The Journal of College Student Development: From Birth to Unknown Future

Editor's Comment: An Apology and Corrective Action

John M. Braxton, Editor

The 50th Anniversary of the publication of the Journal of College Student Development was commemorated with a special issue of the Journal, Volume 50, Number 6, November–December 2009. This special issue included reflections by past editors of this Journal. I apologize for the egregious omission of a reflective essay by Albert B. Hood who served as editor from 1971 to 1976. To go a small distance towards righting this omission, this issue includes a reflective essay by Dr. Hood: "The Journal of College Student Development: From Birth to Unknown Future." I am confident that readers will benefit from this commentary, as I certainly have.

As we celebrate the Golden Anniversary of the Journal's publication, I realize that I have seen it from its birth and even a couple of years before. I began receiving the 11th year of the Personnel-O-Gram in 1956. The Personnel-O-Gram was essentially an 8-page ACPA newsletter that contained the minutes of the Executive Council's meetings, committee reports, announcements, and other association business. In March of 1959, the Executive Council voted to change the name of the publication to the Journal of College Student Personnel, with Chuck Lewis, who had been the associate editor of the Personnel-O-Gram, as its editor for the first six volumes. ACPA's president at that time was Bob Callis who became the second editor. More recent editors dealing with hundreds of manuscript submissions each year may or may not envy Chuck with his three-member editorial board and his primary concern of whether or not he would receive enough manuscripts to fill his next 32-page issue.

Manuscript submissions continued to grow so that this was no longer a worry when Bob Callis took over a 64-page Journal in 1965. Although not overwhelmed with the number of manuscripts being submitted, Bob was able to increase its selectivity, increase the number of pages first to 72 and then to 80, and increase his editorial board members to 15. One of the more enjoyable tasks of a new editor is picking a new cover design. Bob went about it with a purpose quite different from that of future editors. He invited several friends over for an evening, spread a large number of journals on the floor, and asked them to pick the features from among them that they particularly liked. With that advice, and because he had the rather young Journal, he put together a slightly antique-looking cover designed to make the Journal look as much as possible like an older, traditional, well-established publication.

I became the third editor in 1971, five months after having returned to this country after a year's research in Japan, to confront a very large number of manuscripts needing decisions. Now that we had a well-established 12-year-old Journal, I felt able to select a more contemporary cover, which was designed by a prize-winning graphic artist. The design included a photograph of college students that I changed each issue: e.g., September issue—students moving into a residence hall; November—marching in an anti–Vietnam War demonstration; January—students headed for class in a snowstorm; May—a graduation scene. I did not recommend this to future editors as it seemed that I spent much time during my tenure searching for appropriate photos.

As the Journal entered its 13th year of publication, several informal editorial policies needed attention. The first was to initiate blind reviews of manuscripts in which all identifying data was excluded from the manuscript prior to submitting it to the editorial board members. This eliminates the bias that authors often feel favors well-known professionals and researchers. Several editorial board members resisted this change, feeling the reverse was true: that they held out for higher standards for the "old pros" and tended to deal more gently with inexperienced authors.

A second policy dealt with the way by which editorial board members were selected: Executive Council members appointed board replacements from nominations they made at...