Kevin Cokley

Kevin Cokley
Born	1969 Mount Airy, North Carolina
Nationality	American
Occupation	Psychologist, academic and researcher
Title	Oscar and Anne Mauzy Regents Professor of Educational Research and Development
Awards	Distinguished Psychologist Award, Association of Black Psychologists
Academic background
Education	B.A. M.Ed. Ph.D.
Alma mater	Wake Forest University University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Academic work
Institutions	University of Texas at Austin
Website	http://www.kevincokley.com/

Kevin Cokley is an African-American counselling psychologist, academic and researcher. He is a Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and the Oscar and Anne Mauzy Regents Professor of Educational Research and Development at the University of Texas at Austin, where he directs the Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis.^[1] He is a Fellow of the UT System Academy of Distinguished Teachers^[2] and a Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin.^[3]

Cokley's research is focused on racial and ethnic identity, understanding the psychological and environmental factors that impact African American students’ academic achievement, and the impact of impostor phenomenon in academic and mental health outcomes.^[4] He is the author of The Myth of Black Anti-Intellectualism: A True Psychology of African American Students, which was published in 2014.^[5]

Cokley is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the former Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Black Psychology.^[6]

Education[]

Cokley graduated from Wake Forest University’s Department of Psychology in 1991 before receiving his Master’s degree in Counselor Education from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1993. He completed his Doctoral studies in Counseling Psychology from Georgia State University in 1998.^[1]

Career[]

Following his Ph.D. degree, Cokley taught at Southern Illinois University Carbondale as an Assistant Professor from 1998 till 2004, and at the University of Missouri as an Associate Professor from 2004 till 2007. In 2010, Cokley joined the University of Texas at Austin as an Associate Professor and in 2013, he was promoted to Professor of Educational Psychology and African and African Diaspora Studies.^[1]

In 2014, Cokley was appointed as Director of the Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis at the University of Texas.^[7]

Research[]

Cokley applies an emic approach in the area of African American psychology and focused much of his early research on racial and ethnic identity, academic self-concept and academic achievement. He has focused on understanding the psychological and environmental factors that impact African American student achievement. His later research has focused on exploring the impostor phenomenon and other correlates of mental health, including perceived discrimination, and minority status stress among African Americans and ethnic minorities.

Racial and Ethnic Identity Development[]

Cokley’s research regarding racial and ethnic identity has focused on applying new developments in racial identity theory, and critically examining theoretical foundations of racial identity theories and the psychometric soundness of racial and ethnic identity instruments. Cokley has challenged the continued use of psychometrically problematic instruments, and argued that both science and ideology have influenced the study of racial and ethnic identity.^[8]

Cokley has written about racial identity theory and described in the Handbook of African American Psychology, the seminal models, key racial identity theories, and the future directions regarding racial identity.^[9]

Academic Self-Concept and Academic Achievement[]

Cokley has focused on the psychological, cultural, and environmental factors impacting the academic achievement of African American students. His work has identified academic self-concept as one of the strongest predictors of academic achievement. He has also found GPA to be the best predictor of academic self-concept for African American students attending predominantly White colleges and universities (PWCUs) while finding the quality of student-faculty interactions to be the best predictors of academic self-concept for African American students attending historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).^[10]

In research regarding academic disidentification among African American and European American students, Cokley found that African American male students experienced significant academic disidentification compared to other students.^[11] He also challenged the notion that African American students are anti-intellectual using empirical data collected on academic motivation, academic self-concept, and GPA.^[12]

Impostor Phenomenon[]

Cokley has explored the impostor phenomenon, which is one's belief in and experience of one's self as an intellectual fraud, among African Americans and other ethnic minorities. Upon the examination of impostor phenomenon and minority status, he found that impostor feelings were a stronger predictor of mental health than minority status stress.^[13] Cokley has also found ethnic differences regarding the impostor phenomenon, perceived discrimination and mental health. Specifically, he has found that "high levels of impostor feelings moderated the relationship between perceived discrimination and depression and mediated the relationship between perceived discrimination and anxiety among African American students; that high levels of impostor feelings mediated the relationship between perceived discrimination and depression and anxiety among Asian American students; but among Latino/a American students, low levels of impostor feelings moderated the relationship between perceived discrimination and depression and anxiety." He also found a significantly stronger impact of impostor feelings on depression among African American students and a stronger impact of impostor feelings among African American and Latino/a American students.^[14]

The Myth of Black Anti-Intellectualism[]

In 2014, Cokley published his first book, The Myth of Black Anti-Intellectualism: A True Psychology of African American Students as part of the Practical and Applied Psychology Series by Prager Publishers. In this book, Cokley challenged the dominant narrative regarding Black student achievement by examining the themes of Black identity, the role of self-esteem, the hurdles that result in academic difficulties, and the root sources of academic motivation. He proposed an alternative narrative that uses Black identity as the theoretical framework to examine factors in academic achievement and challenge the widely accepted notion of Black anti-intellectualism.^[15]

Awards/Honors[]

• 2004 - Emerging Scholars Award, American Psychological Association
• 2008 - '10 Rising Stars of the Academy' award, Diverse Issues in Higher Education^[16]
• 2010 - Charles and Shirley Thomas Award for mentoring, education, and training of ethnic minority students, American Psychological Association^[17]
• 2011 - Fellow, American Psychological Association,
• 2014 - Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award^[18]
• 2017 - Oscar and Anne Mauzy Regents Professorship for Educational Research and Development
• 2017 – Fellow, University of Texas System Academy of Distinguished Teachers
• 2018 - Outstanding Contribution to Scholarship on Race and Ethnicity Award for the manuscript “Black Lives Matter: A Call to Action for Counseling Psychology Leaders, Society of Counseling Psychology
• 2018 - Distinguished Psychologist Award, Association of Black Psychologists^[19]
• 2019 - University of Texas Academy of Distinguished Teachers^[20]
• 2020 - Named Top 25 Essential Black Voices on Mental Health and Wellness by Relevant Magazine^[21]

Bibliography[]

Books[]

• The Myth of Black Anti-Intellectualism: A True Psychology of African American Students (2014) ISBN 9781440831577

Selected Articles[]

• Cokley, K. (2007). Critical issues in the measurement of ethnic and racial identity: A referendum on the state of the field. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 54, 224-234.
• Cokley, K. (2000). An investigation of academic self-concept and its relationship to academic achievement in African American college students. Journal of Black Psychology, 26(2), 148-164.
• Cokley, K. (2003). What do we know about the motivation of African American college students? Challenging the “anti-intellectual myth”. Harvard Educational Review, 73, 524-558.
• Cokley, K., McClain, S., Enciso, A., & Martinez, M. (2013). An examination of minority status stress, impostor feelings and mental health among ethnic minority college students. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development', 41(2), 82-95.
• Cokley, K., Smith, L., Bernard, D., Hurst, A., Jackson, S., Stone, S., & ….Roberts, D. (2017). Impostor feelings as a moderator and mediator of the relationship between perceived discrimination and mental health among racial/ethnic minority college students. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 64(2), 141-154.
• Cokley, K. & Garba, R. (2018). Speaking truth to power: How Black/African psychology changed the discipline of psychology. Journal of Black Psychology, 44(8), 695-721.

References[]