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Walsh, W. Bruce (1936-)

W. Bruce Walsh is one of the leading researchers and writers in the field of vocational psychology. Walsh was born into a family deeply committed to education. He is one of 11 members of his family to attend Pennsylvania State University. Walsh graduated from there with a B.S. degree in Economics from the Smeal College of Business Administration. It is perhaps his training as an economist that helped to develop his research interest in person-environment human behavior. Walsh, however, never worked as an economist. After completing his undergraduate degree, he went directly to Kent State University where he studied sociology and worked in residence halls coordinating programs and advising students.

Walsh continued his work with students as he pursued his doctorate at the University of Iowa. While he worked on the Ph.D. in Counseling and Vocational Psychology he continued his work with college students by advising the fraternity council and conducting academic counseling. It was during his career at the university that Walsh began to foment his identity as a psychologist with his placement as a junior counselor and intern at the Iowa University counseling center. His life also became cemented to vocational psychology as he worked with his major advisor, John Holland.

Early Research

Walsh's long publishing career began with studies around his work with residence halls and academic advising. His early research seemed to forecast his later dedication to research on person-environment theories of human behavior in that his very first publication was titled “College Student Residence and Academic Achievement.” At about the same time, Walsh investigated the validity of self-report data. In many ways, the self-report research is seminal because so many researchers then and now use self-report as a primary assessment tool. Walsh's research demonstrated that self-report data are accurate and valid. Although doubt continues to linger about self-report data, Walsh's work was the first systematic inquiry into this assessment methodology and does provide some reassurance to the thousands of researchers who use self-report. Though individuals who know Walsh well remember the self-report studies, most students of psychology will recall Walsh for his person-environment work.

While at the University of Iowa Walsh began his decades-long association with person-environment research. It was perhaps Walsh's early training as an economist and later research with college students that eventually led him to the study of the influence of the environment on the behavior of people and the influence of human behavior on the environment. He published one of his seminal works, Theories of Person-Environment Interaction. From there, Walsh conducted numerous person-environment studies and initiated the person-environment book series. Many of the investigations of John Holland's theories are directly attributable to Walsh and his numerous graduate students. With about two dozen articles on Holland's theories, Walsh invigorated the study of this vocational theory as well as inspired the study of other theories.

Vocational Psychology

Walsh moved from a study of Holland's theory to present a broader view of the specialty of vocational psychology. Walsh's work has helped to shape a complete picture of Vocational Psychology. Walsh pulled together the leading researchers and writers in this field for his various handbook series. He began his initial work with the two-volume set of Handbook of Vocational Psychology with Samuel Osipow in 1983 and added four other handbooks that included as coeditor Mark Savickas for the 2005 edition of the Handbook of Vocational Psychology and Mary Heppner for the Handbook of Career Counseling for Women. Walsh also focused much of his vocational psychology research and publications on African Americans and fostered his colleagues' writings on other racial/ethnic minorities and various economic classes. Because Walsh believed in exploring the entire range of variables in the study of the discipline, he and his colleagues essentially codified the specialty of vocational psychology. Walsh further stimulated the field of vocational psychology through his work in the Society of Counseling Psychology, a division of the American Psychological Association (APA). There Walsh helped found the Society for Vocational Psychology, a section of the Society of Counseling Psychology. Through the Society for Vocational Psychology, Walsh and his colleagues initiated a biennial conference on vocational psychology. The inaugural conference was hosted by Walsh in Columbus, Ohio, home of Ohio State University where Walsh served as a professor for 37 years. True to Walsh's commitment to include the entire range of elements in any profession, the Society for Vocational Psychology held its first international vocational psychology conference in Portugal in 2003.

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