In Memoriam: Michael A. Smyer

Dr. Smyer came at a critical juncture in the University’s academic and administrative history when he arrived in August of 1994, as BC graduate programs in nursing and education shifted from GA&S to the schools of Nursing and Education. In addition to inaugurating the position of AVP for research, two months into his first semester he was named co-chairman of the University Academic Planning Council (UAPC), a major long-term initiative to shape Boston College’s academic life into the 21st century.

In a January 1995 interview with the Boston College Chronicle, Dr. Smyer was upbeat about the challenges posed by multiple leadership roles, noting that he had held a similar position at Pennsylvania State University’s College of Health and Human Development before coming to BC.

“I think of the issue as teaching and research, not teaching versus research. I truly think each complements the other. If faculty members are fundamentally excited by what they do, they bring it to all areas of their profession.”

He also pointed to research as a tremendous opportunity for graduate education to make an impact beyond academia. “A number of industrial areas are cutting back the resources formerly devoted to research. To fill their needs, they will be looking to universities for graduate students with advanced degrees, or for partnerships. BC should be involved in areas where we can make a difference and that speak to our mission.”

Ten-and-a-half years later, when Dr. Smyer stepped down as AVP—retaining his role as GA&S dean—the University had doubled the amount of external funding to $4O million, which he said had greatly increased the research activity on campus. But a raft of complex issues facing academic research, such as intellectual property and the use of human subjects, had made it necessary for BC to consider hiring a full-time research officer, he explained.

John Neuhauser, then academic vice president and dean of faculties, praised Dr. Smyer’s performance as AVP, reported Chronicle. “He’s done a tremendous job, and the numbers alone testify to that. But Mick has definitely been instrumental in creating the climate for research at BC. The University’s success is a tribute to his encouragement.”

Dr. Smyer’s involvement in the UAPC and its 18-month study of BC’s long-term academic mission, meanwhile, produced the 1996 report, “Advancing the Legacy: The New Millennium.” The document outlined five goals: strengthening support for professional and graduate education; affirming research as central to the University’s mission; emphasizing BC’s Jesuit liberal arts education tradition; stressing rigorous intellectual development and personal formation as characteristic of BC’s undergraduate education; and proposing diversity, technology, and internationalization as distinctive features of the BC environment.

For all his administrative work, Dr. Smyer remained active as an award-winning psychologist in geriatric mental health from the time it emerged as an organized field. One of his foundational contributions was in co-establishing the Center on Aging and Work at BC in 2005 to promote opportunity, choice, and quality of paid and unpaid work across the lifespan, with a focus on older adults. One of its earliest projects was a study of how the American workplace might evolve to accommodate its aging workforce—a weighty question posed by the aging of the baby boom generation.

“One thing that can affect older workers’ decisions about work that is often overlooked is the availability, or lack of availability, of flexible work options,” he told Chronicle. “Our work will focus on the study of working flexibility because it is a particularly important element of innovative employer responses to the aging workforce.”

Since its founding, the center has produced hundreds of fact sheets, case studies, comparative policy summaries, policy briefs, and research reports; embarked on studies about the health, mental health, and quality of life of the aging workforce in the United States and around the world; and produced translational research products to aid efforts to adapt to shifting workforce age demographics.

After leaving BC, Dr. Smyer was provost of Bucknell University from 2008 to 2015, retiring from his academic career there as professor of psychology in 2020. A native of New Orleans, he earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Yale University and a doctorate in clinical psychology from Duke University. He joined the Penn State faculty in 1977 as an assistant professor and from 1998-1992 was associate dean for research and graduate studies at Penn State’s College of Health and Human Development.

Dr. Smyer’s book, Aging and Mental Health, co-authored with Daniel Segal and Sara Qualls, was regarded as an important resource in the field of gerontology. He was recognized with the M. Powell Lawton Award for Distinguished Contribution in Clinical Geropsychology from the Society for Clinical Geropsychology; and an American Psychological Association Citizen Psychologist Presidential Citation. He was awarded Fulbright fellowships to Japan and India and held an appointment as Civic Innovation Fellow at Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design.

He is survived by his wife, Pat Piper-Smyer; his children, Brendan Piper-Smyer and Kyle Piper-Smyer; and four grandchildren, three nephews, four nieces, four grand-nephews, and a grand-niece.