Faculty Spotlight

Gary Stollak

Q: You’ve been a psychology professor at MSU since 1966. What is it that you study?

A: My interest in young children has lead to my teaching a year-long class called “Sensitivity to Children.” How can we apply the accumulating knowledge in developmental psychology to child caregiving in the first six years of life? Sometimes, that’s called a how-to-parent class. Along with weekly meetings with me the 20-25 undergraduates have had weekly play encounters with children and learn how to “be” with a child through play and receive individual and group supervision of these play encounters. I also teach courses in child development, the psychology of personality, and in child and family psychopathology.

Q: Why have you dedicated such a big part of your life to this age group?

A: There are three parts of a personality I use to talk about the personality of the house: the foundation, the walls and roof are built on the foundation, and then there are beautiful rooms.

But you can’t have these beautiful rooms without a sound foundation. Those are the first three or four years of life.

It’s like the story of “The Three Little Pigs.” We’ve got to build a good, strong foundation. This is the time before the child builds the walls and roof. If you build a good foundation, they can withstand the “wolf” blowing – which we call life.

Q: What do you hope your students take away from your courses?

A: That the more you know about what infants and children need, the more you realize it takes five adults to care for them. Toddlers are nonstop explorers of the universe. If you don’t put them in a playpen, they will walk from East Lansing to Owosso, and back.

Our granddaughter is 1 year old. And we don’t put her in a playpen. We’re exhausted! And she’s only 1. At 2, she gets faster.

Giving care to children is the greatest mission on earth. It has to be more than a career.

Q: What do you do for fun?

A: I do a lot of exercise. I love movies. I love to laugh and I love making people laugh. I spend a significant amount of time during my day making people laugh. I call it my avocation.

I really do love reading and writing, talking, discussing. Only the university gives us that freedom. I hope that will remain so in the centuries ahead.

Q: Is there anything else you want to tell us about yourself?

A: In 1974, I had a children’s television program called “The Attic.” I was the writer, host and co-producer. It was broadcast each weekday on Lansing’s CBS affiliate, WJIM-TV.

Q: And what happened to the program?

A: I was replaced by a guy with a puppet.

Copyright 2001 Michigan State University Division of University Relations.