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wednesday, december 3, 2003
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HOPE award winner measures hope
By Kevin Kampwirth
kkampwirth@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Courtney Kuhlen/Kansan
As he lay in a hospital bed recovering from esophagus surgery, Rick Snyder saw his theory play out firsthand.
"After talking to other recovering patients around me, it became clear that the ones with higher hope recovered more quickly," Snyder said. "The mind is the most powerful medicine cabinet in the world."
Snyder, a distinguished professor in clinical psychology, has spent the past 15 years teaching this idea. He recently received the 2003 Honor for an Outstanding Progressive Educator award. The HOPE award is an annual award given by the graduating class to recognize outstanding teaching and concern for students.
Working with hope, Snyder seeks out, measures, analyzes and relates this seemingly immeasurable concept in terms people can understand.
Snyder defines hope as the process of thinking about one's goals, along with the motivation to move toward and the ways to achieve those goals.
But for all his passion on the subject, Snyder, who's been teaching for 31 years, hasn't always rested his convictions in hope.
"With excuses, you try to break off from the bad that you've done," Snyder said. "The work focused only on the negative and didn't allow me to connect to good things."
Snyder's previous area of work focused on excuses, which he published a book about entitled, Excuses - Masquerades in Search of Grace.
Burned out on excuses, Snyder
What he found out was that goals, specifically the pathways and motivation to achieve these goals, were what many people mentioned.
took a sabbatical from 1987 to 1988 and began talking to people to get an idea of what was important to them.
Rick Snyder, M. Erik Wright distinguished professor of clinical psychology, studies and researches hope. He said he has chosen to focus on the more positive side of human beings.
Snyder developed a scale with which he could accurately measure the degree of hope, or motivation to achieve goals, that different people possess.
"This was really the other side of excuse-making in a way," Snyder said.
The scale is based on a set of 12 statements that the test-taker assigns a score of 8 for definitely true down to 1 for definitely false. After the four "decoy" questions are discarded, scores can range from 8, the lowest hope, to 64, the highest.
Snyder said results from the hope scale tests indicated that about 30 percent of participants had high hope, 40 to 50 percent medium and 20 percent had low hope.
Snyder became increasingly active in a burgeoning new field of psychology known as positive psychology, which focuses on human strengths rather than weaknesses.
When Snyder first introduced his hope theory in 1988, others in the psychology community laughed at him, dismissing hope as something that was too vague to measure and useless to measure even if it were measurable.
Snyder ignored the jeers and continued to delve deeper into the idea of hope, honing his theory into something anchored in ideas most people could understand.
"Human beings all have two sides," Snyder said. "I chose to
focus on the positive side."
Snyder's positive outlook has contributed immensely to his effectiveness as a teacher, especially in regards to his relationship with students.
In addition to winning the HOPE award this year, he also won the award in 1991.
"I really do try to step out and go to bat for students outside of class situations," he said.
teaching," Higgins said. "He keeps things fresh from year to year so that students remain interested."
Snyder currently teaches an individual differences class which centers around how people form perceptions and react to others based on perceptions.
Snyder has what he calls a "one million mile warranty" under which students, past or present, can contact him at any time. Past students of his still contact him, some from as far back as 25 years ago.
Raymond Higgins, professor of psychology, has known Snyder since 1974 and said that it's Snyder's energy that makes him unique.
"I like to think of my classes as just the start of the relationship with students," he said. "I like to think of myself as a catalyst in the student's lives."
"He's pretty innovative in his
"I try to sensitize students within these courses on how they can get along with each other, while at the same time maintaining their own uniqueness, which is important," he said.
Snyder speaks with a certain calm confidence as he projects his views of a world where, day by day, more flexible thinking is becoming increasingly important.
Snyder said that a course like this was especially important going into a 21st century American landscape that is as racially diverse as it is.
From a teacher of hope, this seems ironically appropriate.
—Edited by Michael Owells
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