Richard Holland long admired his older brother, psychologist John Holland, PhD, a pioneer in the field of vocational and personality psychology. To honor his late brother, Richard has donated $150,000 to an APF fund dedicated to supporting researchers who will continue the work his brother started.
Known as the Dr. W. Bruce and Jane Walsh Fund in memory of Dr. John L. Holland, the fund will give grants each year to support scientific, scholarly or applied research and/or educational activities investigating how personality, culture and environment influence work behavior and health. The first grant of $13,000 will be awarded this summer.
"My brother John had incredible perseverance," says Richard Holland, the youngest of the three Holland brothers. "In the beginning, people laughed at his concept that personality types were an important part of career assessment, but he would get an idea and never give up."
John Holland was professor emeritus of sociology at Johns Hopkins University when he died in 2008. He developed the theory that in choosing a career, people will be more satisfied in jobs where they can be around others who are like them. He maintained that there are six personality types: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional. People of the same personality type working together in a job create a work environment that reflects their interests.
To help people identify careers that would be most satisfying, he developed several occupational assessment tools, including the Holland Vocational Preference Inventory and the Self-Directed Search, which have had widespread influence around the world.
Throughout his life, Holland updated his assessment tools as careers evolved, says Bruce Walsh, PhD, who established the APF fund in honor of John Holland.
Walsh met Holland as a student at the University of Iowa. He was intrigued by Holland's idea that environments — like people — have personalities, and he decided to pursue a doctoral degree with Holland as his advisor. After earning his PhD, Walsh went on to an academic career in counseling and vocational psychology with an emphasis on research based on Holland's theory.
"I liked his curiosity and his wry sense of humor," Walsh says. "He was an intellectual but also very attuned to people. He wanted to help people identify career paths that they would enjoy."
Holland continued to hone his theory throughout his career, which included stints at a VA psychiatric hospital, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, the American College Testing Program and Johns Hopkins University. Although he is well-known for the vocational tools he created, John Holland was deeply passionate about the importance of the research that supported his theories. For this reason, Walsh is eager to see what future investigators reveal in the area of work behavior and health.
"John Holland's research has had a staggering influence on vocational psychology, personality and organizational psychology," Walsh says. "I really wanted to honor his work and life by establishing the fund, and see that his concepts and ideas continue in the research and practice domains."
Holland and his work inspired a great deal of respect from those who knew him. In addition to Bruce and Jane Walsh, who established a fund in his honor, Psychological Assessment Resources (PAR), Holland's longtime publisher, contributed $25,000 to continue his legacy through this fund.
