Jim Persinger’s Personal Page

For those who want to know more about my education and professional background and affiliations, click here to see my vita.

Aside from candidates in the School Psychology Program, I don't meet (face to face) many of those who take my classes in spring or summer.  Here are a few professional and personal things to let you know me a bit.

I earned a B.A. and an M.S. at Emporia State University in ’88 and ‘90, then studied at the University of Kansas while working in education for about nine years.  I primarily worked as a school psychologist after earning an Ed.S. in 1992, but throughout my career have concurrently had roles of preschool coordinator, program evaluator, and teacher for students with autism.  I completed my Ph.D. in 1999, serendipitously at the same time a position opened in ESU’s Department of Psychology and Special Education, and started as an assistant professor in 2000.

I have been Director of the School Psychology Program since 2002.  Currently, I teach courses spanning the Secondary Education, Adaptive Education, Educational Leadership, Clinical Psychology, and School Psychology programs.

My wife Keely and I met as students at the University of Kansas, and have been married since 1994.  She’s been a school psychologist in Abilene, Junction City, Manhattan, Flint Hills Coop (Emporia), and Eureka.  She ultimately switched hats, and is now approaching her seventh year as Director of ESU’s Center for Early Childhood Education.

Our daughter Emma is in sixth grade, and her favorite activities are going on bike rides with me, playing soccer, tap dancing, and reading.  She already has finished the Harry Potter and Twilight series, so I’m happy to say that she devours books!  Her unwavering goal is to be a veterinarian or a teacher.  I’ve discussed with her the option of being a professor, which she says is “boring” and consists of sitting at a desk all day.  That is verification that she is an astute observer….

Our son Aaron is in first grade. He likes Phineas and Ferb, Smurfs, riding his bike, playing the Wi, elephants, helping daddy cook, and soccer.  I have personal and/or professional connections with most of the staff in his school, so the boy doesn't stand a chance of getting away with anything!

We have a dog at home named Oliver.  He is, depending on how you like to frame it, either “mischievous” or “incorrigible.” I have formal training and experience in applied behavior analysis, and have drawn one conclusion:  it is generally fruitless to try it on a miniature schnauzer, let alone on children, spouse, or yourself.

I love the field of school psychology, but also have a few outside interests. My main passion, as you can probably infer from the shirts I usually wear, is motorcycle touring. My bike, Scruffy, is so named because I scratched it the day I picked it up at the dealer. I average 9,500 miles on it a year. ESU owes me a course release this year, so in 2012, I’m angling for 15k.

As I've gotten older, I almost exclusively read non-fiction:  I'm getting wise enough to figure out that anything an author can dream up will never be more interesting than real history and science.  I especially enjoy military history such as John Keegan, whose writings on the nature of combat are compelling (see The Face of Battle). Besides professional publications (School Psych Review, Communique, etc…) I never fail to read each issue of National Geographic and Smithsonian Magazine, and I read most of the New York Times daily.

My idea of a perfect vacation is a three-day ride through the Ozarks at breakneck speeds, scraping floorboards along the way. But motorcycle aside, a great vacation is to tour museums, art galleries and historical sites.  I never could fathom why somebody would pay to go someplace like a Jamaican resort for fun and sun all day.  Why would I want to pay to get sunburned and sweaty?  I live in Kansas, so can do that for free much of the year.

My television preferences are predictably manly: I never miss an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Justified, The Walking Dead, and Southpark: they’re all brilliant, though my wife begs to differ on Southpark. I think she doesn’t get it, but she thinks I don’t, so who knows?

People notice and ask about this sometimes, so I’ll just spell it out: One or both of my hands are sometimes clawed, I rarely carry things using my right arm (because I’ll drop them) and my shoulder on that side doesn’t generally move correctly. My ulnar nerve, from shoulder to hand, is in bad shape from an accident. Then I have carpal tunnel problems atop it, sigh. I will often look pretty clumsy in carrying or manipulating things, and often will recruit people to help carry things for me. That’s why. My motorcycling days are numbered, thus the fierce pursuit of it.

My many professional affiliations are in my vita below. I am in my 12^th consecutive year of service to KASP on its executive board. I served as 2008 President of the Kansas Association of School Psychologists, and organized the most heavily-attended KASP conference ever. My most prominent professional service activities at present involve serving as KASP webmaster, trying to create a statewide network of PREPaRE-certified crisis prevention/intervention professionals in order to create a Kansas response team, and trying to help get an NCSP parity bill passed in Kansas. In addressing the crisis intervention piece, I was the first PREPaRE certified trainer in Kansas and have helped train over four dozen individuals so far in crisis response: there are now several on the KASP board with this training, and together we intend to offer this training throughout Kansas. In addressing the NCSP parity bill, ESU emerita Sharon Karr (former director of ESU’s School Psychology Program) led the charge, with several of us offering verbal and written testimony to the House Education committee. We have a House Bill written and sponsored, but (due to budgetary concerns) it has not yet been brought up for a vote. If it were brought up for a vote in this fiscal climate, it would tank!

My research interests are diverse:

· I am working to pilot a sociometric approach for use with Tier 1 of RTI:  a quick snapshop of a classroom, done in two minutes, which can with validity and reliability ascertain which children are likely to have increasingly social and emotional problems barring intervention.  I have presented on the topic at national conferences and will continue this line of research for several more years.

· I am a huge advocate for school-based mental health services and particularly for population-based services (i.e., an emphasis on prevention). An example of a paper (in press) as relates to this topic is here.

· I research theory and technique in use of role-playing games as social skills intervention with socially maladjusted and seriously emotionally disturbed juveniles, adult international students adjusting to campus-life, and gifted students of all ages.

· The development of systemwide prosocial competence programs is a topic of interest for me.

· In the heyday of the full inclusion movement, I extensively studied and have published on Kansas teachers’ definitions of inclusive education.  Practicing classroom teachers have somewhat different takes on inclusion, and actually operate from a very different philosophical and values foundation, than “inclusion experts” do.  You folks who worked in the schools during the 1990s, and experienced the “inclusion for all” push, know what I’m talking about. Ask me about this topic, and I’ll randomly prattle (or rant) for 30 minutes without taking a breath.

Final note:  I am proud to say that my brother Jeff was in the Air Force for 25 years. Aside from fun spots such as Bosnia, he also did multiple tours of Iraq and Afghanistan throughout 2007-10 before retiring in Dec 2010. He’s been away from his wife and young son more often than he’s been home in recent years. Regardless of how you feel about our nation’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, offer your support to the troops. He’s on the far right in this pic here, in the traditional pose the men strike when at a famous location.

Aaron walking his dog on campus.	Emma's more ornery than she looks.
As close to a “nice” family picture as I’ve ever gotten out of them.	Don’t let the cute looks deceive you: he’s a sofa eater and trash can pillager.
If you know who this is (hint:  Sync magazine named him the #1 nerd of all time) you are indeed nerdly.	If you know who this is, you watch too much reality tv.
My brother, back from many years overseas, and I got together in summer 2010 in Las Vegas.	Meeting Penn and Teller after their show: Absolutely amazing performance. My favorite is their goldfish trick.

Heading to the top of Pike’s Peak Summer 2011