Short Biography

Canadian by birth but American by temperament, I grew up hanging around with Americans at McGill University in my hometown of Montreal. I completed my B.A. in 1979 and finally left Montreal on a Canadian Scholarship (OK, thanks Canada) to study at Harvard (M.Ed., 1980), Columbia (Ph.D., 1986), and Yale (Postdoctoral Fellow, 1985-1987).  I returned to Canada for my first academic job at the University of Saskatchewan (1987-1989) in beautiful Saskatoon. I later moved to Nyack, NY and taught at Vassar College, in Poughkeepsie NY (1989-1996).  The Nyack-Poughkeepsie commute was about 65 miles each way, but I drove past West Point and other points of interest in the Hudson Valley.

I relocated to Weber State University in 1996 (for a brief history of the institution, click here) after falling in love with the west, the mountains, and Ogden. I now have on average a 1 minute commute (and I am still late for everything) living in a house siyrranded by 10,000 foot peaks of Ben Lomond and Mt. Ogden, where the 2002 Olympic Downhill and Super G events were run. I am a stone's throw from the Olympic Curling venue where I practice the sport weekly. I spent a memorable 2002-2003 on sabbatical at Clark University, where I had Bernie Kaplan's old office, which looked out at the courtyard area where G. Stanley Hall began the American Psychological Association in 1892. While at Weber State University, I have been awarded the Lowe Award for Innovative Teaching, the Endowed Professor in the Social and Behavioral Science, John S. Hinckley Fellowship, the Carnegie/CASE Utah Professor of the Year, and the Presidential Distinguished Professor. I have been chair of the Psychology Department since January of 2006, and am very proud of the great success of the department.  

I am involved in a variety of university, professional, and community service.  I work on issues of general education, diversity, and student recruitment as part of my service to the university.  I also am the Social and Behavioral Sciences representative on the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, serving as liaison to the Gen Ed and TLA committees. I am also the university Due Process Officer, to ensure that students are treated fairly when they have complaints against the institution.  My professional service has included a stint as Vice President Programs of the Jean Piaget Society and President of the Rocky Mountain Psychology Association.  I am Associate Editor of New Ideas in Psychology, an Elsevier Journal which emphasizes theoretical issues in the discipline.  I presently serve on associate chair of the awards committee of Division 2 of APA (Teaching of Psychology) and on the board of the Jean Piaget Society.  My community service has included 6 years (2005 - 2011) on the Board of Directors of the DaVinci  Academy of Science and the Arts (DASA) which is a charter high school which included a period as President, Vice, President, Secretary, and Due Process Officer.  A notable achievement of my time of leadership at DaVinci Academy was that it was named the Utah Charter School of the Year in 2008.   I presently serve on the board of directors of the Treehouse Children's Museum, which was judged one of the fifty top children's museums in the USA by Child Magazine, and OUTreach Resource Center, a network of safe spaces and social support for LGBTQA youth around the state.

Maybe the thing I am most proud of in my career is my work with students on research.  May own linage traces back to Deanna Kuhn (Columbia) to Jonas Langer (UC: Berkley), to Heinz Werner (Clark University) who served as a RA to Wilhelm Stern (Universityof Hamberg) in 1917 It has been my style to work with as many students as I could. Whatever positive impact I may have had on students and their accomplishments, what is less well known is the impact that they have had on me. Over the course of my career, a number of students I have worked with have themselves gone on to have university teaching and research careers (Students in Academia)

Picture taken at UCUR 2007

More personally, I enjoy family outings and trips, good dinners with close friends, and at least a mediocre round of golf, a competitive curling match, and a ski trip from which I come home intact.

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