Raymond D. Fowler, PhD, who died at age 84 on March 17, 2015, gave more years than most to APA – from council member to board member to treasurer to president to nearly 14 years as the association's chief executive officer. His influence during those years is reflected in the title of one of APA's top award: The Raymond D. Fowler Award for Outstanding Contributions to APA, which has been awarded annually since 2004.
Fowler's service to APA was part of a career that blended academic achievement with practical forays into societal issues that included prison reform, civil rights, international reconciliation and a high-profile post-mortem psychological investigation of eccentric multimillionaire Howard Hughes.
Fowler was born in 1930 in Jasper, Ala., and spent most of his childhood in that state. He began his undergraduate studies at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tenn. raising tuition in the summers by selling Bibles door-to-door and delivering Coca-Cola to rural outposts in Alabama. He transferred in 1950 to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, where he earned a BA and an MA in psychology. He earned a doctorate, with a specialization in clinical psychology, in 1957 from Pennsylvania State University. Fowler said he was not planning to return to Alabama “partly because of the racism that was so endemic there, but I found myself preoccupied with the growing civil rights movement and wanted to be involved in some way.” He joined the University of Alabama as an assistant professor and assistant director of the psychological clinic there. He served as department head from 1965 to 1983, before being named professor emeritus in 1986.
During his tenure at the university, he was active in the civil rights movement, joining the Alabama Council on Human Relations and serving as its vice president.
Fowler's academic research focused on personality assessment, criminal behavior and substance abuse. He published more than 70 articles, books, chapters and other publications during his career. Fowler's research led in the early 1960s to development of system using computers to interpret data collected for the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. That system has been used to generate personality reports on almost 2 million individuals in the United States and abroad, and became the prototype for many other computer-based systems used in psychological testing in the United States and abroad.
His expertise crossed over from academia to a series of activities away from the college campus. During a particularly active stretch in the '70s, following a court-ordered reform, he evaluated every prisoner in the Alabama prison system to develop rehabilitation programs for them. That was followed his being retained by Howard Hughes' estate to conduct what Fowler termed “a postmortem personality assessment, known as a psychological autopsy, to determine Hughes's mental status and level of function throughout his life span.” Hughes had died without a will and the estate said later that the results of the assessment saved them millions of dollars in avoidance of frivolous lawsuits.
Fowler closed the decade with the first of several trips to China, as psychologists there began to re-establish relations with Western psychology. In 1987, he joined the University of Tennessee in Knoxville as professor and head of its psychology department, where he remained until he joined APA as executive vice president and chief executive officer.
Fowler began his tenure with APA in 1965, when he was elected to its Council of Representatives. In 1979, he was elected to the Board of Directors, becoming treasurer in 1983 and president in 1988. He spent the latter year dealing with financial emergencies within the organization. It was “not a pleasant time to be president or, for that matter, a member of the Board of Directors,” he wrote in “Computers, Criminals, an Eccentric Billionaire, and APA: A Brief Autobiography.” Four months after his presidency ended, Fowler became APA's vice president and CEO.
During his nearly 14-year tenure as APA CEO, Fowler oversaw the healing of APA finances, the building of a new headquarters, retention of the academic wing of APA membership and an increase in morale and diversity among APA staffers. His lasting influence within the association is evidenced by the establishment of three awards bearing his name: The Raymond D. Fowler Award for Outstanding contributions to APA, the Raymond D. Fowler Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Professional Development to Graduate Students, and the Raymond D. Fowler Award given to an APA staff member for distinguished service.
On June 14, 2015, family, friends and colleagues gathered at the American Psychological Association in Washington, D.C., to pay tribute to former CEO Raymond D. Fowler, PhD. The gathering is viewable in this YouTube videoopens in new window.