Robert Sternberg

Robert J. Sternberg (born December 8, 1949) is an American psychologist and psychometrician.

He is a Professor of Human Development at Cornell University.

Sternberg has a BA from Yale University and a PhD from Stanford University, under advisor Gordon Bower.

He holds thirteen honorary doctorates from two North American, one South American, one Asian, and nine European universities, and additionally holds an honorary professorship at the University of Heidelberg, in Germany.

He is a Distinguished Associate of the Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge.

Among his major contributions to psychology, the most notable are the triarchic theory of intelligence and several influential theories related to creativity, wisdom, thinking styles, love, hate, and leadership.

Sternberg was born on December 8, 1949, to a Jewish family, in New Jersey.

Sternberg suffered from test anxiety as a child.

As a result, he became an inadequate test taker.

This upset him and he reasoned that a test was not an adequate measurement of his true knowledge and academic abilities.

When he later retook a test in a room that consisted of younger students, he felt more comfortable and his scores increased dramatically.

Sternberg later constructed the Test of Mental Ability (STOMA), his first intelligence test.

This problem of test-taking is what sparked Sternberg's interest in psychology.

Sternberg was an undergraduate student at Yale University.

Neither of Sternberg's parents finished high school, and he attended Yale only by achieving a National Merit Scholarship and receiving financial aid.

He did so poorly in his introductory psychology class that his professor insisted that he pursue another major.

Determined to succeed, Sternberg earned a BA summa cum laude, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, gaining honors and exceptional distinction in psychology.

Sternberg continued his academic career at Stanford University, where he earned his PhD, in 1975.

Sternberg returned to Yale as an assistant professor of Psychology in 1975, and would work at Yale for three decades, eventually becoming the IBM Professor of Psychology and Education, as well as the founder and director of the Center for the Psychology of Abilities, Competencies and Expertise.

A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Sternberg as the 60th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

He left Yale in 2005 to assume the position of Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University, where he quickly began his job search for a promotion to a Provost position.

Ray Hunkins, a UW Law College graduate, former counsel to the UW trustees, a member of the board of directors of the UW Foundation, and the Republican nominee for governor of Wyoming in 2006, questioned Sternberg's policies that had led to the dismissal or resignation of the administrators.

"I think there's chaos in the university," Hunkins said.

After multiple unsuccessful high-profile attempts to gain other academic leadership positions within a few years of arriving at Tufts, including at the University of Colorado and the University of Iowa, Sternberg was offered a position at Oklahoma State University in 2010, where he remained as provost for three years.

In early 2013, Sternberg was named the new president of the University of Wyoming.

After resigning from the University of Wyoming in late 2013, Sternberg joined the Human Development faculty of Cornell University.

Sternberg took office in July 2013 as the University of Wyoming's 24th president.

His major aim was to push the "development of ethical leadership in students, faculty and staff".

Therefore, Sternberg wanted to change the University of Wyoming's test-based selection process of applicants towards an ethics-based admission process: "The set of analytical skills evaluated in the ACT [American College Testing] is only a small sliver of what you need to be an ethical leader."

After arriving at the University of Wyoming, Sternberg's term was marked by tumult in the faculty.

Three weeks after taking in office as Wyoming's new president, the provost and vice president for academic affairs was asked to resign and stepped down.

In the next four months, three associate provosts and four deans were asked to resign or resigned voluntarily—many explicitly citing disagreements with President Sternberg's approach.

In the Chronicle of Higher Education, November 15, 2013 ("President of U of Wyoming Abruptly Resigns" by Lindsay Ellis), Sternberg's tenure was described as "a period that saw rapid turnover among senior administrators and unsettled the campus."

The last dean who stepped down, the Dean of the College of Law, Stephen Easton, accused Sternberg at a university meeting of unethical treatment of staff, professors, and schools.

"You have not treated this law school ethically."

Sternberg refused to discuss the case at the meeting.

The Casper Star Tribune portrayed the situation at the university as "chaos in the college".

Additionally, other provosts blamed a lack of respect for and interest in human capital.

According to Peter Shive, a professor emeritus, Sternberg asked everyone to wear the school colors, brown and gold, on Fridays.

Shive said the farther away from the administrative building he went, the fewer people were wearing brown and gold.