In 2009 Dr. Aller formed the San Fernando Valley Chapter of Move-On, collecting thousands of signatures urging the U.S. Congress to establish a "single-payer", "Medicare-for-all" health care program.
GRANADA HILLS, CA, November 21, 2019 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Marquis Who's Who, the world's premier publisher of biographical profiles, is proud to present Wayne K. Aller, Ph.D., with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. An accomplished listee, Dr. Aller celebrates many years' experience in his professional network, and has been noted for achievements, leadership qualities, and the credentials and successes he has accrued in his field. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
Now retired, Dr. Aller enjoyed a long and successful career that began in 1962 as an assistant professor of psychology at Pacific Lutheran University (PLU). He later taught and chaired the Division of Social Science at the Beirut College for Women (BCW), 1964-67; taught and chaired the Psychology Department at Indiana State University (ISU), 1968-82; and held appointments at Mankato State University (1967-68), American University of Beirut (1975-76), and University of California at Los Angeles (1981-82). He concluded his academic career in 2003 after 18 years of teaching at California State University at Northridge (CSUN), during which time he founded and served as president of Learning Unlimited and Compulearn (1982-87) teaching Basic programming to, among others, the children of Tom Hanks, Mort Saul and Frank Zappa, and teaching Logo to 3-5-yr-olds.
After graduating from Nampa, ID, H.S. in 1951 he entered Northwest Nazarene College (NNC) where he received his Bachelor of Science in physics in 1955 (Magna Cum Laude, Who's Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges, Sr. Class President). While a student, he built a 6" Cassagrain reflecting telescope, still used in Astronomy courses (he's now a member of the Los Angeles Astronomical Society). In 1955, as president of NNC's Marshal Science Society, he put on the first Science Fair in the state of Idaho. A Rhodes Scholar Alternate, he received his M.S. (1960) and Ph.D. degrees (1964) in Experimental Psychology from the University of Washington (U.W.). While pursuing his Ph.D. he spent three years helping Dr. K. William Edmark perfect the extra-corporal hypothermia surgery technique, and served as a Demonstrator in Techniques of Neurosurgery at the U.W. Medical Center.
Dr. Aller's focus as a psychology professor was always on his students, who gave dozens of papers at state and regional conferences based on research he encouraged and guided. He started or sponsored Psychology Clubs or Psi Chi Chapters everywhere he taught. In his first year of teaching, at PLU, he developed a real-time electronic anonymous feedback system to accompany his CCTV lectures in multiple classrooms. Everywhere he taught he built Skinner Boxes and electronic Analog Conditioning Simulators to enrich his classes. At the BCW he received an NSF grant to obtain library journals. While serving as Acting Chair of the ISU Psychology he succeeded in getting a "Psy. D." program approved at the University and State levels while volunteering to teach all the core courses required for a Psy. B.S. aat Terre haute's Maximum Security Deferal Penitentiary. In addition to his invited book chapters and the many research papers in cognition and psycholinguistics he presented at regional and international conferences, he authored the 1970 book, "Readings and Experiments in General Psychology" (Rev.-1971) which was used by his 35 teaching assistants at ISU to enrich his CCTV lectures for 4,500 students/year on two campuses using a chapter-mastery, repeatable-testing system, with 3,200 validated/discriminatory multiple-choice questions. In his last two years of teaching at CSUN he used his own text, "Statistics for Psychology", praised by his students, in teaching advanced statistics. He is a member of the Western Psychological Association, the New York Academy of Science, and the Society of Computers in Psychology, and the honor societies; Sigma Xi, Psi Chi, and Sigma Phi Iota. He and his Ph.D. wife, Sonia Konialian Aller, received a 1975-6 Ford Foundation grant for research in Lebanon on how children acquire Arabic, and where he served as an Advisor to the Lebanese Government's Ministry of Education, researching English usage in Lebanon.
Music is a huge part of Dr. Aller's life. Starting at age 6, he has been a vocal soloist in dozens of church, professional, and semiprofessional groups in a dozen states and in Lebanon, including the Collegium Musicum (U.W.), Seattle Philharmonic Choral Society, Pro Musica Sacra (Seattle), and Cantori Domino (Los Angeles). He has been a church choir director of both adult and youth choirs, and, at the request of the Beirut College for Women's President, formed and conducted the BCW Chorale in1967. He's composed several modest sacred choral works.
Dr. Aller has always been involved in athletics: the #1 high school long-jumper in Idaho (with his 1951 Nampa H.S. State Champions); a record breaking long-jumper in college while coaching a H.S. track team; running with the Seattle Olympic Club and winning the Intramural Volleyball championship while a graduate student at the U. W. While teaching at PLU he started their Varsity Crew program. At age 82 he qualified for the National Senior Games Championships in the two events he entered at the California Championships. At ages 80-82 he completed three Los Angeles Marathons to raise money for charities, including "Imagine No Malaria", a United Methodist Church charity, where he and NCIS star Pauley Parrette were point persons for the UMC's CAL-PAC Conference campaign. While at the U.W. he climbed Washington's Mt. Baker, Little Tahoma, and Glacier Peak. In 1990 he climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, in 2014 Mt. Whitney, and in 2015 he hiked the Grand Canyon, rim-to-rim. A skilled alpine skier, at age 77 he got a ticket for "skiing too fast" at Mammoth Mtn, his favorite site. At age 84, a month before he broke his neck (C6) skiing, an officer of the U. S. Ski Association's Western Region invited him to join its Senior Racing Team. Severe arthritis kept the vertebrae stabilized, sparing him paralysis…he declined the invitation.
Dr. Aller has traveled the world: 39 countries in Africa, the Americas, China, Europe, and serving as a tour guide in the Middle East.
Dr. Aller has always felt blessed: full of gratitude, and compassion for the dispossessed, the oppressed. He now lives to "give back". While still teaching at CSUN, he became a Certified Instructor of the non-profit, Solar Cookers International, giving workshops throughout the U.S. and Africa on how to cook/pasteurize water using only the sun. After retirement, he co-founded the Granada Hills North Neighborhood Council, the first N. C. in the San Fernando Valley to be certified by the City of Los Angeles, and in 2004 he co-founded its North Valley Safety and Emergency Preparedness Fair. Appointed to two Los Angeles City and one Los Angeles County Landfill Oversight Committees (elected chair of the latter), he has fought to control the toxic Sunshine Canyon Landfill, located ½ mile from the Van Gogh Elementary School, and he forced L.A. County to do a cancer/health study for the area. He obtained a $20,00 grant to establish the Van Gogh Elementary school orchestra, and arranged for their performance at the Community Integration Services, a senior day-care facility for which, where, as a member of its Advisory Board, he obtained a grant from the City of Los Angeles for its "Cultural Assimilation Enhancement Project". In 2009 he formed the San Fernando Valley Chapter of Move-On, collecting thousands of signatures urging the U.S. congress to establish a "single-payer", "Medicare-for-all" health care program.
Active for decades in the United Methodist Church, as a Certified Lay Speaker, a membership of the Methodist Federation for Social Action's Leadership Team, Chair of the Board of Trustees and of the Church Council at the Knollwood UMC, and board member of the CSUN's United Campus Ministries, he has promoted interfaith (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) understanding, cooperation, and mission. For 21 years he has served as a volunteer at the North Valley Caring Services and the San Fernando Valley Rescue Mission, providing meals, shelter, and education for the homeless of Los Angeles. He and Sonia have established seven endowed scholarships: four at U.S. universities, one at the Lebanese American University's Institute for Women's Studies, one at the American Indian College Fund, and one for nursing students at the non-profit, American Near East Refugee Aid. In 2019 he became Chair of the Goodwill Industries' San Fernando Valley Advisory Committee.
A strong environmentalist, he was a 2006 L.A. City delegate to a 2-day international conference on how to decrease trash, and how to convert it to "treasure" and energy. He is active in the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society (national/local), having participated in its "Christmas Day Bird Count" for 74 years and doing annual Pacific Ocean beach clean-ups. As President of the Knollwood (Country Club) Property Owners Association (KPOA: $500 million in homes) he worked for three years with the City of L.A., the County of L.A., and the California Regional Water Quality Control Board to establish the "Bull Creek Nature Walk" bordering the Association's property, and in 2008 he got L. A. County to replace/repair one mile of KPOA sidewalks. In 2007 he was presented by the City with "Los Angeles Pearl, Outstanding Senior Citizen" award.
In recognition of outstanding contributions to his profession and the Marquis Who's Who community, Wayne K. Aller, Ph.D., has been featured on the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement website. Please visit www.ltachievers.com for more information about this honor.
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