Biographical Information
on Dr. Roger Ray
Higher Education:
Using my parent's money and a $500 skiing scholarship I had won at the Nationals, I entered Rollins College in the fall of 1959. Three years later I graduated with a combined major in mathematics and psychology and married my high-school sweetheart, Rosalind (and yes, we're still together), in June. That fall (1962) I started graduate school in psychology at the University of Wisconsin. I worked as a research assistant for Dr. Thomas Banta doing opinion-acceptance conditioning of dyads in his social psychology lab. I didn't realize it at the time, but this turns out to be one of the really early efforts to apply operant reinforcement in a social situation to shape a group consensus.
The Pro-Seminar course at Wisconsin was a real mind-blower for me. I was too busy dealing emotionally with all the pain Pro Sem was causing me--relearning how to study in the face of such voluminous amounts of information--to realize at the time what an influence it was having on my understanding of psychology. But K. U. Smith taught a section on cybernetic systems and modeling in that Pro-Sem Course that really set me up for a future penchant for that sort of thinking. While at Wisconsin I also took a seminal seminar in Personality with Jack Gilchrist which introduced me to Razran's (1961) just-published review of the Soviet work on interoceptive conditioning. I presented a review of this work in the seminar, and that paper set me on a direction that literally effected most of my subsequent career as a scientific investigator. Interest in such Soviet research directions would eventually take me all the way to Pavlov's original lab in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), Russia--as I'll detail later.
Biographical Information
on Dr. Roger Ray
Higher Education:
The Pro-Seminar course at Wisconsin was a real mind-blower for me. I was too busy dealing emotionally with all the pain Pro Sem was causing me--relearning how to study in the face of such voluminous amounts of information--to realize at the time what an influence it was having on my understanding of psychology. But K. U. Smith taught a section on cybernetic systems and modeling in that Pro-Sem Course that really set me up for a future penchant for that sort of thinking. While at Wisconsin I also took a seminal seminar in Personality with Jack Gilchrist which introduced me to Razran's (1961) just-published review of the Soviet work on interoceptive conditioning. I presented a review of this work in the seminar, and that paper set me on a direction that literally effected most of my subsequent career as a scientific investigator. Interest in such Soviet research directions would eventually take me all the way to Pavlov's original lab in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), Russia--as I'll detail later.
Using my parent's money and a $500 skiing scholarship I had won at the Nationals, I entered Rollins College in the fall of 1959. Three years later I graduated with a combined major in mathematics and psychology and married my high-school sweetheart, Rosalind (and yes, we're still together), in June. That fall (1962) I started graduate school in psychology at the University of Wisconsin. I worked as a research assistant for Dr. Thomas Banta doing opinion-acceptance conditioning of dyads in his social psychology lab. I didn't realize it at the time, but this turns out to be one of the really early efforts to apply operant reinforcement in a social situation to shape a group consensus.
High School Teaching:
In 1964 I transferred to the University of Tennessee, but only stayed for one semester because of a major fire which destroyed the family's drive in while we were in Florida over Christmas break. Eventually I ended up teaching geometry and algebra at my old alma mater, Winter Haven High School. Roz and I lived in Winter Haven between 1964 and 1966, partially to wait out Viet Nam draft threats with my Math teaching deferment.
Back to Higher Education:
By the end of 1966 my draft board said I could go back to grad school, so I returned to UT to complete my doctorate in general experimental psychology by 1969. I picked up a year of computer programming (Fortran IV) as an alternative to a second foreign language reading skill, and added a minor concentration in mathematics and cultural anthropology to my general experimental major.
More Biography is Available:
Youth and Adolescence
Higher Education
High School Teaching
Back to Higher-Ed
Intellectual and Research Influences
Launching My Own Higher-Ed Career
Research and Russia
Forsaking Dogs for Killer Whales
On to Baboons
Computer-Based AI