VIRGINIA BEACH, VA, May 28, 2021 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Marquis Who's Who, the world's premier publisher of biographical profiles, is proud to present Dennis Raymond Ridley, PhD, with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. An accomplished listee, Dr. Ridley 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.
After an incredible journey in academia that spanned more than four decades, Dr. Ridley retired in 2013 as a senior research associate in the Institutional Research Assessment and Accreditation Division of Joint Forces Staff College. His admirable career included appointments as the director of instructional research and planning at Virginia Wesleyan College, as director of student assessment at Christopher Newport University, and in two research positions and as Visiting Fellow at Cornell University, and teaching positions at several other colleges in New York and California.
As a celebrated figure in his field, Dr. Ridley was honored to serve as the chairperson of the working committee on international studies for the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia in Richmond between 1989 and 1990. He was also appointed to the board of directors of Hampton Roads Research Partnership, and was a member of five visiting teams for the Military Installation Voluntary Education Review, including one team commissioned in 2001 for all U.S. Army Installations in South Korea. Among other noteworthy positions, Dr. Ridley had the opportunity to participate as the treasurer of the first student-organized civil rights conference in the United States. Dr. Ridley noted this conference involved four colleges in western Massachusetts, including Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, where the conference was held in February of 1965.
As a prolific researcher, Dr. Ridley discovered noteworthy generalizations in psychology, such as the Matthew Principle, the color-word connotative incongruity effect which is an analogue of the well-known Stroop effect, expanded understanding of the risky-shift phenomenon in group problem solving, demonstrated effectiveness of training to enhance the strategic element in creative thinking, a revisitation of the Whorfian hypothesis in a "Neo-Whorfian" study of color memory, and many others. He also contributed to post-secondary educational assessment, in particular, pioneering studies of the effectiveness of online instruction at the college level.
Due to his extensive research in education and psychology, Dr. Ridley has contributed his scholarship in well over 100 articles, book chapters, monographs, journal editorials, and book reviews. Among Dr. Ridley's monographs, one was commissioned for inclusion in the monograph series of the Association for Assessment in Higher Education, while another was sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers. He also served as a reviewer or consultant for several professional publications, including Psychological Research, Perceptual & Motor Skills, Journal of Post-Compulsory Education, and Research and Practice in Assessment. A prolific writer, Dr. Ridley's productivity is in various literary genres, including children's books, a one-act play, "Miracle on Sabado Tarde Street," and a book of poetry, "In A Mind Subterrane," which features 50 poems published under the pseudonym Ned R. Yeldir. He has contributed to contemporary American humor through a comic dictionary, "The Original Shticktionary." Furthermore, he contributed numerous skits, monologues, dialogues, and other literary efforts, as well as stand-up roles and even a sermon. Additionally, for several years he was honored as a "Master of Chiasmus" on Dr. Mardy Grothe's site, chiasmus.com, and also was recognized on Anu Garg's wordsmith.org website for composing one of the longest anagrams, of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
Dr. Ridley attended Sellwood Elementary School and Grover Cleveland High School in Portland, Oregon where he was the academic leader of his class, and was awarded the Bausch and Lomb Medal for Promise of Scientific Achievement. He subsequently attended Amherst College, where he was selected for the Amherst Men in Chile program in 1963, and earned a Bachelor of Arts in psychology, cum laude, in 1965. Following these accomplishments, he received both a Master of Arts in educational research and a Doctor of Philosophy in educational psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1968 and 1972, respectively. Dr. Ridley holds a lifetime community college teaching credential in psychology in the state of California.
As a testament to his commitments in the field, Dr. Ridley has been a member and 1997 Distinguished Paper Award recipient from the American Educational Research Association. He was also, as an institutional representative, a cofounder of the Virginia Assessment Group, in which he has served as past secretary-treasurer, past vice president, and former conference organizer. He has also been a member of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, the Virginia Association for Management Analysis and Planning, and the Association for Institutional Research. Well regarded for his standout performance, Dr. Ridley received several competitive fellowships, and was the recipient of two promotions in academic rank during his time as an administrator at Christopher Newport University. Likewise, he was notably the first member of Christopher Newport's non-instructional faculty to be awarded full professor status.
Dr. Ridley has continued his lifetime pattern of discovery, perhaps most notably concerning an infinite series that he discovered and further explored with assistance from a former colleague and outstanding mathematician. Named by his colleague, the "Ridley Series," this discovery has led to ongoing investigations of proposed applications.
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