Bequest Benefits Rohner Center

From the summer 2008 issue of UConn Momentum

Studying the effects of interpersonal acceptance and rejection has been Ronald P. Rohner’s life’s work. After building a premiere center at UConn, Rohner and his wife, Nancy, decided to bequeath $900,000 toward their existing endowed fund for the center so that others may carry on the work.

Rohner, professor emeritus of anthropology and family studies, is director of the Ronald and Nancy Rohner Center for the Study of Interpersonal Acceptance and Rejection at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and founding president of the International Society for Interpersonal Acceptance and Rejection.

Through the center, he has successfully created a worldwide network of academics, researchers and practitioners and provided global outreach. Rohner is credited with developing Parental Acceptance-Rejection theory and a battery of associated measures. The measures, which have been translated into 30 languages, are used to collect data from every major ethnic group in the U.S. and on every continent except Antarctica. They’re widely used by clinicians , courts, social workers and others in a variety of contexts such as foster placement, custody cases, and war zones.

“We’ve learned that people everywhere—regardless of culture, language, race, gender or class—perceive themselves to be cared about in the same four ways,” says Rohner. “We’ve also learned that people everywhere tend to respond in exactly the same way when they experience themselves to be accepted or rejected by the people most important to them. These facts appear to be fundamental truths hardwired into us.”

Rohner initiated one of UConn’s first forays into globalization and interdisciplinary work when he founded the center in 1977. Since his retirement from teaching to commit full time to the center, the Rohners have voluntarily run it without pay. For their tireless efforts, the UConn Board of Trustees renamed the center in the couple’s honor in 2002.

“I retired in 1996 because I realized that we had something here that was so powerful that I wanted to spend the rest of my life exploring it. My whole life I’ve wanted to know what it means to be a human being,” says Rohner. “I work six or seven days a week because I’m so excited. It’s been almost half a century, and I’m just as excited now as when I first started.”

The Rohners’ estate gift will support the center’s ongoing research and outreach.

“We’re putting our money where our hearts are,” explains Rohner.

The center currently maintains a database of everyone working in the field and serves as an international repository and archive. Rohner’s dream is to expand the center to become a destination for education. He hopes that future private donations will provide enough funding to support graduate and post-doctoral fellowships and hire a distinguished professor to teach and direct the center.

To support the Fund for the Study of Interpersonal Acceptance and Rejection, contact Frank Gifford at 860.486.6798.