My Passion to get what I want
My father dropped out of high school to work in his parents' tailor shop. Later he became an industrial pattern maker, a highly skilled woodworking craft. My mother attended a technical school in Ukraine. They were pleased that I finished high school and went to college, but were puzzled when in my junior year at Miami. I decided to switch from accounting to psychology as a major. They knew what accounting was; you could get a good job. Psychology was a mystery to them, but things worked out pretty well for me and for my family.
I think my parents were pleased when I decided to attend graduate school at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, which sounded like a school that could get me a job. Now that school is Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU), but in 1960 it was "Tech." At that time I was interested in what we called verbal learning. My undergraduate mentor, John Jahnke, said Tech had some good people in that area and I completed my master's thesis on immediate memory (now called short-term memory): Nonsense syllables were too complex. I studied consonants.
I took my first course in physiological psychology with Kenneth E. (Keck) Moyer (Korn & Gibbons, in press). This really was science. I loved working in the rat lab, not only with Moyer on psycho endocrinology, but also with Wayne Ludvigson on Spencian animal learning, and later with Leonard Jarrard on brain mechanisms in learning. We all published quite a few articles together, which led to my appointment to the CMU faculty in 1966.
But it was the 60s, man, and things were happening that had a great effect on my life. Before I tell that story, here are some basic facts of that academic life. My interests changed from animal research to education, and I was supported for a sabbatical year at Stanford where I worked on program evaluation with Lee Cronbach, who may have taught me more per minute of contact than any other teacher I had. However, I was denied tenure, so had to look for a different job.
I had been Associate Department Head and enjoyed administering the undergraduate program in psychology, so I applied mostly for positions as department chair. I was fortunate to get that position at Saint Louis University (SLU) where I moved in 1974. I was chair until 1979, then again from 1988-1997. I retired July 1, 2006. Before leaving CMU I had a meeting with Herb Simon, later a Nobel laureate, who told me, "Jimmy [yes, the Great Man called me Jimmy], you will be much happier.
Written by Jim Covey
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