Skip to main content icon/video/no-internet
icon backReturn to Entries

Atkinson, Donald Ray (1940–2008)

Donald Ray Atkinson (born February 10, 1940, in Union City, Indiana) is best known for his pioneering work in the area of multicultural counseling psychology and his leadership in mentoring doctoral students of color into prominent professional positions in counseling psychology across a career spanning more than 30 years. The story of his life exemplifies the values that he promoted during his career. He grew up on the margins of poverty and served in the military before working his way through school, rearing a family on his own, and becoming one of the most frequently cited scholars in the area of multicultural or cross-cultural counseling.

Early Life

Atkinson spent his childhood in poverty in the mid-western United States, first in Indiana and then in Wisconsin. His family lived in an assortment of apartments, trailer parks, and unfinished garages while his parents worked a variety of different jobs trying to make ends meet. Atkinson was diagnosed with rheumatic fever when he was 15 years old. His only sibling died at an early age from cerebral palsy. After graduating from high school and serving in the U.S. Navy for 2 years, Atkinson moved on to college at Wisconsin State College in La Crosse where he received a B.S. in teacher education in 1964. He was able to attend college only because of a meager life insurance policy paid to his family after his brother died. For a short period of time, he worked as a teacher at a small high school in Menominee Falls, Wisconsin, while he continued his education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to earn a degree in guidance and counseling in 1966. He later became a guidance counselor at his old high school in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Eventually, Atkinson moved on to pursue his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1968, where he studied under the tutelage of Marsh Sanborn.

It was during his doctoral studies that Atkinson met his first wife and started a family with the birth of two sons, Jimmy and Robert. Soon, however, Atkinson found himself raising his sons on his own as a single parent after his wife left under the stress of Jimmy Atkinson's severe developmental disability. Following a brief stint at a college counseling center at Moorhead State College, Minnesota, Atkinson moved to the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), in 1972 to become an assistant professor in the counseling psychology program.

Early Career

Atkinson joined Jules Zimmer and Ray E. Hosford to become only the third faculty member in the counseling psychology program at UCSB. Over the course of Atkinson's career, the counseling psychology program at UCSB became one of the most prominent training grounds for multicultural counseling psychology. Although Atkinson was joined by numerous colleagues of considerable prominence, including such psychologists as J. Manuel Casas, Gail Hackett, Tania Israel, Chalmer Thompson, Nolan Zane, Glenn Good, Louise Fitzgerald, Elizabeth Holloway, Patricia Wolleat, Gayla Margolin, Steven Brown, Michael Mahoney, and Larry Beutler, the reputation and achievements of the program in the area of cross-cultural counseling can be substantially attributed to Atkinson's efforts and accomplishments.

...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles

Read next

More like this

Sage Recommends

We found other relevant content for you on other Sage platforms.

close

Have you created a personal profile? Login or create a profile so that you can save clips, playlists and searches

close
close
close Signed In to profile You are signed in as:
close
Logged in Institution Institution