Julie Skinner Vargas (born 1938) is an American educator who has written extensively on the science of behavior. Vargas is the daughter of

B.F. Skinner Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist, behaviorist, inventor, and social philosopher. He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1948 until his retirement in 1 ...

and is the president of the B. F. Skinner Foundation, in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, ...

. She is an officer of The International Society for Behaviorology.

Biography

Vargas received a bachelor's degree in music from

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that was founded in 1879. In 1999, it was fully incorporated into Harvard Colle ...

, a master's degree in music education from

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

and a Ph.D. in educational research from the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university is composed of seventeen undergraduate and graduate schools and colle ...

. She was a faculty member at

West Virginia University West Virginia University (WVU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university with its main campus in Morgantown, West Virginia, United States. Its other campuses are those of the West Virginia University Ins ...

, where she and her husband, Ernest A. Vargas, taught for more than 30 years in the College of Human Resources and Education.

Behaviorology: Skinner's new science

Vargas has written that "What B. F. Skinner began is not an 'approach', 'view', 'discipline', 'field', or 'theory'. It was, and is, a science, differing from psychology in its dependent variables, its measurement system, its procedures, and its analytic framework". She and a number of her colleagues have given Skinner's science the name "behaviorology", which may be defined as the natural science of the behavior of organisms.

Bibliography

*''Writing Worthwhile Behavioral Objectives'', 1973,

Harper & Row Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins, based in New York City. Founded in New York in 1817 by James Harper and his brother John, the company operated as J. & J. Harper until 1833, when ...

*''Behavioral Psychology for Teachers'', 1977,

* * * Her more recent publications have been articles, including two 2005 entries on B. F. Skinner in volumes I and III of ''The Encyclopedia of Behavior Modification and Cognitive Behavior Therapy'', and ''Behavior Analysis for Effective Teaching''.An overview and a preview can be found at with

Routledge Routledge ( ) is a British multinational corporation, multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, academic journals, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanit ...

Taylor and Francis Taylor & Francis Group is an international company originating in the United Kingdom that publishes books and academic journals. Its parts include Taylor & Francis, CRC Press, Routledge, F1000 Research and Dovepress. It is a division of ...

, 2012.

References

External links

B. F. Skinner Foundation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vargas, Julie 1938 births Living people American non-fiction writers Radcliffe College alumni Teachers College, Columbia University alumni University of Pittsburgh alumni Writers from Minneapolis West Virginia University faculty