Jim Persinger’s Personal Page

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

Aside from candidates in the School Psychology Program, I don't meet (face to face) many of those who take my online 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 briefly, a 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.  For most of my career at ESU, I have taught courses spanning the Secondary Education, Adaptive Education, Educational Leadership, Clinical Psychology, and School Psychology programs. At present, I’m almost exclusively a trainer of school psychologists. I was promoted from Associate to Professor in spring 2012.

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 in her ninth year as Director of ESU’s Center for Early Childhood Education.

Our daughter Emma is wrapping up seventh grade in spring 2013. Her favorite activities are horseback riding, playing soccer, piano, and reading.  She had already finished the Harry Potter and Twilight series by fifth grade, and wrapped up the Hunger Games series recently, 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.  This verifies her astute powers of observation….

Our son Aaron is wrapping up second grade. He likes cooking, Boy Scouts, motorcycle rides, Phineas and Ferb, 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 much 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 self.

I love the field of school psychology, but also have a few outside interests. My main passion, as you can probably infer from the garage shirts I usually wear, is motorcycle touring. I average well over 10k on my bike each year: in 2012, I managed 15k and I’m much hoping for 20k in 2013. Weather permitting, I’ll ride the Blue Ridge Parkway in late April, hit Death Valley on a southwest trip in mid-May, and sometime in summer join a friend for a Colorado and Utah adventure.

As I've gotten older, I almost exclusively read non-fiction:  I've figured 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, or a week hitting every scenic drive in New Mexico (doing so, by the way, is exactly 3550 miles round trip from Emporia: I’ve done it in seven days). 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?  Living in Kansas, we can do that for free much of the year.

My many professional affiliations are in my vita. I starting my 14^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 several on the KASP board with this training, and together we intend to offer this 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! Now, unfortunately, most of the legislators we lobbied are now no longer in office, so we’ll have to start all over again on that one.

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 I just published on this topic is here.

· Mindfulness for children is a big interest of mine, and something I’ve presented on at conferences in recent years. I hope to run some local groups and gain some measure of mindfulness training as “inoculation” against the stresses of childhood.

· I formerly researched 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.

· 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 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, and though recently retired has continued doing work in the region. 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.

A few pics from over the years, just for fun:

Family spring 2012. Aaron was just barely able to hold out long enough for the “nice” picture with his sister to be taken:

First day of my school psychology internship, 1992.	First week as a professor, 2000. A correlation = causation fallacy would suggest that work in higher education creates grey hairs, receding hairline and need for trifocals.
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 Colorado’s Pike’s Peak Summer 2011

Arizona’s Petrified Forest, Spring 2012

Highway 55, New Mexico, Spring 2012: Didn’t pass a building, gas

station or another vehicle for nearly two hours. Fun, but…anxiety producing.

San Luis Skyway, Colorado, Summer 2012. One of the most

beautiful stretches of road in the world. Rain, no problem!