Matthew Mayer:
CLASS OF 1969
Milford Mill High School/AcademyClass of 1969
Baltimore, MD
Sudbrook Junior High SchoolClass of 1966
Baltimore, MD
Bedford Elementary SchoolClass of 1963
Baltimore, MD
Matthew's Story
Life
I live in Rahway, New Jersey. I am an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University in the special education program and an associate editor of School Psychology Quarterly, the research journal for Division (16) of School Psychology of the American Psychological Association. My research interests include school violence and disruption, cognitive-behavioral interventions, and methodological issues in school violence and related social and behavioral research. I have been active nationally with colleagues in special education and school psychology, addressing the needs of students with emotional/behavioral difficulties, and also facilitating a national organization addressing school violence issues. I took the Rutgers position in 2006, after having spent four years as a faculty member in the College of Education at Michigan State University. A quick life path overview follows.
After graduating Milford Mill High School in 1969, I went to University of Maryland, where I spent more time on non-academics, getting involved in various causes (anti-war, anti-nuclear, free university, etc.). After dropping in and out several times, I worked different jobs for a few years. I returned part time in 1974 and finished my B.S. in 1978. I was self-employed as a contractor for the next 10 years until I returned to my activist roots, doing educational support work with Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington for several years. I followed my boss to work in a position in foster care as an educational case manager. At that time, I returned to graduate school at UMd in special education to earn my Masters and teacher certification. I complet...Expand for more
ed that program and took a position in Montgomery County, Maryland, where I was a special education teacher for eight years in the area of emotional/behavioral disorders. I began my Ph.D. studies when I started teaching in Montgomery County in 1994, and after having completed my Ph.D. in 2001, I took a faculty position at Michigan State in Fall, 2002.
Over the years, I have been involved in various political and social change causes, such as providing first aid during the seizure of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in D.C. by the American Indian Movement (A.I.M.) in 1972. The seven days and nights spent in that building were an educative experience one carries for life. I helped found a student-owned food co-op at UMd in 1975 that still operates 40 years later. During later years, I broadened my interests into art and indigenous cultures, studying and collecting art and craft work. My major interests have remained with Japanese woodblock prints (Ukiyo-e), Japanese illustrated books of the 17th-19th century (Ehon), southwestern native American pottery and textiles, northwest coast indigenous peoples'¿ art, and saddlebags and related textiles from Afghanistan and nearby areas. I also had the privilege of learning violin making in the late 1970s with Willis Gault (deceased, 1990), under whose instruction I made two stringed instruments: a violin and a viola d'amore. That was a Camelot period in my life. I have been involved in other endeavors, many having to do with working with troubled kids, helping them and those close to them to discover and leverage talents within to foster success in school and life. Those experiences have been the most rewarding of all.
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