Richard A. Schmuck

   We are sad to announce the passing of Richard Schmuck, who was one of the world's leading pioneers in both organization development and cooperative learning.  As colleagues and friends of Dick, we would like to provide our perspective on the significance of his work and to share some personal stories about this remarkable person.

Dick Schmuck had a long and highly successful academic career. After completing a PhD in social psychology and a Post-Doctorate with Ron Lippitt at the University of Michigan, he went to the University of Oregon where he taught for 30 years. While there he conducted research and published over 200 articles and academic books on topics in social psychology of education including his specialties -- organization development and cooperative learning. 

Most of Dick Schmuck’s writing was done in collaboration with others most notably his long-time colleague, Phil Runkel and his wife Pat Schmuck . Together Runkel and Schmuck developed their unique approach to organization development as applied and practiced in educational settings. Dick and his wife, Pat, became well known for several books on group processes in the classroom and how to make schools more accessible to everyone. In addition, Dick’s books on action research stemmed from his long and fruitful engagement in research on organization development. Dick also generously offered co-author opportunities to many of his doctoral students, including one of the authors of this piece.

During his years at Oregon, Dick taught over 1,000 students and chaired or served on a 100 plus thesis and doctoral dissertation committees. He was greatly respected by all his students and loved by many. He was a gentle teacher who was a good listener and always respectful of student ideas. As a dissertation and thesis advisor, his assistance was invaluable. He would tease out poorly expressed ideas and help provide badly needed clarity to jumbled sentences and incoherent prose.

Often, as an extension to his research and teaching, Dick provided consultation to literally thousands of educators in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. In school districts he helped create cadre of organizational consultants who could work and provide consultations to peers in their district’s schools. His consulting efforts aimed at helping teachers work more cooperatively in teams and help them use the human variety pool in their schools more effectively-

Throughout his career Schmuck’s major area of research was organization development; however, he always saw the tight connections between organization development (OD) and cooperative learning (CL).  His chapter, “Mutually Sustaining Relationships Between Organization Development and Cooperative Learning” in Brody and Davidson  (1998)  explored “how collegial relationships among the staff members of a school and teacher-student relationships in that school’s classes can reciprocally affect one another…and  become mutually enhancing and sustaining.”   He concluded “the relationship between cooperative learning and organization development is two way and reciprocal so  when teachers become more interdependent with one another, they can more readily use the skill of constructive openness, thereby improving their teaching strategies through the giving and receiving of feedback.  The cooperative school culture has norms in support of respecting everyone’s ideas and feelings, of equalitarian teamwork and collaborative effort, of openness, candor, and honesty, of warmth and friendliness, of caring for people of all ages, and of seeking self-esteem for everyone. “   

For over a decade, Richard Schmuck provided leadership in the International Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education (IASCE).  In fact, he was there at the beginning. In 1979, a committee led by Shlomo Sharan invited Schmuck to give the  keynote speech at the First International Convention on Cooperation in Education to be held in Israel.   Schmuck  agreed and presented a scholarly description on how the theory and practice of organization development had been used in a high school he worked with in Oregon to bring students into an intervention with teachers and administrators for the purpose of creating a   healthy social climate in the school.  He called the project, "Students as Participants in School-wide OD".   When asked, “what most excites you about OD?” he responded, “OD techniques can help students, teachers, and administrators use democratic cooperation to design a healthy social climate for all.”  

As the 1979 convention proceeded, a core group of the participants decided to create the International Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education (IASCE). Richard Schmuck was elected the Association’s  first president.  He continued to guide the infant organization during the next three years.  Some examples of his leadership are given below.

The 3rd IASCE Conference was held in Saskatchewan in 1985.    As that conference ended, the Board of Directors held an official meeting on the stage of the conference auditorium, inviting interested IASCE members to attend and sit in the chairs below the stage.  Very soon, a hostile and tense climate developed between the Board seated on the stage and  members seated below.  Dick Schmuck,  who had continued serving on the IASCE Board of Directors  along with others, spotted the  tension immediately. He could see  that although the physical distance between Board members and participants was small, the vertical social distance between them was considerable. Dick Schmuck changed the group dynamics of the session by announcing clearly, "I am very uncomfortable with the emotional tone of this meeting; let's change our seating arrangements!" The Board quickly descended from the stage and took seats among the participants. That simple intervention changed the emotional tone of the meeting from hostile to cordial, and the Board had a productive session as it closed out the 3rd IASCE Conference.

At  the 8th IASCE  Conference held in July, 1994 at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, Dick Schmuck was again asked to speak.   He delivered a well-received presentation in which he used the metaphor of a 15-year-old adolescent to illuminate the current development of IASCE.  During the latter part of his presentation, Dick mentioned all 54  conference presenters by name, and he identified  each individual's  contribution to IASCE, e.g., theory, research, or practice in school-based cooperative learning.   He also described their roles -- school administrator, college teacher, researcher and so on.  His attention to this kind of detail about each presenter's contribution to IASCE was inspiring.  It set a very positive tone for the remainder of the conference and helped develop a powerful sense of community where each participant could feel he or she had been worthy contributors to an international movement with shared values of cooperation.

From late 1994 through 1995 the IASCE Board experienced several internal conflicts and power struggles among various sub-groups.  Disagreements existed over issues about the production of the IASCE professional magazine: Who should be involved in preparing the magazine?  Where should it be printed?  Even more severe, some members believed that the IASCE needed to identify new leadership and establish a renewed sense of purpose and direction. Further, the Board had become bogged down in debates regarding to what extent the IASCE should focus on '”the study of cooperation in education" on the one hand, or "interventions to make classrooms and schools more cooperative" on the other.

In 1994, then-President Neil Davidson, asked Dick Schmuck if he would be willing to provide OD consultation with the Board and help members deal with some of the  issues and conflicts, they were facing.  He said, “yes.”   His initial OD consultation occurred toward the end of the Portland Conference in 1994; the second consultation took place at the IASCE Conference in Brisbane, Australia in 1995. Schmuck had told the Board in Portland that he would employ an OD design, the “Process Observation and Feedback."  He suggested interested board members could read about this design in The Fourth Handbook of Organization Development in Schools, which had been recently published with co-author Philip Runkel.    Dick continued to use the same “Observation and Feedback” design,   He carefully observed the Board as it conducted a regular meeting, and he periodically provided feedback based on these observations. He then led the IASCE Board through an S-T-P problem solving process. He asked members to identify what they perceived as the Board’s  current situation (S), the organizational targets (T) the Board would like to  pursue, and the procedures (P) the Board might use to move toward desired targets.   This process helped the board transform its internal conflicts and frustrations into productive problem-solving discussions. Both in Portland and Brisbane, Dick Schmuck’s adept consultative skills, his caring, his commitment to the IASCE, and his experience as its first President were helpful in getting the board back on track as it began planning for the Association’s next steps.

Finally, Dick Schmuck took an active role in two of the earliest IASCE publications  He prepared a chapter on "Students as Organizational Co-Participants" (Schmuck, 1980), for the first  volume, and he served as coeditor of IASCE's second volume, Learning to Cooperate, Cooperating to Learn (Slavin et.al.1985).

______________

*Portions of this appeared in our chapter, "About Richard Schmuck's Contributions to the Study of Organization Development and Cooperation in Education," In N. Davidson (Ed.) (2021).  Pioneering Perspectives in Cooperative Learning. That chapter also contains reminiscences from Dick Schmuck’s remarkable personal memoir.