Crimson and Gold Connection; Dr. Don Ward

Welcome to Crimson and Gold Connection. I am Dustin Triber and today's guest is Dr. Don Ward. He's just retired from Pittsburgh State University. He was in the Department of Psychology and Counseling and spent 40 and a half years. Dr. Ward, thank you so much for coming in. You're welcome. Glad to be here, Dustin. And today we have you in because you're actually, even though you just retired, you're still getting achievements in an award from the American Counseling Association. They will be honoring you with the Thomas J. Swini Award for Visionary Leadership and Advocacy. So congratulations on winning this award. Thank you. Well, tell us a little bit about yourself and your time here at Pitt State and what initially brought you here. Well, it's been a wonderful experience of four and a half years. In some ways, I still feel as if I'm one of the youngsters on campus. Everybody was older than I went. When I came many years ago, it's been a really good place to work. I came here in 1976. So I've seen many changes in the world and the nation and certainly at the university. I love helping people. And I found that my niche because I'm so interested in academic things

is teaching others to do that. Fun I can make more impact by training people. So my primary work has been teaching at the graduate level in psychology and counseling, teaching concerts and psychologists how to work with people and to help them. And that's pretty much. And then I would just completely surprised and flabbergasted when I received the news that I have been given in a major national award by the Professional Association. This is my national international peers of over 50,000 people as that group. And basically, I think it's recognizing that even at a university such as arts, which is a regional university, non-doctoral running until the nursing degree now, has some of us and there are others too who work at a regional and a national level and are pretty active besides everything we're doing here. It takes some work

to do that. It takes a certain picture. And I think that's part of the vision. My son uses the terms, the big picture and the little picture and many people prefer one or the other. But what I've always been interested in is the combination of the two and how they meet and how it help people to understand that both with counseling people that are upset and hurting and with teaching people to do that just in general. I think it's a good life lesson. And I guess the abgesy part is not so much that I worked with a legislature and any of those kinds of things who is more advocating for people to help people thrive and do better and help them if they're hurting. But also kind of my lifelong motto is loving and learning. And I think those two things you can't beat knowledge and caring are really important. I try if nothing else, that's how teaching works, that's how parenting works, that's how counseling works, all those kind of really

life works better when we're doing those things. So that's a great deal. So some of my, I think some of the ward, I know it was nominated by my colleagues here. And that was such a wonder. And they kept a secret from me. Didn't you know that you catch on? I didn't. But I think it has to do with the fact that I've been, I was active in building our current counseling program here. And working all the way from when I was at the beginning when I came here, most people working in a field as counselors were underqualified. But we just didn't have trained people so much. So that's changed a lot from a little 32 hour program, graduate program to a 60 hour plus program with lots of time in the field. And that besides the work both state level was president of state association and working at the national level. I was editor of a journal and that's pretty unusual. That takes a lot. I check with my wife and my chairperson before I agreed to do that. That's a lot of work.

And usually the doctoral place you have lots of doctoral students to do a lot of the work. But I really, really enjoyed that. I find I am very, very academic and scholarly. The longer I've lived the more I know I should have known that. I love school for the beginning. And it was the one thing I was good at. So I find the way to stay in school all by life, you know. So that that piece has been important. And I also was president of my national group work association. That's a division of that American counseling. Socialist people specializing work with groups which are more and more important people are understanding now how to it's different than working with an individual working in groups. And the other thing I was on the national accreditation board which accredited programs and was vice chair for four years. We were the first programming Kansas to be nationally accredited. And now K state and some others are too. So all of those things together. And I never thought about it for any and I published two, about two books, about 50 articles. I think I didn't think about it

at the time. I was just trying to do the things in which I was interested. And one of the tricks I found is to me, you don't start these things to try to be a big shot, which you do is you volunteer. They're always looking for volunteers to help in organizations. You probably know that in your work too. And once you get in, if you'll do some things and do some work, usually then they'll tap you and ask and see if you can do the next thing. If you can't you stay there, you know, you can you move on. So those kinds of things all, but it all really came back to how can I best help teach people within our structure here to help other people. The university's been very supportive. They won't get in the way of your work. I guess we want to say if you work hard, it's always very supportive. And we have a really good always have known to have a really good faculty and psych and counseling. That really works together and really works with with students, you know. So we get an awful lot of people select a major, change a major because they're actually able to talk with somebody in our

department, you know, that they had for a class. So that sort of sums a lot of it up. I've had a lot of just a lot of good experiences with different faculty members in the department by chairman, Dr. Herford, Dr. Bachner and Brannock and spirit in the counseling section of our department and many, many others and Dr. Scott, I've known him since he came here and his daughter, oldest daughter went to school with my sons, we've known each other over the years and keep track. I think it's been a really good experience. It was different. I talked for three years at Ball State, which was doctoral granting in Indiana. And even my first three years, if you believe it, out of my doctorate in the 70s, I was teaching for Ball State. They were offering a master's in counseling on air force bases in Europe. So I got to go and teach without having to salute anybody on air and see Europe. For a working class kid, you know, I was the first one who went to college,

my family. That was a big deal. Wonderful because I'm a real fan of ancient England and we got to live there and teach there and of ancient Roman history too. And I got to visit there and really loved it. Dr. Ward, congratulations on winning the American Counseling Association. Thomas J. Swini Award for Visionary Leadership and Advocacy. And thank you so much for coming in speaking with us on Crimson and Gold Connection.