James Gordon Kelly
James Gordon Kelly (December 21, 1929 - May 16, 2020) was most recently an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) where he retired from in 1999.
During the summer before entering college, he read: Listening with the Third Ear by Theodor Reik which was influential in his later work with community-organizations and developing his ecological model.
Jim Kelly's first research study at OSU explored the way students interact with each other and the faculty in high schools that varied in population exchange.
The study supported his notion that person-environment fit was an important consideration for the boys’ coping success as they transitioned to high school.
Kelly became Dean of the Lila Acheson Wallace School of Community Service and Public Affairs at the University of Oregon in 1972.
He was Dean until 1981 when he left for his last full-time academic position in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).
The idea was to help create an organizational structure and process that would enable each citizen to collaborate in a manner that was compatible with their own preferences and talents.
[7][8] They represent his last large project and a culmination of topics and research questions that developed from his goals expressed at the earliest stages of his career.
[9] This contribution was based on two papers he presented at the 1967 meeting of the American Psychological Association “The Ecology of Adaptation” and “Towards a Theory of Preventive Interventions”.
He spent the subsequent 50-plus years demonstrating how to think and act ecologically in collaborating with diverse community groups and organizations on issues defined by the local residents.
His role in the development of the ecological metaphor for understanding and changing human communities shifted thought in Psychology and related fields such as education and public health.
His ecological thinking also informed his work on the process of change and the development of academic-community partnerships which are guiding principles in Community Psychology.
These include the development of trust by honoring local context and cultural humility and giving away the by-line so that the researcher is not the focus of the collaboration.
He wrote about these ideas in some of his earliest works which he compiled into the book Becoming Ecological: An Expedition Into Community Psychology[10] at the urging of colleagues and students.
Kelly's ecological ideas expanded to include a focus on structures and processes which he describes in his chapter for the Handbook of Community Psychology.
