Charles Charver, PhD, 71, died on June 22, 2019 in Miami, FL. He was born on August 19, 1947, in Cleveland, Ohio, to Robert and Mildred Carver. He grew up in Huron, Ohio, where he played football and was captain of the high school wrestling team.
Charles (Chuck) Carver received his bachelor’s degree from Brown University (1969), and his doctoral degree in psychology from the University of Texas at Austin (1974). He had a long and illustrious career at the University of Miami (1975 to 2019), where he was a Distinguished Professor of Psychology, and Director of the Adult Division of the Psychology Department. [His faculty website can be viewed at: https://people.miami.edu/profile/ccarver@miami.edu].
Chuck Carver was a humble and unassuming person. He once described himself as a thoroughly unremarkable student during college and graduate school, and noted that as a grad student he had difficulty finding any topic to sustain his interest until his third year. It was at that point that he became fascinated with the topic of human motivation. His work since that time spans the areas of personality psychology, social psychology, health psychology, and more recently experimental psychopathology. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, and the National Institute of Mental Health. He was a person who had an inquisitive mind, an exceptional clarity of thought, and showed a tremendous amount of generosity to his collaborators.
Carver has been honored by the American Psychological Association (APA), Divisions 38 (Society of Health Psychology) and 8 (Society for Personality and Social Psychology), for his career contributions to the areas of Health, Social, and Personality Psychology. In 2018, he received APA’s award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions "for significant theoretical and empirical contributions to our understanding of goal-directed behavior and self-regulation.”
He served for 6 years as Editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology’s section on Personality Processes and Individual Differences and another 6 years as an Associate Editor of Psychological Review. He is author of 10 books and over 400 articles and chapters. His work has been cited over 120K times in scientific publications by other researchers.
He is survived by his loving wife of 9 years, Youngmee Kim, his brother Jeffrey A. Carver, and several nieces. He was predeceased by his half-sister, Nancy Carver Adams.
In addition to his friends, Carver also was fond of his dogs, Calvin (who passed away 9 years ago), Tntnhan, and Jahnghan. His canine friends have received special space on his professional website https://local.psy.miami.edu/faculty/ccarver/. If you'd like to send a gift or make a pledge to the U, please click https://development.miami.edu/
Contributions may be made to the Charles S. Carver Memorial Fund, which will be devoted to research and training in psychology at the University of Miami. A memorial service was held on Sunday, August 18th on the University of Miami Coral Gables Campus (Newman Alumni Center, 6200 San Amaro Dr., Coral Gables, FL 33146)
