RickRayfield

 Welcome to my web site where I stash info for myself and others

Call me if you need something NOW.  802 229-8237
Content previously on this web site is still available on request. Probably.

eMail:  rayfieldvt@aol.com

USPS:  PO Box 819, Waitsfield VT 05673
Shipping: Tempest Book Shop, 5031 Main St, Waitsfield VT 05673

Education

• University of Chicago  PhD 1980 Biopsychology
• University of Chicago  AM  1977 Biopsychology
• University of Chicago AB   1974  Philosophical Psychology- New Collegiate Division
• Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality 1981 SAR Certificate
• Various courses at Aurora College (1969), St Dominic College (1969-70), N Illinois University (1972) and Roosevelt University (1980-1986 Art History)

Some of My Teachers

Israel Goldiamond,  Gene Gendlin, E Hazel Murphy, Elsie Pinkston, Al Rechtschaffen, Howard Moltz, Bruno Bettelheim, Eckerd Hess, Lew Seiden

Richard Mintell, Wardell Pomeroy, Stuart Kauffman, Robert Tapp, Bob Schuster, Vivian Smith & Joel Pokorny, Sal Maddi, Bill Wimsatt, Susan Weininger

Ted Cohen, TedMcIlvenna, George Beadle, Howard Wainer, Orville Baker, Barry Bauman, Michael Limoli  William Thomas McKinley and some without photos  click for a phrase on what they taught me

My Teaching

Teaching
Roosevelt University  1979-1986  Assistant and Associate Professor
Norwich University    1990-1993  Part-time Faculty
Trinity C0llege            1994              Adjunct Faculty
St Joseph College        1996-2012   Adjunct Faculty
                                                         and Liberal Studies Program Head

Courses taught:    (bold- taught often)
 click here for brief description of these courses

• Learning
• Motivation
• Psychopharmacology
• Behavior Analysis
• Advanced Research Methods
• Intro Statistics
• Intermediate Statistics
  
• Intro to Psychology
• Human Sexuality 
• Personality
• Physiological Psychology
• Brain-Behavior Methods Practicum
• Human Development 
• Undergraduate Thesis Supervision
• Master Thesis Supervision
• History and Systems of Psychology 
• Psychology of Art
• Psychology of Fear    click for content
• Foundations of Liberal Studies   click for content
• Symposium on Liberal Studies

Welcome ! Here I am as a teacher.

    Hi- I’m Rick Rayfield.  I taught from 1997 to 2012 at St Joseph College, usually commuting one day a week from Vermont to West Hartford CT, and daily on-line.  It was a great experience- interesting students,  eager colleagues, and a can-do atmosphere. Previously I taught in Vermont at Norwich College/Vermont College, and Trinity College.
From 1979 to 1986 I taught and did research at Roosevelt University in Chicago, where I was granted tenure. I resigned and moved to Vermont to raise my family near grandparents and to take over my family’s book shop.
I have taught  Boy Scouts, and Red Cross swimming and skiing in the local schools and rec programs, and I am a long-time volunteer teaching nature and ecology in the local elementary school. With a reduced teaching load at present, I am finally writing up a series of laboratory studies for journal publication, a sort of sabbatical.

   My college and graduate training was at the University of Chicago from 1970 to 1980, AB AM and PhD.  My pre-Chicago experiences  include St Bede Academy, Aurora College and St Dominic College, all Catholic rooted despite my skeptical Protestant background.   I spent the summer of 1972 in Greece and Turkey with a Northern Illinois University program studying Greek literature and culture, and New Testament.  My undergraduate degree was an interdisciplinary program in philosophy and psychology, housed in the New Collegiate Division.  My PhD is in Biopsychology from The University of Chicago. Among my teachers were Al Rechtschaffen who developed the definitions of sleep stages based on EEG, Pete and Lori Grossman who pioneered work in neurotransmitter coding of feeding and drinking,  Martha McClintock who discovered human menstrual synchrony,
Bob Schuster who became the head of NIDA and later of the WHO drug programs, Elsie Pinkston who was an early proponent of operant training by parents in social work settings,
Eugene Gendlin who was a colleague of Carl Rogers and developed data-based assessment of “touchy-feely” psychotherapies, including his “focusing” method,
Stuart Kauffman who is a leader in complexity research,
Lew Seiden who was a founder of modern psychopharmacology and in whose lab I made the initial observations leading to my dissertation,
Hazel Murphy who demonstrated brain plasticity in adult cats as well as young cats, dogs, rabbit, and monkeys, and taught me brain surgery and behavior testing, and pulled me in biopsychology as a student technician,
Eckhard Hess who was a colleague of Konrad Lorenz and among a wide variety of research interests teased out the factors in egg hatching synchrony and was a founder of pupillometry,
and Israel Goldiamond, my doctoral adviser, known as an operant purist, with applications ranging from stuttering to bulimia and a crusader in favor of constructional rather than pathological approaches to treating behavior problems. I built an animal lab in Goldiamond’s clinic, tying together basic research with the assessment of human intervention. As a Goldiamond student, I was present and active at the founding of the Association for Behavior Analysis, originally MABA, now ABAI. In his clinic I was involved in the treatment of stuttering, drug addiction, eating disorders, and a range of psychiatric presentations which were thrown to the “behaviorists”.

  I studied for a SAR certificate at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in order to teach human sexuality.  Wardell Pomeroy (second author of both Kinsey studies) was the Dean and our primary teacher.   When I left Roosevelt University, my sections of human sexuality accounted for about one quarter of the psychology department’s total enrollment.

   I took art history and studio courses while a faculty member at Roosevelt University, and studied painting conservation and frame construction with the Assistant Conservator Barry Bauman  at the Art Institute of Chicago.  These have informed my Psychology of Art course and my History and Systems of Psychology course, among other applications.

    I have done research in the visual system plasticity and taste preferences in cats, treatment with stutterers and heroin addicts, and operated human, pigeon, monkey, and rat labs.  The pigeons were demonstrating that signal detection theory applies to time perception, showing that errors of judgment are indeed rational decisions.  My rat work looks at how schedules of reinforcement produce profound effects on bowel motility, a likely analog of human irritable bowel syndrome.   I can produce and control diarrhea by robust behavioral mechanisms that are untouched by drugs or diet, in seeming paradoxical ways.
My experiences also include consulting with Matt Israel to develop acceptable methods to punish self-injurious behavior of institutionalized autistic children. Then for over a decade in Vermont I consulted and then developed a replacement for complete control and data acquisition for human operant research at the University of Vermont Human Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory.   I developed computerized systems used world-wide for measuring maximum oxygen uptake ( VO2 max) in the early days of personal computers (1974-1990).  These were used in research, athletic evaluation, notably in US training camps for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and cardiac rehabilitation.   I worked with Joan Darbee at the University of Kentucky integrating breathing valves and gas handling with a mass spectrometer and writing computer software to measure alveolar health for evaluating different therapies to alleviate COPD and asthma.

    For 15 years (1997 to 2012), I taught psychology in West Hartford CT at St Joseph College  (now University of St Joseph)– Intro, Personality, History and Systems of Psychology, Human Development, Human Sexuality, Psychology of Fear, Psychology of Art,  and Behavior Analysis.
I was the program director for the Liberal Studies progam at St Joseph from 2007 to 2012. It was licensed as an on-line interdisiplinary degree program but never had enough in-house on-line courses to fly that way.  The Dean who hired me bailed out when the College decided not to reapply for licensure due to a lack of sufficient on-line courses. Because of student need and my background in interdisciplinary study,  I stayed on so that students who lost their major could exit with a degree.

  For about twenty-five years, I have been a parent volunteer teaching nature and ecology in the Fayston Elementary School. The Four Winds Nature Institute trains the parents and other comunity volunteers, and then the parents come into the classroom, coordinating with the teachers. The five year rotating curriculum is keyed to Vermont science standards, but is notable for getting the students out into the woods for observations of the classroom material.  Fayston School ranked #1 in all Vermont in reading and math standard tests in 2013, and recently ranked fifth in all New England in standardized science testing.

  My other work includes owning the Tempest Book Shop with video rental.  This dovetails nicely with teaching liberal studies, including using of film as a teaching tool for interdisciplinary work.   I have been building my house since 1988, learning and doing the concrete, carpentry, electrical, plumbing, gas, roofing, tile, painting and flooring myself.   I sing in my church choir, and with my wife in the local community chorus, Mad River Chorale and was a frequent member of the chorus in the Green Mountain Opera Festival until it folded.  Recently I have sung at the unique Unadilla Theatre in Gilbert and Sullivan classics.  Since 2002, I have been the songleader for Phi Gamma Delta at the University of Chicago’s Interfraternity Sing (IFSing.org).  I am active in my local masonic lodge and as drama director for the Central Vermont Valley of Scottish Rite where I am a 33rd degree member.   I am an Eagle Scout and served as a Scoutmaster to an inner city Scout Troop for 13 years.  In Vermont I served as Cubmaster for Cub Scout Pack 798, and as Scoutmaster for Troop 700.  I bake bread twice a week for my family and the local food shelf, as well as for other nonprofit events.  I try to maintain the simple web sites I built for my masonic lodge, my Cub Pack, the Interfraternity Sing, my grandfather’s fishing club,  our community chorus,, and my book shop (see below).  I perform weddings and civil unions as an elected  Justice of the Peace (or as a minister), serve on the local Board of Civil Authority which I presently chair, served as Democratic Town Chair (now Vice Chair), and have been elected Town Moderator since 2020.
My wife Holliday is a psychiatrist; I have four daughters born from 1985 to 2004.   So far, they have attended Wellesley College, Principia College, and Barnard College.

  This web site was started to communicate to students, friends, and family about my recovery from a stroke in 2005 (see tab).  Now I use it to stash all sorts of information (as you can see)  where people (like me) can have easy access to it.

   Rick