Robert Reardon, PhD

Robert C. Reardon, Professor Emeritus, was born in San Antonio, Texas November 20, 1940.  He grew up in Mason (pop. 2,000) and graduated from high school in 1959 with 41 students.  Reardon received a BS in social studies from Texas Lutheran College in 1963 with plans to become a high school counselor.  This led him to pursue graduate study at Florida State University in counseling and guidance and counselor education that earned him M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 1965 and 1968, respectively. 

Deciding to remain in Florida rather than return to Texas, he held full-time counseling and teaching positions at FSU for 42 years from 1966 until his retirement in 2007.  He was first employed as a counselor in the Counseling Center, and later as a tenured faculty member in the Division of Student Affairs, a unique appointment.  He was Director of Instruction, Research, and Evaluation in the Career Center; Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems; and Co-Director (with James Sampson, Jr.) of the Center for the Study of Technology in Counseling and Career Development.  He coordinated the career specialization in Psychological Studies in Education in the College of Education for two decades.

FSU has enabled him to maintain an office in the Career Center after his retirement where he provides mentorship to current and former students and staff, administers over $800K university foundation funds for eight career advisor scholarships and related programs, and pursues his research interests in career service delivery.  For over two decades, he has organized dinners for 30-60 FSU staff, students, and alumni at National Career Development Association meetings held throughout the nation. 

Bob has coauthored and edited a score of books and monographs with FSU colleagues and friends, an activity that he finds fulfilling and rewarding.  The most recent work is Career Development and Planning: A Comprehensive Approach (2022) for undergraduate students.  The computer-and Internet-based Client and Professional Interpretive Reports for the Self-Directed Search interest inventory which he coauthored have been used by more than 650K persons worldwide. 

Reardon has published more than 140 articles in journals focusing on the research and development of innovative career programs for college students and adults and featuring the use of educational and occupational information.  The CCIS program he developed at FSU in 1972 (now embedded in the Career Center) logs over 22,000 career service contacts annually, has been reported in more than 60 scholarly articles, and has served as a field-training site for over 400 graduate students.  Moreover, visitors from over 44 countries have visited FSU to view these programs in operation.

Bob received the Eminent Career Award from the National Career Development Association in 2003, the Merit Award from the National Vocational Guidance Association in 1983, and was co-recipient with Dr. Jim Sampson, Jr., of the Ralph Berdie Memorial Research Award and the Extended Research Award from the American Counseling Association in 1996 and 1999, respectively. 

Peter Scanlon, Ph.D.

Peter Scanlon received a doctoral degree from the program of Counseling Psychology of Florida State University, in 1979. He was licensed as a psychologist in 1980. He has had the opportunity to work in a state inpatient hospital for adults with serious and persistent mental illness, a correctional facility, a psychological testing program, an inpatient adolescent unit, and a community mental health center. After a four-year stint in academics, he began the work that turned out to be his life’s work in community mental health.

In 1986 Dr. Scanlon founded South Bay Mental Health with the mission of encouraging disadvantaged families to self-sufficiency. As an outpatient clinic, South Bay worked with children who had been abused and neglected and with their families. The agency developed systems of care for treating trauma, helping children with behavior problems and working with families. In addition to treating anxiety and depression, South Bay developed programs for adults struggling with addictions and personality disorders and those involved in forensic programs. South Bay pioneered in-home therapy and typically provided services in natural settings including the home, schools, group living facilities and correctional facilities.

South Bay grew as the needs of the community increased. Over the more than 27 years during which he headed up South Bay, the agency grew to just under 1000 staff, with over 27 sites in two states. To provide services for individuals leaving inpatient psychiatric facilities, South Bay opened six partial hospital and day programs. In order to serve families of very young children, South Bay developed Early Intervention programs for children under the age of three which provided family treatment, developmental educators, speech and language therapist, nurses, physical therapists, and occupational therapists. South Bay established Applied Behavioral Analysis focused programs for children on the autism spectrum.

With all these programs, the problem turned to staff training and the standardization of treatment. South Bay adopted evidence-based treatment protocols for the most common disorders in children and adults. This was sometimes done in collaboration with experts in the field, including Marsha Linehan for Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, the Medical College of South Carolina in establishing the protocol for Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Treatment, and Zindel Segal for Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression. Other treatment protocols were developed from the literature for treating attention disorders, using Motivational Interviewing, using mindfulness to manage anxiety, protocols for addressing grief and grieving, and behavior management.

Each of the programs of South Bay continually went back to the basic values of the agency: guaranteeing consumer accessibility, continuity of care, accountability, collaboration with all stakeholders, and commitment to consumer empowerment.

Since retiring from South Bay, Dr. Scanlon has served as the Director of the Vandermark Foundation which supports a women’s education program in India, a program for street kids in Vietnam, providing medical services for kids with club foot and building clean water treatment programs in the Dominican Republic. The Vandermark foundation also works to support higher education programs and help them partner with NCOs in developing countries. 

Carolyn Aidman, PhD, CLD

At 3 ½ years old, I already knew how to be an engaging little girl. On Saturday nights I often visited at my grandparents’ house where they and friends played pinochle and poker, and sometimes someone would hand me a real silver quarter and tell me to save it for my college education. So, at just over 3, I knew I was a college girl and never forgot. By the time I was in 12th grade at Southwest Miami Senior High, I’d saved over $1200--big money in 1966 dollars.

I chose FSU because it was the farthest I could get from home in Miami and still be in-state. Most of my friends were going to the University of Florida, but I wanted a fresh start, so I chose a place I didn’t know much about. I did know that Tallahassee had hills, and after growing up in Miami, that was appealing. With a bachelor’s degree in Social Welfare, a master’s in Counselor Education, and a doctorate in whatever they called our program back then--Human Services and Studies, or Counseling and Human Systems--it was a great college life.

I remember students streaking from Landis Green to the Sweet Shoppe. One of them ran for mayor after that. I remember the Night of the Bayonet, when Sheriff Raymond Hamlin led troops against students and many of my friends were arrested. I got there late and just watched.

I remember my first campout at Byron, Georgia, in Houston County, for the second Atlanta Rock Festival. It was my first time ever camping, and friends had to coerce me into the van to head us home. FSU’s doctoral program was great, with a cohort of smart people from all over the world. When I took Bob Reardon‘s career development course, I came upon the concept of flextime-flexible work scheduling. I recognized flextime as something I was all about. Halfway through Bob’s class I knew I had found my dissertation topic and used his class to write the literature review.

My major professor, Harold Cottingham, immediately liked my dissertation title--Flexible Work Scheduling, Quality of Life, and Tolerance of Ambiguity. He told me it fit in with Maslow‘s hierarchy, and I needed to get busy working my way up the hierarchy. I never forgot that. And he introduced me to Dr. Don Rapp who became my outside member and juggling instructor.

My dissertation also provided a basis for my job as a retirement, personnel and collective bargaining analyst in the Florida House of Representatives, where I helped draft Florida’s flexible work scheduling, comparable worth pay, and shared-employment laws. Not long after that I was recruited by the Florida Department of Transportation HR office to work with employees in the accounting office who felt stuck and disgruntled. I was a human resource developer, working on a career development plan for and with each one.

Later, as the Director of Training, Testing and Certification for all of Florida’s child-protection professionals--public and private sector--my Florida Professional Development Center team led the development of a nationally recognized Child Protection Professional Certification program.

Then I became Director of the Office of Adolescent Health and Youth Development for the State of Georgia, where I guided 39 teen health centers and 36 male and community involvement programs in sites where the repeat teen pregnancy rates were the highest.

Since 2011 I’ve worked at Emory University as Associate Director of the Urban Health Initiative in the Dean’s office in the School of Medicine, and love my job. The students, faculty, staff, community partners, and people across the country and world are fascinating, and many are brilliant. When asked if I want to retire I can’t think of a reason why I would. The pay is great for my 20-hour a week job, the health insurance is magnificent, and there is always something to learn. And that doesn’t include the wonderful feelings I have when my team and I can improve people’s lives and make significant differences in the world.

My master’s and doctorate in counseling and my relationship with Harold Cottingham, Bob Reardon, Ann Montgomery Hingst, and Don Rapp helped set me on a path to many wonderful jobs and the desire to stay connected, which brings me to the joy of this Cottingham Colloquium 2022.