Just got this email. Thought you might want to know if you hadn't heard. Sad news.

The UALR Psychology family is deeply saddened by the loss of our friend and colleague Dr. Tommy Polling, Professor of Psychology who passed away Monday afternoon after a brief illness. Dr. Poling came to UALR in 1974 after graduating from Oklahoma State University with a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. In addition to being a full-time faculty member in the department, he was a licensed clinical psychologist who often provided free clinical consultations to UALR students and faculty.

During his 40 years at UALR, he participated in growing the Psychology B.A. program into one of the largest majors on campus. He developed innovative courses such as PSYC 3340 Meditation Techniques and PSYC 3363 Psychology of Religion which are popular among students as well as community members.

There was hardly a student who passed through the Psychology undergraduate program who didn't take a class from Dr. Poling. His lasting legacy will be the many students he inspired to go on to pursue clinical psychology and are currently practicing across the country. In addition to being a beloved instructor, Dr. Poling's career is marked by many innovative and important scholarly contributions in the areas of personality theory and measurement. In collaboration with faculty and student colleagues, he investigated the influence of personality characteristics on a variety of variables, including religious conversion and denominational affiliation, deity conceptualization, moral reasoning, creativity, leadership style and language use.

Sad to hear that. I was so young when my dad taught there that I didn't remember many of his psych colleagues save John Pittenger. For some reason he hung out more with the history department! I will let everyone know, however. Thank you for the info.

I got my psych BA from UALR in the early 90's and somehow never had a class with Poling or Pittenger.

I told my mom and she sent word to our friends on the faculty. Apparently they were pretty good friends. According to my mom he and his wife were hippies in the truest sense of the word and really great people.