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The distinguished J. Jeffries McWhirter was a beloved professor of the counseling and counseling psychology programs at Arizona State University for over 50 years. He was a brilliant and compassionate psychologist, a wonderful and engaging teacher, a creative researcher and a gifted writer. McWhirter loved being a professor at ASU and he cared deeply for students. For 34 years he taught exclusively in the counseling psychology and counselor education programs and in its original college, the College of Education. Then, for another 18 years during his “retirement,” he continued to teach for the ASU Counseling programs and for the new undergraduate program in the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts at the ASU Polytechnic campus.

The national and international success and impact of the ASU Counseling and counseling psychology programs owes a great deal to McWhirter. But as a very humble person, McWhirter never sought recognition for so much of what he did and contributed to ASU. In fact, McWhirter was recruited by the counseling psychology program at ASU in 1970 from the American Psychological Association Accredited Counseling Psychology doctoral program at the University of Oregon so that Arizona State could seek APA Accreditation for its doctoral program, which they soon received and have held ever since. McWhirter was instrumental in ASU making its first national mark. His international and cross-cultural research, teaching and service was groundbreaking for its time, and was a precursor at ASU to the counseling field’s focus on multiculturalism and multicultural counseling.

McWhirter was a highly productive and internationally respected scholar, having published numerous books, monographs and hundreds of research and practice articles as well as making hundreds of professional presentations during his career. On three different occasions he was selected as a U.S. State Department Fulbright Scholar: as a Fulbright-Hays Senior Scholar to Turkey (1977-78), as a Fulbright Senior Scholar to Australia (1983-84) and then selected to be on the Fulbright Senior Scholar Roster (1990-95) which took him on shorter assignments to New Zealand, back to Turkey and to other countries over the period of his Award. Throughout all of his national and international work, McWhirter conducted hundreds of professional training workshops in the U.S. and abroad.

McWhirter’s research focused mainly on the areas of interventions for youth and families at-risk for problematic behavior and poor outcomes, group counseling, and school and family interventions for learning disabilities. His work was nationally recognized on numerous occasions by organizations and associations such as the American Counseling Association, the American Psychological Association and the U.S. Department of Education. McWhirter was a voracious reader of professional scholarship as well as literary classics and history, and always integrated the scientific evidence base and practical wisdom into teaching and counselor formation. In addition to his national and international impact on the counseling field, he had a profound impact on the hundreds of counselors and psychologists he trained over five decades, most of whom went on to provide mental health counseling throughout the Valley of the Sun.

Not surprisingly, throughout his life McWhirter was an advocate and proponent of education as one of the best ways to enhance hopefulness in a person’s future. He was a first-generation college student from very humble beginnings, and he went on to hold degrees from Saint Martin’s University, Oregon State University and the University of Oregon. His post-doctoral work was at the Oregon State Hospital through the University of Oregon Medical School, which later became Oregon Health & Sciences University. He was a Fellow of many divisions within the American Psychological Association and the American Counseling Association. As a licensed psychologist, McWhirter was Board Certified by the American Board of Professional Psychology, a credential achieved by only 4% of practicing psychologists in the U.S. Through all his accomplishments, McWhirter was an incredibly humble, kind and caring person who was gracious and generous in all his interactions and who always had time to listen to others.

His legacy includes children and grandchildren who are also psychologists, professors, educators, advocates and service-providers. His five children and their five spouses hold a combined 17 degrees from Arizona State University in the areas of education, counseling, counseling psychology, law, history, music, health, psychology, engineering and the Honors College. As of 2023, his grandchildren hold or are earning ASU degrees in social work, criminal justice, engineering and aviation, and there are more on the way. In fact, to McWhirter, his greatest accomplishment, along with Mary, his spouse and best friend of 62 years, is his family. He instilled a consistent hard-work ethic, high expectations, faith commitment and desire to care for others. And at the time of his death at the beginning of 2023, McWhirter was blessed with 17 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. McWhirter’s family continues to honor his work in their social advocacy, in their commitment to improving the lives of others, and in raising the next generation of the McWhirter clan.

Although he dealt with a number of health issues during the last few years of his life, he never stopped teaching or lost his love of teaching. He taught until the semester before he died. This was largely due to his work-hard ethic and to the constant care that his lifelong partner, Mary, provided for him. After a series of illnesses, McWhirter died at home on January 20, 2023, at the age of 84, just 11 days before his 85th birthday. His legacy will live on.