Wake Forest Magazine, June 2009 - Past Issues - Wake Forest ...

allowed to choose their affiliation. All of
them opted for philosophy, which meant
that psychology would have to be built from
the ground up. To accomplish that task, in
1958 the College appointed J.F. Dashiell as
consultant and interim chair.
Dashiell, who had just retired after a
distinguished career at UNC-Chapel Hill,
championed psychology as a “biosocial
science” and consequently succeeded in
securing space for the department in the new
science building—Winston Hall—then in its
planning stage. He then set about building a
faculty. His first hire, in early 1959 for arrival
that summer, was John Williams, who would
go on to a legendary career as the father of
psychology at Wake Forest and departmental
chair for thirty-four years. Together, they
continued the hunt for a second hire.
Beck, a native of the Mississippi River
town of Quincy, Illinois, was in the second
year of a postdoctoral research fellowship at
his undergraduate and graduate alma mater,
the University of Illinois, in December 1958
when he learned of the Wake Forest position
from a professor in his department. “I applied
and there was initial interest, but then I heard
nothing for months,” Beck recalls. “It was
getting to the point where I needed to find
a job for the following year. Finally, John
Williams called in May and said Dashiell had
simply forgotten about the hiring.”
Beck flew on short notice to Winston-
Salem for interviews with Dashiell, Williams,
then-acting Dean of the College Edwin G.
Wilson, Jr., and College President Harold
Tribble. “I was asked by Dr. Tribble what I
thought it would be like to move from a large
state university to a small Baptist college,”
Beck says. “I told him in essence that I
wouldn’t bother the Baptists if they wouldn’t
bother me.” He was hired.
One of Beck’s first accomplishments after
his arrival on campus in September 1959 was
construction of an animal lab, along with
supporting electronics and woodworking
shops and animal colony, in the basement
of Kitchin Hall. “By the end of that first
semester,” recalls Beck, whose specialty is
motivation, “we were conducting animal
research in the new space.” Over the years he
reckons he has supervised more than forty
master’s theses within the department’s focus
on general experimental psychology as a
training ground for potential Ph.Ds.
Beck met his wife of fifty-seven years,
Bettianne, while working as a drug-store
soda jerk in high school. They have five adult
children. “I always thought that whenever
I outgrew the institution, I’d look for
another job,” he says. “I never outgrew it. The
psychology department grew at a good pace,
Wake Forest grew from being a small regional
college to a highly ranked national university,
and we’ve always had great students. What
could be better?”
Although he won’t teach, Beck will retain
the use of his office for another year and
plans to work on a myriad of unfinished
writing projects. “I don’t have as much energy
as I used to have,” he says with a smile in
explaining the timing of his retirement, “and
fifty years is a nice round number.”
-By David Fyten
Robert C. Beck
16 wake forest magazine