1998 Bemis Award: Dr. Donna Denning

The Stephen E. Bemis Memorial Award is presented to recognize an individual in the area of personnel assessment for outstanding commitment to merit principles and fairness, practical contributions to assessment, and commitment to assisting others in the field. These are characteristics for which Steve was so respected and is so fondly remembered.

On June 23 at the IPMAAC Conference in Chicago the 1998 award was presented by Doris Maye (the 1997 winner) to Dr. Donna Denning. She is well deserving of the honor. Since 1986, Donna has supervised the classification, examining and personnel research activities for the City of Los Angeles, one of the largest municipal agencies in the nation. During the last 11 years, she has worked to improve the quality and responsiveness of the personnel systems used by the city, including its selection processes, employee surveys and performance appraisal systems. By serving as a technical advisor to management on test construction and use, legal issues in employee selection and affirmation action concepts, she has advanced the understanding of the field beyond the traditional confines for selection professionals.

Donna is not only an active member of many professional associations which support the field of personnel selection, but she has also taken leadership roles in most of them. She is currently a member of both the Scientific and Professional Affairs Committees for the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology , Division 14 of the American Psychological Association. For three consecutive years, she volunteered a substantial amount of her time to the benefit of her colleagues by coordinating the Job Placement activities of the Society.

Dr. Denning has also served as the Annual Conference Program Chair for IPMAAC and is currently serving a three-year term as an elected member of the IPMAAC board. She is a member of IPMA's Center for Personnel Research. In addition, she has a long history of able contributions to the Personnel Testing Council of Southern California in many capacities, including accepting appointments as both President and Executive Director.

Beyond supporting these professional organizations, Donna is recognized as an expert in the field of personnel selection. She serves of the editorial board of Personnel Psychology for their "Innovations in Research-based Practice" journal segment. She also co-chaired the 1990 International Congress on the Assessment Center Method. To further underscore the recognition Donna's technical competence and illustrate her willingness to share her expertise, she has also taught graduate courses in personnel psychology and advised student research at the California School of Professional Psychology.

As a prolific researcher with wide ranging research interest Donna has drawn upon and demonstrated her broad knowledge in the field. She has authored papers in subjects ranging from multi-purpose job analysis to employee safety and job satisfaction, from the social benefits of testing to validity generalization and construct validity, from a needs analysis for literacy training to accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

She is well known through the professional community for her readiness to assist any individual or group to improve their understanding of personnel selection. She has made nearly 50 presentations to professional associations, including many invited addresses. She cohered and presented in numerous symposia, participated in panel discussions, and has her work published in professional journals. Recognized even by other fields, she has contributed through presentations on physical abilities assessments at the American Petroleum Institute Meeting and the annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine and on social benefits of testing at the American Educational Research Association.

Please join us in congratulating the 1998 Stephen E. Bemis Memorial Award winner, Dr. Donna Denning.

Donna was nominated by the Personnel Testing Council of Southern California and the Western Region Intergovernmental Assessment Council.

We would also like to recognize the three other nominees for this award.

David Kleinke

David Kleinke's entire career as a psychologist has been devoted to the construction and promotion of tests and other selection procedures that are color- and gender-blind for the purposes of making high stakes selection decisions. He has been committed to the development of tests and test items that measure the construct of interest and are free of error variance from demographic or other sources of contamination.

During David's 17 years tenure with Edison Electric Institute (EEI), he has taken numerous steps to ensure that the companies that use EEI tests do so appropriately.

David is a pioneer in the area of consortium projects. The EEI consortium was one of the first in the country and has been one of the longest lasting. David essentially wrote the book on how to organize a consortium to make it effective and self-supporting. This industry-wide consortium has delivered 12 valid selection project to 89 companies across the continental US and Hawaii.

He has been a leader in promoting understanding of the Americans with Disabilities Act and helping organizations adapt their procedures to come into compliance with the Act's provisions. David has shared his work in this area with fellow practitioners at national and regional conferences and workshops. He has also worked extensively on an individual basis with organizations who have specific questions about how to adapt tests to accommodate the needs of particular disabled candidates. His efforts have increased the appropriateness of the assessment of disabled candidates and opened up new employment opportunities.

Based on David's efforts, hundreds of thousands of candidates nationwide have been and continue to be evaluated in a fair, objective, and consistent manner. The impact of these contributions have been felt in the fields of employment testing, licensure testing, and educational testing.

David's nomination was made by the Personnel Testing Council of Metropolitan Washington.

Terry McKinney

Terry McKinney has been an active contributor to the personnel field for 29 years. He has 26 years of experience with the City of Phoenix and three years of experience with the State of Illinois Personnel Department.

He believes in life-long leaning and in sharing his expertise with others. He has taught workshops and seminars on the topics of Job Analysis, Examination Planning, Training and Experience Evaluations, Test Validation Methodologies, Writing Good Test Items, Statistics for Selection Professionals, Assessing Writing Skills, Test Administration and Security, ADA Testing Accommodations, Ethics in Personnel Selection, and Surfing the Internet for Selection Specialists. Terry has authored and co-authored several WRIPAC monographs and is a frequent contributor to the newsletters of PTC/A, WRIPAC, and IPMAAC. Terry also Chaired the WRIPAC Committee the authored the WRIPAC Ethical Principles.

Perhaps Terry's greatest strength is his commitment to assisting his colleagues, being available to them and freely calling upon them. Terry is active in many professional organizations and well known within the assessment community. He has been a member of IPMAAC since 1976. He was the Conference Chair for the Minneapolis Conference, is a past Board member, Chaired the Ethics/Professional Affairs Committee for three years and has served on numerous committees. In addition, Terry is a Charter member of WRIPAC, was the 84-85 President, Co-Chaired the committee that produced the first WRIPAC Test Exchange Agreement and Chaired the Ethics/Professional Affairs Committee for three years. Currently he Chairs the Internet Committee and acts as liaison to IPMAAC On-line!

Terry's many practical contributions to improvement procedures and processes include the following for the City of Phoenix: forecasted recruiting, study guides, instant test dates, firefighter simulations, and no lost challenges.

Terry was nominated by the Western Region Intergovernmental Assessment Council and the Personnel Testing Council of Arizona.

Chuck Schultz

Chuck has been an assessment professional for almost forty years. In the early years of his career, while teaching at Seattle University and the University of Pennsylvania, he developed a deep understanding of the theoretical/scientific aspects of assessment and contributed to the education and training of future academics and practitioners. After more than a decade in academia, Chuck dedicated himself to the "real-world" practice of assessment.

Chuck spent twenty-two years with the Washington State Department of Personnel. He initially served (under an IPA grant) as Director of Validation Research, with the responsibility for performing criterion-related validation studies of existing selection procedures. Discovering the poor quality of many of these examination, he quickly shifter his focus to improving their development. Moving to the Test Development Unit, which he managed for over nineteen years, Chuck focused first upon designing high quality multiple-choice tests. He didn't stop there, however, introducing numerous innovations to the state's assessment systems. For example, he replaced the traditional system of T&E ratings based largely on seniority with a more job-related one, developed systematic rating guides for oral exams, introduced structure to the interview process, transformed the global/trait based performance evaluation system to one based upon observed behaviors and introduced job simulations as an assessment techniques. To ensure the effectiveness of these innovations, he provided extensive training and support to his staff and that of the state's agencies.

Chuck is a great believer in sharing information. When he began work with Washington State, he began to contact other organizations around the country to identify who was doing interesting work in the filed. The network that resulted from Chuck's efforts was an important precursor to IPMAAC> He was there at the organization's beginning, and has served in a variety of formal leadership roles, including IPMAAC President. At each over twenty annual conferences he has taken the time to share his expertise through workshops and presentations. In addition, Chuck has made many presentations and meetings and conferences of MAPAC and other regional assessment consortia. He uses humor, creativity, and an engaging presentation style to communicate important messages in fun and absorbing ways.

Chuck has a unique ability for raising complex statistical issues in such a way that they're easily understandable. Through his writing, presentations, and workshops over the years, Chuck has helped assessment specialists of all backgrounds understand and effectively use quantitative methods. His regular "Statistics Tips & Enigmas" column in the ACN has won wide acclaim for helping assessment professional think about statistical concepts in new ways and apply them effectively to their everyday work.

He is an excellent methodologist and teacher of the "numbers" foundation of selection work. Yet for all of this, Chuck is well aware of our tendency to overemphasize and overinterpret our data; it's one of his favorite topics at which to poke gentle fun. He is well aware of the larger context of our work, and has provided wise counsel on how to effectively serve our many customers and constituencies.

Chuck's nomination was made by the IPMA Assessment Council.

Congratulations to all of the nominees! They are a credit to our profession. We appreciate the contributions they have made to our field and their willingness to share with colleagues.