Todd Risley in Context at the University of Kansas

I served as the founding chair of the Department of Human Development and Family Life (HDFL) at the University of Kansas (1964 to 1975) and worked with Dick Shiefelbusch, director of what was then called the Bureau of Child Research, to create the department. Dick and the university wanted to develop the bureau into a strong research unit, and he needed an academic department with which he could work. I was asked to build HDFL out of what had been the Department of Home Economics, and Dick and I shared in the efforts and brought our resources together to achieve mutually beneficial goals. It was an extraordinarily fruitful partnership that continues in different forms with different names to the current time. We set our initial sights on bringing Don Baer to Kansas. It was known that Don's commitment to the then-new methodology associated with behavior analysis was not well tolerated by his more traditionally oriented colleagues in the Psychology Department at the University of Washington. We knew that a person of Don's quality and integrity was exactly the lynchpin needed to set the base for a fledgling academic department and an exciting and robust research agenda. And how right we were! With Don's arrival at Kansas we were able to embark upon the creation of what turned out to be a unique academic department in a vibrant relationship with the Bureau of Child Research. Our goals were to recruit faculty involved in basic and applied behavior analysis research as well as selected areas of traditional developmental psychology. Don brought to the process of recruiting faculty his experiences and contacts from his University of Washington days and his wide acquaintance with young academics working in the field of behavior analysis. I brought to the process my relationships across the field of developmental psychology. The first contingent of recruited faculty included Mont Wolf, Barbara Etzel, Jim Sherman, and Todd Risley for the behavior analysis focus; Hayne Reese, John Wright, and then Aletha Huston for the developmental psychology contingent, along with Howard Rosenfeld. We were working in a heady atmosphere of a growing university, increasing sources of federal funding for basic and applied research, and an almost unheard of opportunity to create, from scratch, an academic department with a fresh new curriculum and no historically entrenched ways of doing things. Each of the initial group of new faculty (and those who joined subsequently) brought his and her interests, skills, and visions for shaping an undergraduate and graduate program. It is safe to say that Todd Risley's approach was the most imaginative as well as more intense, more laser focused, and more imbued with a sense of certainty than those of his colleagues. And his approach was sometimes somewhat less realistic as to the real politic of the relationships we needed to maintain with other departments and for getting through the university's review and approval processes for new academic programs. Departmental meetings were lively—lots of discussion, some arguments, some disagreements. Todd's basic ideas were sound, but we had frequently to struggle to make them fit into the university's molds we were required to fill. And he did not make our work easy. In those days Todd was not particularly adept at the small or sweet talk that can smooth some of the rough edges when dealing with heartfelt issues; he could sometimes raise the pitch of give and take beyond what was comfortable. I came to think of him as our occasional resident “infant terrible.” I recall one departmental meeting (but not the subject under discussion) when Todd was insisting on a point of view in a very forceful manner. It was not particularly practical. Soon a quiet watchfulness and waiting settled over the rest of the group as Todd pushed his ideas. It was clear to me that no one wanted to take Todd on directly, to cause him to leave the meeting in a huff. We certainly didn't want to be making something of the issues about which Todd felt so strongly such that we might brook the possibility of losing Todd and his extraordinary talents. It fell to me, as chair, to break the silence and to do so in a way that would be respectful of Todd's opinion while making it clear that it was not one that could, realistically, be adopted. To my great relief and to the great relief of all in the room, Todd stopped, reflected for a moment, accepted the situation, and rejoined, constructively, in the give and take of the resumed conversation. It was Todd's clear vision of what was important in the education and training of doctoral students that influenced much of how we eventually shaped the requirements for the doctoral degree. His essential point was that we should look at each requirement being considered and ask ourselves: Is the requirement functional? Does it involve behaviors that the student will have to perform once he or she has obtained the degree? Thus did Todd set us to the task of developing our set of degree requirements by asking ourselves questions. Lots of required courses? Not necessarily. Once having earned the PhD, taking courses was not a behavior that would need to continue. If we were concerned about the knowledge base we thought students needed to be successful professionals, investigators, and academics, we should think about various options for having our students acquire that knowledge base. As a result, we required only three core courses; all other courses were to be elected in consultation with the student's adviser and in consideration of the research and career goals of the student. Lots of required writing? Yes. Skilled written work is a key behavior for any successful academic or professional. Several writing projects were stipulated for making progress toward the degree. One involved a major review of the literature related to the student's research interest. Another required the student to engage in constructive written critiques of articles and manuscripts. These were writing behaviors that we expected would be continued into the student's post-PhD professional life. Each writing requirement was submitted not only to the student's adviser but to other faculty for review and feedback and sometimes considerable numbers of revisions. Involvement in research? Absolutely—from the get-go. All students accepted into the doctoral program had to be accepted into an ongoing research group and to begin to collaborate on research and then to carry out their own studies. It was a brilliant Todd suggestion that became the source of much of the success of the program and for our students' continuing research careers. And so it went until we had, to most everyone's satisfaction, formed the program we would present for approval to the relevant university bodies. Todd believed in and modeled what he felt were the needed functional behaviors for carrying on with each task every day. Sometimes one wished for a more emotional, fuzzy, warm wrapping. Sometimes one wanted a bit of release from the requirement to always, always, think rigorously, behaviorally, objectively. Sometimes one wanted a little more give in the inclination to come quickly to the adoption of firm analytical frameworks. These were behaviors and characteristics that were to develop over time but were not necessarily abundant in Todd's repertoire in those early years. I probably spent more time thinking about Todd and how to insure that he would continue to feel satisfied and productive at Kansas than was the case for any other faculty member. And it was not only I who was concerned. Because Todd was so valued and genuinely appreciated by his colleagues, I could seek the counsel of others and they, in turn, shared their insights and the concerns with me—Don Baer and Dick Schiefelbusch and Barbara Etzel, especially. Interestingly, there was never an issue about salary. Todd could have demanded salary increases. But he did not. He could have gone on to other places and earned more than at Kansas. Undoubtedly he knew that in going elsewhere he would have had to put up with a lot of academic tradition he did not much value. But he was loyal. He had an affection for the department that was real though unstated. And when he subsequently left Kansas to go to the University of Alaska it was as much the pull of returning to the beloved places of his childhood than anything else. When Jim Sherman told me that Todd had stipulated that he wanted his ashes distributed not only in Alaska but also in Kansas, I was not entirely surprised. A few years ago, during a celebration of Mont Wolf and Todd at the University of Kansas, Todd sought me out. He wanted to thank me, he said, and to tell me that he had really appreciated my tolerance and patience when it came to some of his early behaviors that, in retrospect, he thought had not always been reasonable and certainly had not made some things easy. It was a special and touching moment. Todd Risley is gone and so are Don Baer and Mont Wolf. Each was a giant and an innovator in the field of applied behavior analysis. Each engenders in me fond memories. But my memories of Todd are perhaps a bit more colorful; a bit more particularistic. Todd's unique personal qualities—sometimes trying, always genuine (there was never a scintilla of artifice in Todd)—combined with a laser sharp intellect contributed much to shaping an environment that made the Department of Human Development and Family Life at the University of Kansas a place that was student focused, intense, always interesting, productive, and filled with the excitement and consequences of engaging and contesting with imaginative ideas.