Clinical psychology professor Bonnie Strickland is giving even the most decorated professors a run for their money.
Strickland recently received the American Psychological Associations Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement in Psychology in the Public Interest for a body of work that spans five decades. According to a UMass press release, “Gold medalists are selected by their peers who have seen evidence of a ‘sustained superior performance recognizable at a national level,’” and an “enduring contribution to the application of psychology in the public interest.”
For Strickland, this award caught her off guard.
“The surprise is that working in nontraditional areas would be recognized by more traditional psychology,” she said. “One of the special joys of (receiving) the award was hearing from friends and colleagues from years and years ago. That was very, very rewarding.”
Strickland, who was born in Kentucky in the midst of the Great Depression, never thought she would be able to attend college, nor had she ever considered becoming a professor herself.
Raised by a single mother, Strickland initially pursued an undergraduate degree at Alabama College as a physical education major. At the time, there were only two psychology faculty members on staff at her college, according to Strickland. She credits one of them, a man named Jules Rotter, with encouraging her to pursue graduate school at Ohio State University for clinical psychology.
After graduating from Ohio University with her Ph.D in 1962, Strickland landed her first professorship at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, a major accomplishment for a Southern woman in the 1960s.
Strickland was an active participant in the civil rights movement during her tenure at Emory and is considered a forerunner in the women’s rights movement. She also began her marginalized persons research at Emory and her extensive work on the topic when she arrived at UMass in 1973.
Strickland’s research has mainly focused on minorities, specifically blacks, lesbians and gays. Through her dedication and initiative, several common societal and community problems have been presented with solutions.
“I think a lot of folks follow a more traditional path but I was very interested in social activism, gay-lesbian activism, and also achievement of black children,” she said. “It just so happened that these areas had not had a lot of research, so it was easier to step in. … It was just something people weren’t doing and it just never occurred to me not to do it”.
In addition to serving as APA’s president in 1987, one of Strickland’s main contributions to psychology was her work on the Nowicki-Strickland Locus of Control Scale for children. This instrument is now “widely used both nationally and internationally,” and is a measure of generalized locus of control of reinforcement, Strickland said.
Strickland’s passion for her research and her students is evident, and she plans to continue that.
“Just teaching…I just always wanted to be a schoolteacher. I tried to retire in 2002 and I failed,” she said when asked about her current endeavors in the psychology field. “I flunked retirement.”
Haley Medeiros can be reached at [email protected].
