William Reynolds
Years Served: 2000-2019
Dr. Reynolds received his undergraduate degree in psychology at the University of California at Berkeley (B.A. 1973) and graduate degrees at the University of Oregon (M.A. 1974, Ph.D. 1976) with an emphasis in school psychology with minors in clinical psychology and special education. Dr. Reynolds is current Professor and Chairperson in the Department of Psychology at Humboldt State University. Dr. Reynolds has primary affiliations in the Academic Research Master’s Program and the Graduate Program in School Psychology at Humboldt. Before coming to Humboldt, for 9 years Dr. Reynolds was Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver where he was also director of the graduate program in school psychology. Prior to his time at UBC, Dr. Reynolds was for 11 years Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where for several years he was director of the graduate program in school psychology. At the University of Wisconsin Dr. Reynolds also held appointments as Principal Investigator at the Waisman Center on Mental Retardation and Human Development, and Discipline Chief of Psychology at the University Affiliated Program at the Waisman Center. From 1976 to 1980, he was Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology and Statistics at the State University of New York at Albany.
Dr. Reynolds is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (awarded 1987) and a Fellow of the Society for Personality Assessment (awarded 1987). In 2013, Dr. Reynolds received the American Psychological Association Senior Scientist Award from Division 16 which “is given for a sustained program of scholarship of exceptional quality throughout one’s career.” He has been on the Editorial Boards of numerous journals in the fields of clinical and school psychology, including the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Clinical Psychology Review, Journal of Clinical Psychology, Journal of School Psychology, Professional School Psychology, School Psychology Review, Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, Psychology in the Schools, Assessment, Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, Journal of Personality Assessment, and Clinical Case Studies. Dr. Reynolds has consulted with school districts and mental health agencies in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Israel on procedures for the identification of psychological distress and suicidal behavior in adolescents, and presented workshops on this topic in North America, Australia, Europe, and Israel. He has also been a consultant on adolescent suicidal behavior and psychosocial treatments for psychopathology in children and adolescents for the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Dr. Reynolds is currently working with researchers at NIMH and other universities on several projects examining suicidality in persons, including the study of suicidal ideation in children and adolescents with developmental disorders.
For the past 40 years, Dr. Reynolds has maintained an active research program in multiple areas of clinical, school, educational, assessment and other areas of psychology. His research interests have focused on the nature, assessment, and treatment of depression and suicidal behavior in children and adolescents, assessment of competence in mentally retarded persons, the effects of exposure to violence on adolescents’ mental health, and the assessment of self-concept, child and adolescent psychopathology. More recently, Dr. Reynolds has focused on the assessment and study of bullying and bully-victimization in children and adolescents, and self-injurious behaviors in children, adolescents and adults. Dr. Reynolds has authored or co-authored over 150 professional publications, including journal articles, books, book chapters, and psychological tests, and has made over 250 professional presentations at national and international conferences and meetings.
Throughout my career I have been interested in more questions in psychology and education than I can pursue. My research over the past 40 years has been on varied topics, with a number of programmatic lines of inquiry. However, to a great extent, my overall research interests including those of today have not diverged too greatly from my graduate school days at the University of Oregon, when Norm Sundberg asked me to co-author an Annual Review of Psychology chapter. The chapter was to be a review of major research over the previous three years in the area of assessment of psychopathology. Our chapter (Sundberg, Snowden, & Reynolds, 1978) was reframed as reflected in the title: Toward assessment of personal competence and incompetence in life situations. This characterizes much of my work in the area of psychological test development, and my interest in studying psychosocial characteristics and competencies of persons. It is reflected in my published measures of depression in children, adolescents, and adults; suicidal ideation in adolescents and adults; anxiety in adults; psychopathology in adolescents; psychological adjustment in adolescents; bullying, bully- victimization, bully victimization distress, and school violence anxiety in children and adolescents; and social and prevocational knowledge of adolescents and adults with intellectual disability. I have also studied positive characteristic of persons, including academic and social self-concept, and more recently, the study of moral cognition.
My research interests go beyond psychometrics and test construction to include research and writing on the treatment of depression in children and adolescents using cognitive behavior therapies; the nature and study of internalizing disorders in children and adolescents; the study of depression in children, adolescents, and adults; suicidal ideation and behavior in adolescents and adults; depression in adolescents and adults with intellectual disability, the diagnostic utility of computer administered and clinical interviews of depression and anxiety; and the study of a facet model of self-concept, including academic, social, and physical self-concept, among other studies.
More recently, my research has included investigations of exposure to school and community violence in children and adolescents and the potential psychosocial impact that it has on young people; and the study of bullying, bully-victimization and the internalizing and externalizing outcomes related to bully-victimization. I have initiated several investigations of deliberate self- harm in children, adolescents, and adults, with an on-going study of self-harm and mental health characteristics in emerging adults.
My research was acknowledged by the American Psychological Association in 2013, when I received the Senior Scientist Award from the APA Division of School Psychology. An invited article “Catching Students Before They Fall” based on my formal presentation at APA as was published in The School Psychologist and provides brief autobiographic information related to my research and career in psychology. The attached provides a list of selected recent and representative publications.
