John M. Whiteley is this year’s School of Social Ecology Founders Award winner. Photo by Patricia DeVoe
John Whiteley, second recipient of Founders Award, works to advance social ecology
By Mimi Ko Cruz
From the way he speaks to the actions he takes, Professor John M. Whiteley exudes peace. He softly walks and talks around campus, offering his help and expertise in myriad quiet ways.
Behind his soft-spoken demeanor, though, is a fiercely passionate social ecologist, environmentalist and peace activist who has been named this year’s School of Social Ecology Founders Award recipient.
“John is soft-spoken, modest, gentle and unassuming, but don’t be fooled by his quiet demeanor,” said Daniel Stokols, founding dean of the School of Social Ecology and the first recipient of the Founders Award, who has worked with Whiteley for the past 46 years. “He is passionately committed to his ideals and unflappably persistent in pursuing them. John has an abiding commitment to institutional stewardship. He is an innovative scholar and mentor. His research has advanced the fields of counseling psychology, global peace and conflict studies, environmental health and sustainability science. His teaching and research reflect his deep commitment to social ecological scholarship and educating students in community-engaged, team-based action research. John is known among his students as a compassionate and caring mentor. His guidance and encouragement have been essential to the success of so many students. Some of John’s advisees who faced serious obstacles to finishing their dissertations might not have completed their degrees, were it not for John’s compassionate concern and sustained support of their work. His selection as recipient of the Founders Award is richly deserved for all of these reasons and more.”
Stanford and Harvard educated, Whiteley joined the University of California, Irvine as dean of students in 1972. When he was hired by Daniel G. Aldrich Jr., UCI’s founding chancellor, Whiteley was given one charge: “leave it better than you found it.”
That opportunity became his doctrine.
Just look at some of his numerous accomplishments in the pursuit of peace and social and environmental justice throughout his career, in which he served as vice chancellor for student affairs from 1978 to 1983, and as professor since then.
- Whiteley founded, edited and published The Counseling Psychologist, the journal of the American Psychological Association’s Society of Counseling Psychology. Forty-eight issues of the journal were published under his editorship from 1969 through 1984 as were 13 volumes in the Book Series in Counseling Psychology.
- He was elected a Fellow in the American Psychological Association in 1979.
- He created a PBS videotape and digital series called “Quest for Peace,” for which he interviewed 200 national leaders in diverse fields, including B.F. Skinner, Julian Bond, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Menninger, J. William Fulbright, Norman Cousins, Robert McNamara, Barry Goldwater and Condoleezza Rice. The series was broadcast on television in the 1980s and early ’90s. It aired on more than 400 PBS and cable stations in 47 states, reaching more than 28 million households.
- He has received numerous grants and awards, totaling more than $16 million, for his scholarship, which over the decades has included studies on myriad topics from teacher effectiveness, student motivation and counselor education to efforts to save the environment.
- He created a number of films designed to help people overcome the challenges of living in a complex society and transcend emotional distress. Four of his films, produced in the 1970s, won awards from the National Council of Family Relations. The winners were: "Back to School, Back to Work"; "Divorce"; "Carl Rogers Counsels an Individual on Hurt and Anger"; and "The Struggle for Self Acceptance."
- In 1983, he helped launch UCI’s Global Peace and Studies program.
- In 1989, he set up the Global Common Classroom with the National Geographic Society, linking students at UCI to students in Soviet classrooms, via computer.
- He produced 67 educational films in the “Distinguished Contributors to Counseling” and “Explorations in Human Development” film series of the American Counseling Association.
- He was instrumental in establishing the Bren Events Center. The impetus for this accomplishment, he points out, "was the contributions of UC Irvine’s two-time First Team All-American Kevin Magee, basketball Coach Bill Mulligan, and the legendary president of the Irvine Company Tom Nielsen."
- Through a collaboration melding the tribal connections of Kogee Thomas and the computer education laboratory of Kim Burge, Whiteley created the Native American Intertribal University Preparatory summer program, funded with a $1.5 million grant, that reached more than 400 junior high and high school Native American students from 73 tribes in 25 states. The students took part in the six-week summer program that helped them improve their academic preparation for college.
- He produced a series of “Social Ecology of Peace” research projects investigating the thinking of intellectuals about striving for peace in the Cold War and how people can change through conflict.
- He’s traveled to Chechnya with the International Committee of the Red Cross and to the secret city of Chelyabinsk-65 in central Russia a dozen times to survey the horrors of radioactive pollution in his quest to help heal the people and the land that was bombarded with radiation for 50 years.
- He brought 18 Russian epidemiologists to UCI to learn about models of environmental protection.
- He launched the “Toward a Sustainable 21st Century,” an initiative addressing significant unsolved problems of global society in the areas of marine resources conservation, and threats to ecosystem and environmental health caused by toxic chemicals and the absence of effective governance structures which promote sustainability. To that end, he has produced 34 symposiums so far. The topics range from climate change to malaria and offshore oil drilling. And, planning is underway for several more conferences including on "Coastal Resilience and Preventing Species Extinction" in October.
- He developed and today continues a four decades-long research project on the moral and ethical development of college students. The “Character and Community in the College Years” project is a study looking at how formal education is associated with higher levels of more principled thinking in decision-making on moral challenges. The study has produced evidence that college students are more effective in using what they learn in college if they have developed psychological and personal skills in addition to those provided by traditional academic disciplines. His “Sierra Project” at UCI is named after the residential hall where a year-long course of inquiry is taught to freshmen. This initiative represents an opportunity to influence the structure of thinking of the next generation of citizens — those who will lead and serve our institutions of society and, who as parents, shape the nature of future generations. Research conducted by the Sierra Project has revealed that educational experiences can raise the level of moral reasoning. And, society benefits from citizens whose lives are characterized by principled thinking and moral maturity.
For his quest for world peace and international goodwill, the UCI Alumni Association awarded him its highest honor: the Extraordinarius Award. For promoting democracy through international projects on environmental and peace issues, he was awarded the George Washington Honor Medal by the Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge. For his outstanding scholarly research, he was bestowed with the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision Publication Award. For his outstanding contribution to literature and research, he was given the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators Literature Award. For his teaching, research and writing, he was awarded the Contribution to Knowledge Award Award from the American College Personnel Association. And, for his teaching prowess, he was named Teacher of the Year by the Social Ecology Students Association in 2006.
When accepting the Founders Award, Whiteley told an audience of more than 150 friends and admirers who gathered June 3 to honor him that he doesn’t accomplish anything alone and credited all his UCI colleagues for their “convictions,” which propel them to also leave the university better than they found it.
“My life has been so enriched by joining so many of you in this cherished task,” Whiteley said. “I firmly believe the university community is one of the global society’s most viable institutions for helping achieve the goals of fulfilling human potential, enhancing human dignity, liberating the human spirit and contributing to social justice and gender equality.”
It is because of people like Whiteley that UCI “started along a trajectory that was so incredibly promising, a trajectory that now the entire world recognizes as one crafted on standards of excellence and opportunity that reflects the deepest values of the nation and of the whole purpose of higher education — to turn out compassionate citizens, a competent workforce and people as comfortable lifting themselves up as they are other people,” said Richard Matthew, associate dean of the School of Social Ecology and faculty director of the UCI Blum Center for Poverty Alleviation. “That’s what John does well. And, you cannot help but be impressed by his boundless energy and constantly fertile mind as he encourages all of us to take advantage of opportunities and move into bold new directions and think about the overall welfare of the larger community.”
When asked why he cares, Whiteley simply answers: “We are all blessed to try to leave this world better than we found it.”
Dean Nancy Guerra said Whiteley has made an indelible mark in his 47-year career at the university, and that she is proud of his contributions that have poised the School of Social Ecology to achieve even more in the years ahead.
View the Founders Award event photo album on Flickr.
