigan State, faculty often had two offices: one for regular work, and one, whose existence they did not disclose, for scholarship. They had "think houses;" I do not.

Three days a week I usually have two morning classes along with office hours. Since I see the graduate students in our clinical program by appointment, I usually see undergraduates from introductory psychology or abnormal psychology courses during office hours. One day a week I devote three or four hours to supervising graduate clinical psychodiagnostic work and psychotherapy.

Usually I teach introductory psychology in a large (225 students) section. The challenge of teaching large classes is even more difficult by an inadequate sound system and poor acoustics. When I do not recognize students who tell me they had me as a teacher, I know they were in my introductory course.

By late morning I have taught two courses, held office hours and, if I have been lucky, had an hour's worth of focused productive time. At lunchtime I work out at the university gym or eat with colleagues. We talk about teaching, problems with students or lectures, current events, or department or university politics. Often I work through the lunch hour.

In the afternoon I consult with students about their theses or with colleagues on university or department business. When I am in my office, I am often interrupted by phone calls. I teach a night class one semester each year and I prepare for this during part of one afternoon a week.

An average day leaves little time for thinking. I take a full briefcase home each night to grade papers or exams, draft or edit a thesis proposal, read books, and develop lectures. On some days I am so busy I never have time for a single cup of tea. An academic life may appear orderly and smooth, but it is not. Unplanned work is the norm. The department can receive a request out of the blue, for information on some topic important to the requestor. Seldom do my responses seem to have any bearing on my work, but the requests must be met.

One day a week I do some work as a practicing clinical psychologist. I have been a consultant to Wisconsin corrections facilities for years. I have spent a decade consulting at a maximum security prison built in the mid 1800s, the same facility in which I was offered a job in 1974. The clinical work improves my teaching and graduate supervision because it gives me a feeling for "doing" and keeps me in touch with what practitioners are thinking, doing, and reading, and the problems they face.

I try to keep two afternoons a week relatively free. Sometimes I use these afternoons to write and explore ideas, both vital pursuits for me. On other days I give up any hope of control and face what comes my way. These days are actually the most fun because there is no conflict between my goals and what the world brings to my office door.

The weeks turn into semesters. In a 14 week semester, I will spend about 125 hours in the classroom, 50 to 60 hours holding office hours, 100 hours or more on scholarship, and anywhere from 30 to 60 hours on department or university business. My past schedule books show there is an unforseen demand or crisis about once each week. I feel stress when I get two weeks or two months behind in a project. I feel a sense of loss when I am two years behind in starting an area of reading or scholarship. There are simply too many opportunities and not enough time to pursue them all.

There are probably five highlights each semester. These can be a lecture which captures the students' attention and was "perfect", a note from a former student, or a piece of writing with which I am pleased.

1986-1991

What was I to do once my formal role with faculty development had ended? I felt a need to understand what I had devoted my life to for a decade. It seemed to involve helping faculty be entrepreneurs; their new products were ideas and scholarly projects. Jim Gueths and Don Weber, the university grants office and a friend who had been on the board for years, and I wrote a prospectus and eventually published a book titled, The Academic Intrapreneur.

My belief in organizational structure, culture, and leadership making a difference for organizational members grew out of the work I had done with faculty development. I wrote a text on Organizational Entrepreneurship with a colleague and a friend in the College of Business, Jeff Cornwall. These two books were written over a three year period. I arose at 4:00 A.M. and wrote until just before classes at 8:00 A.M. I had never immersed myself so totally in a set of ideas before. Both books made me enough money for a weekend vacation for my family, but I learned is that unless one is lucky, books do not produce much income. I write because I have ideas I want to see clearly set down on paper.

The challenge that faculty face is the use of time. Time is finite, and working on one project means other work or ideas go unexplored. The risks I took to write these 2 books were worthwhile. I have no regrets and continue to be proud of what we said and how well it was written. But in looking back, I know I also wrote the books because it was a way to fill time and delay resolving who I was as an academician.

As the 1980s ended and the 1990s began, unconsciously and without planning nor strategy, I began to focus more on my teaching. Service to faculty development was now in the past. I understood the issues, the programs, and the nitty gritty of making it work, and I had worked through the sense of loss about leaving it.

Second, I was less interested in researching terminal master's training. As fate would have it, my expertise was recognized and the recognition brought a sense of closure. I was asked to be the keynote speaker at a June, 1990, national conference on Applied Masters's Training in Psychology which was held at the University of Oklahoma. Four days at the Conference allowed me to share my ideas and, most important, meet many people interested in and involved with applied master's training in psychology.

Third, after 18 years of doing applied graduate work in psychology I was burning out and losing my focus. The difficult work of applied terminal master's training was becoming less attractive. Because of a limited number of training faculty I have been intensely involved for 18 years, devoting much summer time to students' theses. I have served on 73 thesis committees yet UWO provides no teaching credit for thesis work. The program allows two years to educate students to become competent to work with clients. The amount which needs to be taught is enormous; the time is short. I was tired and wanted to change my academic work and have more time for myself.

At present, admissions to the graduate clinical emphasis are suspended pending a decisions on whether the training will be continued. The prospect of teaching only undergraduates appeals to me. It is time to move on.

How Academia Has Affected Me - Some Musings

Academia has given me interesting perspectives on time and work. First, my new year begins with each new Fall Semester, not January 1. Second, I do not teach in the summer, but I use relatively little of this time for myself. I have not managed this part of my job well. There is always something to do, sometimes a great deal. The three-month summer vacation for faculty is a myth. It is, however, true that I can develop my own schedule; in summers I often work from 6:00 A.M. until 2:00 P.M., freeing up late afternoons and evenings.

Third, because I am a clinical psychologist and have applied job opportunities, I have sacrificed income. But time with my family and working in a university compensate for this loss of income. I am an academician first, a clinician second. Fourth, university employment is the most intrinsically satisfying work I have ever known.

My work in academia has been a mixed blessing for my family. I have never missed an important event in either of my son's lives because of work. On the other hand, the full briefcase each night and frequent weekend work throughout the academic year makes me less available than I would like. That is one of the most interesting facets of working in a university. I choose what fills up my day. I decide to serve on thesis committees, do scholarship and service, work on my courses, and to be current and available, all of which keep me busy. I always bring work home, and sometimes it calls in a loud voice.

If I could go back to the beginning of my academic career knowing what I know now, I would value people and my time with them even more than I did, and I would be less task oriented. Now, I take pleasure in the company of colleagues at a meeting, knowing that relationships are more important than the topic of the meeting.

Preparing for An Academic Life

If you are interested in pursuing an academic career I have a few suggestions about how to prepare for it. First, attend the best doctoral program that admits you. Second, as a graduate student, prepare for teaching by getting as much supervised experience as possible. Read books on teaching, think about teaching, and get some different teaching experiences. Regional universities have recently placed greater emphasis on scholarship, but teaching is still the heart of what we do. Teaching experience will be of great value when you apply for a job. Third, do not give up who you are. Wherever life takes you, whatever interests you, whatever you do will be useful in the classroom. The more life experiences you have, the more perspectives and depth you can bring to your chosen area of psychology. Next, look honestly at who you are and how you relate to other people. Teaching is an interpersonal enterprise. Ask yourself questions such as "Do I like people," or "Do I like to be around people?" Last, expect to work hard.

The Present

My inner feelings about working in academia have changed over the years. Being a good teacher has increasing priority. I realize more than ever how lucky I am to be able to work with young people in a university setting. I also accept my role as a teaching faculty in a regional university; I no longer yearn to work in a doctoral program. My soul could still use some of the beauty and magic of a large campus or a small liberal arts school, but it will have to be fed in other ways.

I will probably work at UWO until I retire. The quality of life is good; my family has friends here. A regional university has its attractions: it is large enough to have a wide array of students and programs, small enough that doctoral faculty teach almost all classes. What faculty do at institutions such as UWO set the standard for the value of a college education throughout the country.

But no academic setting is perfect. UWO seldom suffers serious budget cuts, but it seldom seems to move forward. It struggles for symbols of an intellectual climate. Money is difficult to obtain for equipment; we are on the cutting edge of little. Educational and administrative fads come and go; all take time, almost none make a difference. We are at the mercy of legislative bodies and Regents with political aspirations and mind-sets. At times I long to work in a Lawrence University or a Michigan State. But although the grass may be greener the truth is that I can do my work here.

As I write this chapter, I am on sabbatical, a time of reflection and renewal. I will be doing more undergraduate teaching when I return from my leave and do not regret giving up involvement with graduate clinical teaching. I am spending my sabbatical reading about psychology and thinking about how I want to teach my classes. I feel refreshed after attending a national conference on teaching.

A second focus for my sabbatical is the new teacher. It is estimated that about 40% of university faculty will retire in the 1990s. As a senior faculty I feel a responsibility to mentor and teach new faculty about what it means to be an academician and how to teach. Teaching is a calling and I want my new colleagues to understand what this vocation means to me, and pass it on to them. I am in the beginning stages of another research program, this one looking at the new teacher from a variety of perspectives. I would like to establish a postdoctoral program in college teaching for psychologists to give others what I had at Michigan State years ago.

Who would have thought that I would look forward to undergraduate classes and to working with new teachers? In my academic life so much seems to have been unplanned and unexpected. Scholarship is difficult and time consuming, yet fascinating and fulfilling. Teaching is an act of faith; I seldom know the impact I have or even if I am reaching students. Yet it is one of the most satisfying and important endeavors I can imagine. I have had the opportunity to shape lives and influence how students ask questions and consider ideas. These two dimensions - working with others and the pursuit of knowledge - have sustained me for 19 years and I am confident, will continue to do so. Anyone with the opportunity to work in an academic setting is lucky.