Oral history interview with Dr. Rosemery O. Nelson-Gray, 2017

Lacey W.: Today I am interviewing Dr. Rosemary Gray. Today is December 11, 2017. We'll just start the interview with a bit about your biographical information in the beginning. When were you born?

Dr. Rosemary G.: I was born January 29th, 1945. My mother was alone with her mother because my father was a World War II bombardier navigator who served in the Pacific. So he did not see me until I was about six weeks old when he had to leave from the service.

Lacey W.: Where were you born?

Dr. Rosemary G.: In Flint, Michigan, which is, of course, famous for the led in the water. Flint, when I was born, was a more thriving city. General Motors had multiple factories there, but now it's one of the dying towns of the north. When 00:01:00I go back for high school reunions, I believe that I'm the only one from my high school class that ever got a PhD degree. It was very unusual from the setting that I came from.

Lacey W.: That makes some sense, just an industrial town. Did you know what you wanted to do before you were applying to colleges?

Dr. Rosemary G.: Not really. When I went to college, we're kind of jumping ahead, I tried different majors. At one point I thought I wanted to be a elementary education teacher, but I took a couple of or at least one of those elementary ed classes and ended up with about two sentences of notes for the whole semester and thought, "I'm not learning much here." So I switched. I think 00:02:00I was an English major for a while and ended up in psychology probably when I was a junior.

Lacey W.: Okay. We'll back up a little bit to what colleges you applied to.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Well, at that point, I thought I wanted to live far from home and be independent. And so, I ended up at St. Louis University which was about over 500 miles from Flint, Michigan, and ended up being homesick all four years. When my parents dropped me off, we went to the St. Louis Airport and they bought me a round trip ticket for Thanksgiving. I kept that on my dresser the whole semester because I knew I was going to go home eventually. But even after four years, the homesickness never really left.

Lacey W.: Yeah. That would make some sense. You were just eager to be back at 00:03:00home for that. You graduated with a degree in psychology?

Dr. Rosemary G.: Yes.

Lacey W.: Which you joined when you were in junior year.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Uh-huh.

Lacey W.: Tell me about getting your psychology degree.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Okay. I was in the honors program when I was an undergraduate student, and this becomes important later because it involved a tremendous amount of writing. One semester I had to write 26 papers, and so I got used to doing the research and we didn't have computers. I had to go to the library and read. I'd write the paper and then type it on my type writer, turn it in, and start over again. It was two papers a week, basically.

Lacey W.: Wow.

Dr. Rosemary G.: But during my college years, it was during the initial Civil 00:04:00Rights Movement with Martin Luther King Jr. and the Selma, Alabama, the first desegregation. And so, St. Louis was I'd say partially... it wasn't as bad as further south. But there was still the Civil Rights marches and candlelight vigils, and I was very much involved in those activities. John Kennedy was assassinated when I was a sophomore in college.

Dr. Rosemary G.: When I learned about different types of psychotherapy, the main therapy at that time was psychoanalysis or psychodynamic therapy. From reading about it, it seemed to me people needed years of analysis and they would go 00:05:00three times a week and be on somebody's couch. So I talked to my adviser and I said, "This seems very elitist." And in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, I was thinking, is there any kind of therapy that would be more convenient for more people?

Dr. Rosemary G.: My adviser told me that there was a new type of therapy called behavior therapy that typically worked in 12 to 16 sessions and people could come and learn the techniques of behavior therapy and feel better in terms of anxiety, depression, whatever. So, of course, I said, "Well, I'm ready to go to graduate school. Where can I learn about behavior therapy?" She said, "Well, the only place I know, it's so new, is in London, England. And so, I said, "Well, that's great. But how can I ever go to London?" At that time, this would've been 00:06:00in the late 1960s, people really didn't travel the way they do now. My family had never been abroad and neither had I.

Dr. Rosemary G.: She said, "Well, you have the credentials to be awarded a Fulbright scholarship and what I would suggest is that you write to the professor that's in charge of the behavior therapy in London, Professor Hans Eysenck, who is now deceased, and write to him and tell him that you'd like to study there and would he write an endorsement if you got the funds to go there." I got a very short letter. Of course, it came by email. Not email, but airport mail. They had a special type of stationery for airmail, and it just said that... I have the original too, but this is Hans Eysenck's signature. It just 00:07:00said, "If you are successful in obtaining your scholarship and wanted to study with us for a year, we'd be very happy to have you with us."

Dr. Rosemary G.: It was relatively easy for the Fulbright Commission. I had the credentials and I had the letter, so all they had to do was plug in the money for me to go to London. Then I did two kinds of things in London. It was learning about behavior therapy and then also did some research in Professor Eysenck's laboratory. He had a personality theory that he was carrying out experiments about.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Most of the students were international students, and so I got to meet students from other parts of the world. Actually, through them, I 00:08:00learned about where I ended up going to graduate school. It was then called The State University of New York at Stony Brook, SUNY Stony Brook. And I think recently they changed, shortened it to Stony Brook University because the SUNY system has multiple sites in it.

Lacey W.: Sure.

Dr. Rosemary G.: When I was in England, and again this is all pre-computer days, and certainly pre-cellphone days, I applied to Stony Brook and actually got a telegram of acceptance back that I was accepted into their program. That's how I ended up... and the reason why I chose Stony Brook was because they were one of the couple of places in the US that were also starting behavior therapy programs. And so, I was really kind of in on the ground floor, so to speak, in 00:09:00the behavior therapy movement.

Lacey W.: Right. Yeah. Then you had the experience of being in London, studying there as well and you can take that to Stony Brook.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Right. Exactly.

Lacey W.: Wow.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Exactly.

Lacey W.: So you then moved to New York for Stony Brook?

Dr. Rosemary G.: Yes. It's on Long Island. It's about 60 miles out on Long Island from New York City. It's a lovely area. I was in the second class at Stony Brook. I know we talk about diversity now, but back then it was gender diversity. So the clinical faculty were all male and I was the only female in my class. My doctoral class had nine students and I was the only female. But I was truthfully just used to it because in college, I took like Calculus I, Calculus II, physics classes, and there weren't any other females in those classes. And I 00:10:00just thought, well, that's the way it is. And so it wasn't really feeling like I was singled out in any way.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Graduate school was very chaotic because it was during the Vietnam War when college students were being drafted left and right. Stony Brook was actually in Time Magazine as one of the hotbeds of student protests, and so there was police presence on campus virtually all of the time. I had an old article from Stony Brook that showed the confrontation between a group of students and a group of police officers.

Lacey W.: Yeah. Looks really intense.

Dr. Rosemary G.: The police cars would be overturned and set on fire. My point 00:11:00of saying all this is I don't really... it was very hard to get an education because you could even go in from a parking lot to an academic building, you we were stepping through police cars and protest lines. I never had a graduation because we weren't allowed to have gatherings of people because there were bomb threats and buildings were shut down by student protestors. It affects me even today because I didn't buy academic regalia because we didn't have a ceremony. I got a hood in the mail and I got my diploma in the mail. But I still have to wear borrowed regalia because I didn't ever need it for my own graduation.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Plus, it was the very early days of behavior therapy, so there were only two journals that started that were publishing articles in behavior. 00:12:00There were some books that were like anthologies of case studies, but when I talked to my peers who were in my class, I basically said, "Well, what did we do? We didn't have anything to read." And they joked back and said, "That's because we were doing the pioneer work, doing the experiments and doing case studies ourselves."

Dr. Rosemary G.: The Stony Brook had a psychology clinic and that's where we did our practicum. It was a community clinic similar to what they UNCG clinic is. We did our practicum there and we had labs at the building. But again, it was just challenging because of all the chaos on campus at that time.

Lacey W.: Yeah. That's got to be a lot with you being on the front of the field, but also just a very intense hotbed of a campus.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Exactly. Exactly.

Lacey W.: Yeah. I can imagine. But then you graduate in what year?

Dr. Rosemary G.: Well, I actually took this job... I had finished running my dissertation data but I didn't actually finish my dissertation. I knew I wanted an academic job, and then I went to three places, UNCG being the first place.

Dr. Rosemary G.: The first place I went was Dartmouth, and the plane left LaGuardia and all of a sudden the pilot said it's snowing so hard, there are no airports open. So we're landing at the very next airport. It was 60 miles away from Dartmouth where I was supposed to give my job talk. They put us up in a motel/hotel and then my job talk was actually delayed 24 hours because they had to put me in a cab when the snow stopped, to go from this hotel to Dartmouth. My thoughts were, "If I ever get out of here, I am never coming back, because it 00:14:00was..." I mean, things went well at Dartmouth, but they also just had a master's program.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Then I went to a big 10 university and I won't name it. It was again an all-male faculty and they were extremely rude when I was giving my job talk. Back then, we didn't have PowerPoints and so on, so I had a blackboard and chalk. Right in the middle of when I was writing things, I could hear them laughing in the background. So I just put the chalk down and I said... just looked at them and said, "I'm ready to talk when you're ready to listen." And I just stood there. On the way back to the airport, the department had said, "Well, we're going to have our faculty meeting on Friday or whatever and we'll let you know if you got the job or not." And I said, "Well, if I'm your only agenda item, you can cancel the meeting because your colleagues are so rude, I 00:15:00would never work here." And that was the end of that.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Then my third interview was here at UNCG and it was a difference of night and day.

Lacey W.: Really?

Dr. Rosemary G.: It was still an all-male faculty but the people were as nice as could be, and they were just bending over backward in terms of, what do you want to see? What do you want to learn about? Just as nice as anything and just were very welcoming during my job talk. I was hired and gladly took the position at UNCG but because I hadn't had my oral defense, I was hired in 1971 as an instructor. Then I finished my dissertation during that year. I went back to Stony Brook to defend my dissertation. So the next year, 1972, I was an assistant professor. Had a contract as an assistant professor.

Lacey W.: Okay. So there's just like a transfer of a little gray area.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Right. Exactly, while I was working on my dissertation.

Lacey W.: What was the Board of Psychology like when you started the Department of Psychology?

Dr. Rosemary G.: Here at UNCG?

Lacey W.: Yes.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Well, it was a male faculty, but Bob Eason who was one of the department heads at that time was extremely open-minded and so he hired three females including me in that same year, 1971. And then Jackie White, she just retired a couple years ago. She was here for the long haul. And then Marilyn Erickson left after just a few years here.

Dr. Rosemary G.: The other thing that Bob Eason did that was very good, he was very open-minded and used something, what people now call holistic admissions 00:17:00and admitted quite a few diverse students that probably didn't have the same type of credentials, but he could see the promise and the opportunity. The most famous of them was Norm Anderson who became CEO of the American Psychological Association in Washington DC. Norm Anderson came back last summer to visit and he and I went to see Bob Eason who's now living at the friends home. He's now 92. We went to visit him and took some pictures with him this summer.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Maybe five or eight years ago, there was a colloquium or a symposium I guess in Bob's honor, and the minority students all came back and gave talks about him and talks about their own work in his honor because it was very memorable that he had done that. The UNCG Board of Governors had just 00:18:00authorized UNCG to offer a doctoral program in psychology in 1970, so that was why these open positions were given to the psychology department. There was nothing like a clinical program, and Bob Eason talked about having what he called an applied wing of the experimental program. Excuse me. Two of the three hires that year were in applied behavior therapy and there was already Scott Lawrence who had been here and he had just retired a couple years ago from UNCG. We formed like the core of this applied wing of the program, and then it developed later into a clinical program.

Lacey W.: Okay. That makes sense. Where were you housed?

Dr. Rosemary G.: The psychology department, when I got here, the whole campus, of course, has changed, the psychology department was the third and fourth floors of the nursing building, the current nursing building. Down on Market Street where currently the School of Music, the new building is housed, there were old houses. The animal research back then, you probably heard about using rats and pigeons to do basic learning studies and teaching rats to run mazes or pigeons to peck keys for reinforcement, those animal studies were in the old houses on Market Street where the School of Music is.

Dr. Rosemary G.: For a psychology clinic, because you can't have a clinical 00:20:00program without a practicum facility, was in an old house across the street from the nursing building. Those houses were torn down and replaced with a parking lot, and that was great because you could also buy or reserve parking place, which yours truly had one. Then the parking lot was then replaced by the Sullivan Science building, so that's what's standing there right now.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Then in 1977, I was on the faculty and worked with Bob Eason in designing this building. The most notable thing, everything was, of course, put together here. The animal labs were on the sixth floor. Then the clinic was on this floor and it has since moved to-

Lacey W.: To third floor.

Dr. Rosemary G.: West Market Street. But also, we decided to have all of the faculty offices, regardless of the area of psychology, like social psychology, 00:21:00cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, clinical psychology, all of us have offices that are on the second floor, so it makes for a lot of collegiality. The offices are small because we had limited floor space. But purposefully, we wanted everybody to be together so people could collaborate or just have more collegial relations. That was a big move for the psychology department. Now I believe Eberhart is the oldest building on campus that has not been renovated. We get a coat of paint every once in a while. That's about it.

Lacey W.: Got you. What were some of your favorite classes to teach?

Dr. Rosemary G.: Well, when I was a junior faculty member, I taught large classes. I taught primarily Abnormal Psychology. We had these 500-level classes 00:22:00which were called service classes, so teachers had to have continuing education classes or other departments required 500-level classes for their own master's degrees or whatever. Those typically could be anywhere from 60 to 100 students. And now, because that was back in the 70s and 80s, primarily I run into those individuals that were former students of mine who are now doing all kinds of wonderful things themselves.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Just as an example, Celia Hooper, who is the Dean of the College of Health and Human Services. She is now stepping down as Dean and she 00:23:00asked me to be in this photo of her because she was a student in one of my 500-level classes and remembers that. One of the practicum placements where I work now is Newcomers School which I'll talk about later. At Newcomers School, the school counselor was also a student of mine. The Newcomers students are immigrant and refugee children. She introduces me to them as her teacher and it just doesn't comprehend, how could you, who is our school counselor, have a teacher? It's fun to meet the students that I taught in the past and see them flourishing in their own professions, of course.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Then, as time went on, I became, I guess, more specialized in my teaching. I teach a graduate class every semester. Then I also, for teaching 00:24:00credit, supervise in the UNCG Psychology Clinic or in other off-campus practicum settings. My main contact with undergraduates now is I have a large lab, a research lab, and I have at any one time about five graduate students, and anywhere between five and 10 undergraduate students and we all meet together once a week. The undergraduates, some are doing their own honors thesis in the lab and others are just helping run participants in the lab. But I'm not directly teaching an undergraduate class and I haven't for maybe the last decade.

Lacey W.: Right. But it's a different kind of teaching atmosphere.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Yes.

Lacey W.: In terms of just helping them with their research and running the clinic.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Exactly. It's much more on-on-one teaching.

Lacey W.: Makes sense. What changes did you notice under the Department of 00:25:00Psychology during your time here?

Dr. Rosemary G.: Okay. Well, of course changed from, as we just talked about, moving from the sort of scattered site to the Eberhart Building in '77, and of course we're still in the Eberhart Building. So that was a change. People have always been very ... the faculty have always been very kind I think to each other, but there were the main, I guess, controversial discussions we had outside consultant's comm was how many areas within psychology could we afford to have represented in the psychology department.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Initially, there were six different areas and now there are four areas. And I think that's here to stay. It's pretty stable. We have clinical, social, developmental, and cognitive. The two areas that were sort of 00:26:00naturally attrition was the learning theory or the strict behavioral principles. Then also, physiological psychology, the animal research stopped because physiological psychology kind of morphed into neurosciences and the equipment's very expensive. There's a big stretch between the behavior of the brain and the behavior of the person. So we are not doing the neurosciences research here. That was a change.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Then faculty, of course, have come and gone. We did continue to hire female faculty. It's interesting to me that the only one who got tenure who 00:27:00already came with children was Susan Keen who's still here, of course, as a full professor. She's next in seniority to me in the department. And it wasn't only because people had children. There have been single females and single males or males with children also didn't get tenure. Most people, instead of going through the tenure process, knew ahead of time or were instructed ahead of time, "You're unlikely to get tenure." So they left with some dignity instead of going through that whole process. That was changes.

Dr. Rosemary G.: We recently hired an African-American male who's Director of the UNCG Psychology Clinic. And we're desperately trying to hire an African-American faculty member at least within the clinical area.

Lacey W.: Okay. We're going to shift over to when you were Director of Clinical Training. So that as '77 is when I have it. Does that sound right to you?

Dr. Rosemary G.: Right. Yes. Well, there's history to that too. When I first came in 1971, as I mentioned, Bob Eaton talked about having an applied wing, is what he called the experimental program. Again, behavior therapy fits with that because we do our own experiments. The treatments that we use are empirically validated treatments compared to doing nothing or doing other kinds of treatments. But there was a reluctance, I'd say, to call it a clinical program. Then, during those first few years I was here, I knew that in order for our students to eventually get licensed and either practice or become faculty 00:29:00members or work for an agency as a psychologist, a clinical psychologist, they had to get licensed. The easiest way to get licensed is to come from an APA approved program.

Dr. Rosemary G.: APA is the American Psychological Association. So come from an APA-approved program, do an APA-approved internship, and then each state has a licensing board. But that's kind of a ticket that you've had a good education. Then you still have to take a national exam. It's called the EPPP. It's an exam for practicing psychologists that's a national exam, and then each state has their own exam as well.

Dr. Rosemary G.: I convinced Bob Eason that we should go for APA accreditation, and so we hired Peter Nathan as a consultant. He is a famous person I guess from 00:30:00Rockhurst University. I think he was the dean and a clinical psychologist himself. He came as a paid consultant to say what he thought we needed to do. That was in 1977 as well. This building was new then.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Among the suggestions he had was you have to name this as a doctoral program in clinical psychology, and you have to name somebody as the director of clinical training. So even though I had been functioning that way just informally, so then I got that title of Director of Clinical Training in 1977.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Then the APA accreditation process is extremely tedious because there is all these forms to fill out and you have to keep all these records. And again, we didn't have computers. This was in 1977, and so the forms all had to 00:31:00be filled out either by typewriter or by hand and then everything had to be mailed to Washington where the headquarters for APA. So we did that. Then the typical procedure after you do the paperwork is three site visitors come and they interview the faculty and they interview the students and look at the facilities and so on. The site visit occurred in the 1981/82 academic year, and that was we won our first accreditation at that period of time.

Lacey W.: Wow.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Then the time length between site visits has changed by APA rules and so the most you can get now is a seven-year approval before another site visit. We're in sort of the middle of a seven-year cycle. I was Director of Clinical Training for 25 years. Then Arthur Anastopoulos was for either two or 00:32:00three years. Then Susan Keen has been Director of Clinical Training ever since that time and remains that way.

Lacey W.: So you were involved with helping to get the accreditation-

Dr. Rosemary G.: Yes. Definitely.

Lacey W.: ... from the American Psychological... dealing with the paperwork and all the accreditation handbook and paperwork and everything?

Dr. Rosemary G.: Yes. Yes.

Lacey W.: Sounded tedious.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Yes, it was. Then to maintain accreditation, there's an annual report due every year. And there's all of this data, the statistics that you have to keep and know every single student, how many applicants did you have and how many were made offers, how many accepted those offers. Did anybody leave the program before they got their degree? When they got their degree, who chaired 00:33:00their dissertation? What did they do for their internship? What did they do for their first job? Did they get licensed or not? I mean, you have to keep track of these people, basically the rest of their lives.

Lacey W.: Yeah. It sounds that way.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Yeah.

Lacey W.: What changes did you implement during your time as Director of Clinical Training?

Dr. Rosemary G.: Probably the main thing, we had what were called in-house or captive internships. They were at Forsyth County Mental Health Center, Davidson County Mental Health Center, Guilford County Mental Health Center. Our students were placed in those sites and then our own faculty went to those sites to do on-site supervision. But APA accredited us with that idea that we had these kind of in-house internships, but it was harder and harder for students to get 00:34:00licensed, having to explain that the site visitors would actually drive out with me or someone else to these sites which were 30 miles away or whatever.

Dr. Rosemary G.: So we switched to requiring the APA approved internships, which there is hundreds of them, and they're all over the country, and students apply to those. Usually the deadline is November 1st. Right now during December and January, they have interviews and then they're matched away, like MDs, medical residents are matched to a site and they learn that in February. Then the internship lasts one year and we're not allowed to award doctoral degrees until they finish the program and their dissertation and their internship and only then. The typical time is somewhere between six and seven years from the beginning of the doctoral program to the actual degree.

Lacey W.: Okay. What were those site visits like when you were... because then you have to go all over the place, right?

Dr. Rosemary G.: Well, we had site visitors come here. But in my early career here, I was very active both nationally and internationally for let's say maybe about maybe 20 years, 15 to 20 years. And so, I became a site visitor myself. The American Psychological Association, the accreditation office, would particularly invite me to go to problem programs because they would say, "You know the standards but you can also present the feedback in a way that is not damaging to the people that are there."

Dr. Rosemary G.: I did just multiple site visits myself and eventually became a consultant like Peter Nathan was to this program. I knew that accreditation process inside and out of recipient and deliver in the process.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Then during that time, I was also in a lot of professional organizations that required travel. I was going to Washington quite a bit for the American Psychological Association, the Council of Representatives, those kind of meetings. I was active in AABT, the Association for Advancement and Behavior Therapy and would go to their board meetings and conventions.

Dr. Rosemary G.: All the directors of clinical training, there is under 200. But there's about 200 both in the United States and Canada. I was eventually elected 00:37:00the chair of that council of clinical directors. But they had annual meetings, they still do, where the directors talk to each other and learn what's going on in other programs and how to deal with certain issues that come up across programs.

Dr. Rosemary G.: I was traveling probably once or twice a month. Then I was also invited to multiple other countries to give talks about my research and behavioral assessment. And so, I was in South America, in Peru, in Venezuela, Columbia, Mexico City, and then also went to invited trips to Asia. I gave a presentation in Hong Kong, and in Singapore, in Thailand. I went to Australia 00:38:00and gave a presentation in the city of Adelaide in Australia and visited some other cities there.

Dr. Rosemary G.: I didn't get married until late in life. I was I think 40-ish when I got married. Then my husband and I had two sons right away. Then it was just the traveling was just too much. I tried one trip with one... leaving one child at home and by the time I packed all of the bags, this is for Monday, this is for Tuesday, and got him to daycare and don't do this, and I thought this is just not worth it. And so I kind of resigned from all of that travel and all of the boards and just ended up staying home happily and working at UNCG happily and leaving the rest behind me at that time.

Lacey W.: Sure. You did do a lot of traveling.

Dr. Rosemary G.: I did. I did.

Lacey W.: You got a good amount in before focusing a bit further on home things.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Exactly. Exactly. Yes.

Lacey W.: I think we're going to shift to professional development and growth.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Okay.

Lacey W.: You arrived here as an instructor first.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Right, because I had to finish my dissertation that first year. Then I went through the ranks, now I can see, at an exceptionally fast pace. But I was just doing it and so I didn't even think about it that way. I was an assistant professor for only three years and then was promoted to associate professor with tenure. I was only an associate professor for four years and then was promoted to full professor. It was in part because I had a very heavy publication record right away. I attribute that to when I was at St. Louis 00:40:00University having to write 26 papers in one semester. Again, we still didn't have computers, but as fast as I could move the pencil and the page, or we did have typewriters, as fast as I could type, the words luckily just came out and I always had graduate students to help collect data in the lab. I had a good publication record.

Dr. Rosemary G.: It was my charter to analyze data then. We didn't have computers in-house. It was called a main frame, a big computer, very big. It took them like a room in Forney Building and you had to keep punch cards, computer cards that were shaped like a rectangle. And then the cards had to be 00:41:00in a certain order. So if it be like Group 1, condition A. And if you ever dropped a box of cards, it was virtually impossible to... you'd have to start over again because everything had to be in a certain order, and you'd have to carry this box of cards to the main frame and wait your turn and put them in the computer. Then you'd get a data output, a paper data output.

Lacey W.: Wow.

Dr. Rosemary G.: And then have to write your paper manuscripts based on that paper output. But because I had a strong publication record, I was promoted very quickly. Then also because I was promoted quickly and had so many publications, then I was awarded. This was, again, in academic year 1989 to 1990. This is the UNCG Research Excellence Award which I got.

Lacey W.: Oh, wow.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Now you can wear it on ceremonial occasions like a graduation over regalia and so on.

Lacey W.: Were you nominated for that and then got-

Dr. Rosemary G.: Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Lacey W.: By the faculty?

Dr. Rosemary G.: Yes. But this one would have been from our department. But it's a university-wide award. It's not just the College of Arts and Sciences. Still, there's one winner a year of the award.

Lacey W.: It's a huge honor is what I'm getting to.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Yes. Yes. Yes.

Lacey W.: It really is.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Yes, it is.

Lacey W.: I want to switch back to your research productivity because the notes I have for you... I think we need to get in for you that you have 157 peer-reviewed journal articles.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Those are journal articles, yeah.

Lacey W.: And four books.

Dr. Rosemary G.: I have four books, and then I didn't count published book reviews or book chapters of which are on top of that. But I also had, the only 00:43:00colleague I've published a lot with was Steve Hayes who was on our faculty. I believe he left in 1986. He and I have about 15 publications together. Typically, I published more with my graduate students than with other faculty. I have a smattering with other faculty, but it's usually with my graduate students. And Steve Hayes was the exception where he and I published quite a bit together.

Lacey W.: Right. What are your four books on?

Dr. Rosemary G.: Well, they were in the behavioral assessment arena. One book had a first and second edition, and Steve Hayes and David Barlow who was Steve Hayes' internship mentor. We each wrote different chapters in the book. It was called The Scientist Practitioner Model, so how you integrate research and 00:44:00clinical practice. That had two editions that was sold pretty well.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Steve Hayes and I edited a book called The Conceptual Foundations of Behavioral Assessment. Truthfully, it was harder to edit a book because we would tell the different authors, "This is kind of what we want as a content," and then they would write the chapter and it would be not what we wanted. You'd give them feedback and then they would still go back to their old ways and write what they wanted wrote. It would have been easier to write the book ourselves.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Then my fourth book was with a graduate student, one of my doctoral students, Rich Farmer, and that was a book where we each wrote half of the book. I had a research leave from UNCG. The book was under contract by the American Psychological Association. I had the contract and then to apply for the 00:45:00research leave. Just said that I'm writing whatever it was, six of the 12 chapters, whatever, and then just budgeted my time to write one chapter a month.

Lacey W.: Then if we shift to journal editing.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Yes. So, because my specialty was behavioral assessment, and in the late 70s, that was a very popular area and various publishers were actually arguing with each other who was going to get to publish the first journal in behavioral assessment, AABT, my professional association actually sponsored the journal and hooked with what's now Guilford Press, Guilford Publications. You've probably seen their name in many places. They were competing for the journal. 00:46:00Then I think actually it was ended up being published by a Pergamon Press. I went to visit these.

Dr. Rosemary G.: I was chosen as the founding editor of the journal and helped negotiate with these different publishing houses. So I had the journal for, I guess, it was the first three or four years of its existence and then helped pick subsequent editors after that.

Lacey W.: Okay. Trying to see what we didn't talk about, about outside professional organizations.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Then the other thing in these other organizations, in AABT, the name was changed later to ABCT, but it's the same organization, I was elected 00:47:00the first female president. But again, my thinking at that time wasn't like, "Oh, the people elected me because I was a female." My thinking was just because it was so... I don't know. It was always that way. I had so many publications and I was so active professionally. It might sound immodest, but of course I would be elected. I deserve to be elected regardless of gender. But nonetheless, I was the first female that was elected as president of ABCT.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Just a few years ago in New York City, they had a symposium at the national convention, and it was called the Trailblazers, or the Women Who 00:48:00Stretched the Glass Ceiling. Of course, I was invited as the first female president. After me there were other female presidents, so a couple of them were invited or people who were prominent at research. I think there were six of us on the symposium. It was in a ballroom in a hotel in New York City and it was standing room only. It was just packed and people. We had specific questions we were answering and then people from the audience ask questions. Then into a journal, we each wrote a piece, the things we had said at that symposium, and then it was published as a series and a journal.

Lacey W.: Very impressive. Okay. Then we shift to things you're most proud of during your academic career.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Okay. Again, after our two sons who are now in their 20s were 00:49:00born, I sort of gave up all the national and international scene. We've traveled since then but not professionally. I kind of settled into being at UNCG and especially just staying within the psychology department. I never really was interested in becoming a dean or a university administrator or applying for jobs at administrator levels elsewhere.

Dr. Rosemary G.: During that time, of course, I got job offers from other universities but I was very content to stay here. The clinical program has been awarded various training grants and they provide mostly stipends to doctoral students. But they offer different sites for the students to do their training. 00:50:00The goal of these training grants is to increase the number of psychologists who are interested in XYZ. And so we had a series of training grants to serve underserved populations. Then we have to demonstrate that indeed a good share of our graduates ended up in locations that served the underserved.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Then the current one we have now is in medical settings. There's a new movement called Integrated Behavioral Healthcare where a patient sees their medical provider and then the medical provider calls in the psychologist because the person's not taking their medication, they're under stress, they're depressed, they've had a traumatic experience. And then the psychologist provides services right on-site. They're usually very short 00:51:00appointments, 30 minutes, with a follow-up visit if necessary after that. But it reaches many more people because more people see their medical providers, then they call a independent psychology clinic.

Lacey W.: Got you.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Yeah. It hits more people, so that's our current training grant. Then the grants also provide money for guest speakers and books and supplies if we need them in special fields or whatever. As part of those training grants, my, I guess, favorite locations that I've worked with has been Newcomers School which is a public school in Guilford County and it's across the street from Western Guilford High School. I've heard a couple of publications about Newcomers School in my research at least at that time. It's the only free-standing public school for newly-arrived immigrant and refugee children.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Some places across the country might have a wing for immigrant students or they might have a floor of a building. But this is a school and it varies in enrollment. At it's hey day, it had as many as 550 students. And now, with the current bans and limitations and immigration and refugee status, we're down to about 270 students. That's about half as many.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Then we have, through these training grants now, through a contract arrangement with Guilford County schools, we provide the psychological services for these, I'll call them children although it's grades 3 to 12. The children have traumas coming to the United States. They have traumas from their 00:53:00own countries like in Syria with the war going on. When they come here, they have problems reuniting with the parent that left them in whatever, Honduras, 10 years ago. They don't even know this person who's telling them what to do and how to live, so there is re-unification issues.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Then, of course, the children especially from Central Africa, have had their parents, maybe both parents, killed or kidnapped and seen death and war since the day they were born. So the need for services is great. The school is great. I mean, it's like the world should be. There's people at any one... Last time, there were 34 different languages there, but everybody is there for the same purpose, to get an education and to learn English and learn about the United States.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Then, another place that we could provide services was Elon Law 00:54:00School has a placement called the Elon Immigration Humanitarian Law Clinic. They do the screening of individuals and they recommend it to our clinic, that we think this person deserves to be a US citizen. They did the background checks and so on. But we don't think that they can take the citizenship exam. You have to know US history, US civics. You have to be able to read, write, and speak English. So we did probably 50 of these citizenship evaluations and I just made up a test battery because there is really no such thing in the literature. We used a non-verbal IQ test copying forms which you'd have to do if you were learning to write any language.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Then we would write a report and then these were people... some of them had been in the US for a long time, people that were 80, 90 or so old, that never went to school in Vietnam or wherever they were from. They don't know how to read, write any language, let alone a new language at their age and so on, and people who were brain damaged from war torture that were cognitively impaired because of that. But the best thing is that the reports that we got that 100% of the people we recommended, the immigration judges approve that they be exempt from the citizenship exam because our assessments were very thorough and documented. There was only one person that Elon referred, that we thought could take the exam. So we didn't recommend that they be exempt. But that was very interesting too, meeting people from all over the world, people who were 00:56:00pretty low-functioning compared to what was required for the exam. But very eye-opening to see a variety of people in this country, to say the least.

Lacey W.: Definitely.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Then we had the UNCG Psychology Clinic which operates as a community clinic. One of my main jobs is working in the clinic as a supervisor. At any one time, I have four doctoral students who are supervisees and they each have their own case load. I like doing that.

Dr. Rosemary G.: I have, as I mentioned, undergraduate honors thesis that I'm chairing. I work with the Office of Undergraduate Research and Creativity, and they only allow two students to be funded per faculty member at any one time. 00:57:00So, usually, I have two students who are funded through the URCA Awards and chair their honors thesis. They're good students because they're honor students. Then I supervise the research. I've had the very good fortune of having been able to admit many doctoral students over the years and I just counted. I graduated my 70th doctoral student on Thursday at the wedding.

Lacey W.: Oh, congratulations.

Dr. Rosemary G.: But all of that is like one-to-one teaching as opposed... I mean, I do teach my graduate seminars, but more of it is one to one. Then the question of it in terms of being proud of the accomplishments is because all of these people then go out into their own careers and then continue to be productive professionals. And it's just spreading the profession, basically 00:58:00through other people.

Lacey W.: Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. Then we're shifting to changes in UNCG over time.

Dr. Rosemary G.: The main changes, obviously, the UNCG has grown in size very rapidly in terms of the number of students. Even though there are now online classes, I think most students, at least during some of their time, they prefer to take or they must take some classes on campus. So there's been a pretty rapid proliferation of academic buildings, the dormitories. I think parking remains a problem.

Lacey W.: Sure.

Dr. Rosemary G.: But there is just the growth of the campus and going across Lee Street or High Point Road, Gate City Boulevard, increases the space for the campus. That's been very notable. I think the campus remains physically attractive. There was a grounds keeper. Had a maintenance grounds keeper named Charles Bell, that when he retired, I thought the whole place is going to disintegrate because he had designed beautiful flower beds and he had an article on Greensboro News on record every Saturday on gardening tips and he knew was he was doing. But was glad to say that the campus remained physically attractive.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Then I think the main change that has happened everywhere is the changes in technology. Again, when I first came, we didn't have desktop 01:00:00computers, and so everything, paperwork, all had to be typed and we had a fleet of secretaries who's job really was to type things. If you didn't type things yourself, and especially on forums where you'd have to keep adjusting or the lines where we had the secretaries do complicated typing like that.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Then the same thing with references, and this is true for the students as well where you had to go to the library and the journals, actually find a physical journal, and take notes from it. There were copy machines, but you couldn't copy every single thing that you wanted to know about. So people spent hours like taking handwritten notes from especially journals because the books you could check out but not the journals. And so it's the increase in 01:01:00convenience in terms of being able anywhere to be able to call up a journal article in any convenient location because the Jackson Library obviously has subscriptions to all these electronic subscriptions. Then with all the word processing capabilities of computers, people can send tasks. Or when you're writing a manuscript or editing a manuscript, it's so easy to do that or editing students' papers. It's made academic life just so much easier and so much more efficient.

Dr. Rosemary G.: But then on the other hand, there is more many more things being written. It's almost impossible to keep up even with your own little tiny field because there's just so much being published because it's so much easier 01:02:00to analyze data and publish articles than it used to be.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Then I remember on campus when the cellphone technology just started, a Blackberry was the brand. I remember the chancellor and provost saying, "I'm sick and tired of waiting for deans to return my calls," and so they issued Blackberries at that point just to all the deans so they could be in constant contact. Then, of course, technology now has changed much more rapidly. I had my first one, was an iPhone 3. I was one of the first faculty that just purchased an iPhone. But that's because I had teenage sons who knew about the technology ahead of time and kept me up-to-date with it too, so it was good.

Lacey W.: Tell me how UNCG has affected your life and what it means to you.

Dr. Rosemary G.: Well, as I mentioned, I chose UNCG based on the collegiality at my initial job interview, and that has not changed. I think I still feel very positive about my colleagues and workplace, and so I've been satisfied. I think, in looking back, I probably could have done more in terms of getting big research grants, but that wasn't mandatory. I could run my research without them. That's probably the only omission in my professional career.

Dr. Rosemary G.: I have influenced a lot of people through my teaching, both classroom teaching and the one-on-one work that I've done. And so I feel very 01:04:00satisfied with my career. I could have taken jobs elsewhere, as I mentioned, but chose to stay on my niche here. And I think it's worked out well for me.

Lacey W.: I think so too. These interviews are for the 125th anniversary of the campus, which is an excellent time for reflection, but also helps us think about where we're going to be in the future. What do you think is the future for UNCG? Where do you see UNCG going as an institution in the next 25 to 50 years?

Dr. Rosemary G.: Well, I hope it, I guess, doesn't change too much because I think it's a good combination of what it is now. It's called a research two institution, which makes I think a good balance. I have been on the Promotion and Tenure Committee through the College of Arts and Sciences. The faculty are 01:05:00evaluated not only on research and publications, but on their teaching, both the amount of teaching they do and on student ratings and peer evaluations of their teaching. And I think that's good for the students, having faculty in the classroom as opposed to only teaching assistants. So it's a good balance between teaching and research. But the research is also supported. People can get a research leave and there's a lot of help on campus to get external funding, people that will help write grants, evaluate grants, and so on. I think that's a good balance.

Dr. Rosemary G.: I see the student body continuing to grow as the population grows and the expectation that college is more normative. Again, when I was 01:06:00growing up, going to college was something only some people did. It was considered more unusual than it is now. I think still only maybe fewer than half of the US population has a college degree. I think it's maybe at the most, 40%. But more it's the expectation that people will at least try to go to college. Not everybody succeeds, not everybody can afford to, but the expectation is.

Dr. Rosemary G.: And there's not room at the flagship universities anywhere continuing to grow the number of students that they have, and so the other university system is going to have to absorb more and more the students and the community college system as well. Not only are there greater number of students, 01:07:00but the increase in diversity of the students, which is much needed and only enriches the lives of everybody around the students as well.

Dr. Rosemary G.: We have students of different ethnicities at UNCG's racial composition. I think we could do better in terms of attracting more international students. One of my university services, I work for the Study Abroad program and interview UNCG students who want to go abroad. But I don't really see the reciprocity. We could have more students coming from other countries than it seems apparent, at least to me. But I think the growth and diversity both in students and hopefully in the growth in faculty, diverse faculty, is lagging far behind, although I know many departments are also 01:08:00pushing for a diverse faculty as well, including the psychology department.

Dr. Rosemary G.: I see those kind of changes. But again, I hope UNCG retains its current flavor of being a balance between research and teaching and maintaining the Students' First posture. I love the Students First Office. I think there was a great idea and I hope that's... it is a motto, but I hope it continues to be a motto where the UNCG doesn't change too much even though it's bigger.

Lacey W.: All right. I don't have any other questions for you. Do you have anything else you wish we had talked about?

Dr. Rosemary G.: No. Not really.

Lacey W.: Okay. All right. Then we're done. Thank you so much.