Oral History Project - Retired Faculty
Dr. Roy P. Martin
Professor Emeritus
Educational Psychology
Department of Educational Psychology and Instructional Technology
(1979-2006)
Interviewer: Edward Locke
Date: 24 October, 2007
Q: How did you come to work at the College of Education at the University of Georgia?
A: Well, in 1979, I was working at Temple University in Philadelphia and that university was having economic problems. So I was looking around for positions and there was an open position here. I simply applied and was accepted. I thought that I would spend probably just two years here. And, I have been here ever since.
Q: What was your position at Temple University?
A: I was Associate Professor, in the Department of Educational Psychology. My main job was to train school psychologists, psychologists that work in the schools, that try to help children who have special learning problems.
Actually, what my biggest job was to help doctoral students with their dissertations. Because the students in Philadelphia have lots of opportunities to get good clinical training and to get good psychological training. But they were not getting a strong research training; so my major job was really to help them with the research training.
Q: What were your plans when you first began working here?
A: Well, they were pretty simple. I wanted to continue doing my research, which at that time was primarily temperament differences in children, meaning early appearing behaviors and emotional tendencies in very young children, that would help predict behavioral problems and learning problems later in their lives. I just wanted to keep that going, to get promoted, and to work with the congenial faculty. And, basically I found those things here when I came.
Q: Could you tell me about the people who influenced you at the College of Education when you began working here?
A: Well, when I moved here, I had only heard of two faculty members. One was Paul Torrance, who was a professor of gifted education. He was quite famous in the United States. And the other person is a man in counseling, whose name is George Gazda, who was also quite famous. I had read some of his stuff; so these were the most important people to me when I first came here.
It turns out that one of the most influential people actually may have been, a person that was hired the same year that I was hired, a neuropsychologist, George Hynd. Even though he and I didn’t study the same things, it was very important to have that new person here. He was very ambitious, and he was a very good colleague. I think he may have made working here much more enjoyable than it might have been otherwise. Because when I first came, one of my earliest memories is that there was some political problems in school psychology and educational psychology. We had a couple of professors that were very controlling and were very difficult to work with, and actually wanted to move the program to another group; and so there was some conflict early on.
Q: Were concerned in terms of attitude of the administration of the department?
A: Yes, yes.
It was much more of a power thing. I think this person felt a little uncomfortable by having someone like me come in, who is an associate professor, bringing another associate professor at the same time. The two of us had similar attitude and I think he was afraid that he would lose his power position; so it was mostly about that.
Q: Thinking back over your career at the College of Education, what are some of the critical events that have occurred.
A: There isn’t any one event; but there were several times… School Psychology is a small unit in the Educational Psychology Department, and because it’s a small unit of three, four, or five people, when one person moves away, you hire young faculty but there is always a chance that they will take a job elsewhere, or they want to get married to someone who lives in another place, or something, so you always lose faculty. The fact that the administration always supported the School Psychology program, and gave us new faculty, that was among the most important things that happened.
I am a very independent worker, I go along and do my thing almost regardless of what’s going on around me. But if you don’t have support from the administration, your working conditions would become very difficult. So that’s one of those critical things.
The second thing is, pretty soon the faculty asked to put me in leadership positions. They wanted me to be, they called these different names at different times, but they wanted me to be department head, or they wanted me to be division head or something. And I appreciated that support from the faculty that they wanted me to try to help them with the problems of the department. And I actually did it three different times, doing administration in the department. I am good at some parts of administration and not very good at other parts. But it was a very important learning lesson for me in dealing with adult s and the work environment. It was formative because it helped me understand all the problems people have dealing with their work, and, it helped me understand how difficult it is to administer an organization. So, that was a formative experience.
But maybe most importantly, was not anything that had to do with here. I went to several international conferences; one of the most important of which many years ago was in Italy and at that meeting, some other researchers from around the world, specifically Finland, approached me and gave me huge amounts of data, and asked me to help them with their research. That was the central most formative, important thing that happened to me in my career because it, it set me off on the whole other line and gave me access to information that I would not have otherwise. So that was probably the most important thing.
Q: How did you feel about all of these things that happened later?
A: The conflict that happened in the department was very disturbing to me; and being involved in the big power thing was uncomfortable, and I tend not to like conflicts very much, so that was a negative. The general support that this program has had or my little program has had from the administration for years has been very good and very comforting.
As I said this last case where some researchers had asked me to help them with their research and turned over lots of data to me, that was very positive, very affirming and made me feel like people thought that I was doing good work and it just reinforced all of the hundreds of hours that you spend doing research that somebody cared about it. So, that was very important.
I should actually say one more thing, maybe, or you may getting this. Another very important thing in these past 20-30 years that I have been here is that, working with doctoral students is extremely satisfying in research efforts, in classes also; but particularly one-on-one working with doctoral students has been a very good thing. I enjoyed that and I have close relationships with those students, many of them still here. I have had a lot of doctoral students, maybe 60 or 70 in the years that I have been here when I was a major professor; and maybe 250 on whose dissertations I’ve sat on.
Q: How did you have that many?
A: I would graduate about two each year. But often I would have 12 or 14, 16, sometimes as high as 20, which is crazy; but I would have that many during a semester.
This job has been extremely satisfactory. And it’s been very positive. Now, there is my wife, who is not a Southerner. There are some parts of living in Georgia that are not as comfortable for her. She grew up in New York. But we stayed here in part because the job was just so good for me. It was a perfect fit. I had a chance at one time to go to a university that many people would think of as more prestigious, as a very big name university. And they were going to bring me in as a full professor so I wouldn’t have to worry about promotion or tenure. And I turned them down and one very famous psychologist called me and said that he couldn’t understand why I would turn down this offer. It was really because I felt like here I had the freedom to do what I wanted to do. There, I would be constricted into a much tighter box, even though it was a very famous place. So, because I desired independence so much, this has been a very good place.
Q: Looking back over your career, what advice do you have for others studying and working at the College of Education?
A: Well, I teach almost exclusively doctoral students in school psychology. But if we take them as an example, as incoming students, I would tell them this is a very good university for them to learn, but you only get out of your doctoral training what you put into it. That is, it’s very important to form relationships with faculty, and to do extra things to get involved with research, to go to professional meetings, though none of those things are required. I would tell them to do those little extra things in addition to going to class, and to have a faculty member that helps foster those things; that’s the most important thing they should be thinking about.
Our College, in general, is a strong college. It has some weaker programs and it has some very strong programs. I have been here through several deans. For new faculty members, I would say it’s probably better for your career not to get involved in the big political controversies of the University and the College. Each dean has a strength, and some have weaknesses and they all have different biases, but they come and they go. It’s much better for you to keep your head down, not to get involved in those big controversies. It’s not that people will take retributions, it’s just that they are very time-consuming, and you can get very emotional about many things then in the next year, there is a new dean. So stay out of those things for a while, unless it’s an issue that is absolutely critical to your values.
One other thing, if I was thinking back historically about the College, and advising the College, I would say this College for a while tried to do everything. This is one of the biggest colleges in the country. So it tries to be excellent at physical education, at science education, at teacher preparation, at training researchers, at all of those things. It turns out that it is probably not possible to be really excellent at everything.
So, in these days of scarce resources, I would advise the College to take some things that they want to be known for nationally, and to put their resources in those areas. And it may not be the things that I value, but if they would concentrate their efforts, I think they could do a better job servicing the state and becoming more internationally recognized. Even though they do quite an excellent job now, I think it could be better if there was more focus of resources.
Q: You advised new faculty to stay out of big controversies. Does this also apply to graduate students and what other advice do you have for them?
A: Well, yeah. I would say the same thing for graduate students, although there are some issues that graduate students probably should be involved in, but I think that the most important thing for graduate students is to form a relationship with their major professor, and to ask their major professors the things that they want in their development. Some major professors are fairly distant, are sort of, well, let’s get your dissertation done, and it’s about all that’s about.
The very best ones help students build their career; and so that student needs to go and ask for what they want. If they want to learn something, about something else, or they want to go with that professor to a meeting, or whatever it is what they want to do. It’s helpful if they are not shy about asking for what they want. And, by the way, it’s most difficult for Asian students, because Asian students, some of them are brilliant; some of them are the very best students in my program. I have to talk to them quite a bit because they are so used to being deferent to authority; and what I want them to do is to ask me for what they want, what they need, you know, not necessarily personal things, but things that I can help provide them.
In addition to classes, every student has some kind of goal that they are aiming for – either they want to become a professor, or they want to become a master teacher; or whatever their goal is, they should help make those goals clear and spend time talking with not just the major professor, but other faculty about what they want to get from this experience. That’s very important.
Q: Is there anything else that you would like to add to what we haven’t talked about?
A: Well, everybody in all organizations, want leaders that they can identify with, they want leaders who can help foster their development. Maybe it’s too big, in some way it’s a fantasy on the part of faculty, because this College is so big that the dean has a very limited role, but I wish that they were stronger.
We have had occasionally, very occasionally, but we have had deans who seem to have a vision, seem to have a big idea that they will push toward. I may not necessarily agree with that big idea, but at least they have a big idea; and those who want to follow that, they can help to mold some thing. Most of the time our administrators are so busy just filling out forms and going to meetings, and raising money that they don’t have time for big ideas. So the only other thing I would say is I wish our College had deans that had big ideas, but that’s very, very rare and very hard to find.
Dr. Roy P. Martin
Ph.D., Educational Psychology
University of Texas
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