Person Profile: J. Scott Richards, PhD
Lauri Yablick, PhD
“Scott Richards typed his dissertation by a river,” Kris Hagglund told me. “If I remember correctly, he took an old Volkswagen camping van and spent his days alternately fly fishing and writing.” Hagglund suggested I confirm this with Richards, but threatening a perfectly good psychological truth with the possibility of a few nonconforming facts seemed unforgivably reckless. The truth is that Richards has balanced work, family and his other passions so skillfully that it could be the subject of folklore, and a little mystery is good for all of us.
Richards’ professional accomplishments and contributions have been highly visible in AASCIPSW. He has been active on the Research Committee for well over a decade, received our Essie Morgan Excellence Award, spent many years on the Board of Directors––including terms as vice president and president––and participated in the Outcomes Task Force. His recreational habits have been a bit less obvious, though in my unabashed search for a dark secret to disclose, he confessed to occasionally ducking out of the annual conference over the years for a round of golf.
Like that’ll book him a fishing trip on the river Styx.
Richards’ commitment to spinal cord injury has been the centerpiece of a very active professional life after completing a year-long internship at the Cleveland VA hospital. He has maintained clinical involvement while managing all the teaching, research and ever-increasing administrative responsibilities on the faculty of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) for the past thirty years. Within the field his interests have included sexuality, outcomes, life satisfaction, and pain, among others. “I encourage students to focus their careers more than I have,” Richards admitted, “but I’ve had an unusual range of opportunities and good collaborators.”
As a clinician with a strong interest in research, Richards has taken full advantage of working at what has been described as the hub of the SCI model system centers, supported by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR). “UAB has maintained model system status continuously since 1973,” Richards said. “The national SCI statistical center here is the repository of the data set for all of the model SCI centers. We have initial hospitalization data for over 20,000 people with SCI, with over 100,000 follow up visits. It has been an excellent source of projects for our residents and students.”
Richards’ long-standing interest in SCI pain remains a priority in his current and future research. Shortly before we spoke, he was awarded a grant for a pilot study using functional magnetic resonance imaging to study activation in the dorsal column of the spinal cord in order to better understand the mechanisms involved in neuropathic pain. He is also in the process of investigating the relationship between nicotine use and pain, first introduced in an article last year in the Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine describing two case studies. “Two guys having flap surgeries quit smoking and got good pain reduction, but their neuropathic pain resumed when they started smoking again,” he summarized. Additional pilot work also suggested a nicotine effect on pain, and Richards is currently involved in smoking cessation trials for pain management and also looking at the effects of nicotine gum on visceral, musculoskeletal, and neuropathic pain complaints. Stephen Wegener, also prominent in SCI research, lauded Richards’ achievements. “Richards has done pioneering work in SCI pain research, and has developed a large research engine at UAB,” he said. “He serves as vice chair in the Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation Department, which is a distinction afforded to few psychologists.”
Hagglund pointed out that Richards has published with over 100 different authors. “That says a lot about his collegiality, collaboration, and the respect that he gets from his colleagues.” He has the reputation of consistently shouldering his share or more of any project he contributes to, and is always a pleasure to work with. He has been a favorite among students as well, some of whom, like Hagglund, have also achieved prominence in the SCI community. “Students, interns and post-docs simply like to work hard for him,” Hagglund said. “He has helped many with managing the demands of life and career, and models good balance between work and home.”Considering the heft of Richards’ CV, I wondered about that. “I knew a workaholic research director who put in eighty or ninety hours per week,” Richards said. “I decided early on that I wanted to be more involved with my family, and have a life outside of work.” He has always worked hard, set reasonable goals, and established a sustainable pace, achieving productivity that suited the University, himself and his family. “I came here with a one-month old baby, and expected to stay three or four years.” The youngest of his three children is now a college senior, and his eldest will soon deliver his first grandchild. His middle daughter has stayed closest to home, working at Spain Rehabilitation Hospital while she completes her education. The whole family is close, and Richards’ retirement destination depends in part on where they all land.
Richards met his wife while teaching in inner-city Detroit. “I was there as an emergency placement; after a week’s training I had a class of 39 kids.” He attended night school to complete a certificate in elementary education, but remembers it as a terrible year. “I struggled.” he said. “My wife was a teacher there, and she was superb. She helped me get through it, and I taught for three years before I returned to graduate school.”
His undergraduate degree was in psychology, but a return to the field was not his next stop. He completed a Master’s degree in natural resources ecology, and although he rejoined us vocationally, his passion for the outdoors never waned. “I have personally witnessed Dr. Richards involved in the demise of both pheasants and trout,” said Wegener, painfully mocking my effort to uncover the skeletons in Richards’ closet. The two have often taken a detour into the glitz-free Southwest after the annual conferences in Las Vegas, and Richards’ talent shines in that setting as well. “As they say when Scott is in the field,” Wegener quipped, “ if it flies, it dies.”
Richards and his wife recently endured the chaos of rehabilitating a home that had suffered badly at the hands of its previous owner, but had the attraction of being situated on a golf course. “I cuss a lot on the golf course,” Richards said, which I suspect emerges as an animated “darn,” or a heated “dagnabbit.” He has achieved an uncommonly successful transplantation to the South, and was described by several colleagues as a true gentleman. As such, he endeavored to explain to a non-golfer the appeal of the game. “Golf is a real good stress reliever,” he assured me. “It takes concentration, like trout fishing, in a quiet green setting. The game is addicting, an exercise in intermittent reinforcement where I hit one in fifteen shots beautifully.”
He’s fibbing, I believe, because one of his golfing buddies informed me that he’s an excellent golfer, with a very low handicap. I don’t know exactly what that means, but it’s apparently good if not entirely politically correct.
So he fibs in modesty, and I’m once again haunted by Barry Corbet, admonishing that if these profiles don’t include some warts I’ll have no credibility. Inventing them has caused me no end of grief, as psychologists and social workers have shown a remarkable––and, quite frankly, disappointing––intolerance for fiction.
Remember, though, he slipped out of a meeting to go golfing.
Lauri Yablick, PhD, is with Southwest Neuropsychology Associates in Tucson, Arizona.