1999 Bemis Award Winner: James C. Johnson
The Stephen E. Bemis Memorial Award is a unique award in that it is intended to reflect on both the tangible contributions that Steve Bemis provided to our profession and on the open, caring attitude which characterized his personality. It was designed to serve as perpetual reminder of the qualities which caused his colleagues to admire him. Individuals are nominated for the award based on the emulation of the three primary qualities for which Steve is remembered:
- Accomplished personnel management practitioners who are recognized for their on-going commitment to the principles of fairness and merit.
- Professionals who have made an impact in the field by their practical contribution(s) that have resulted in an improved or new procedure.
- Concerned individuals who are recognized for their commitment to assisting fellow practitioners, being available to them, and freely calling on them.
Past recipients of the Stephen E. Bemis Memorial Award include:
| 1998 | Donna Denning |
| 1997 | Doris Maye |
| 1996 | Jim Sharf |
| 1995 | Richard K. McKillip |
| 1994 | Wayne Cascio |
| 1993 | Anita Ford |
| 1992 | Nancy Abrahms |
| 1991 | Barbara Showers |
| 1990 | Karen Coffee |
| 1989 | Bruce Davey |
| 1988 | Al Maslow |
| 1987 | Ted Darany |
| 1986 | Glenn McClung & Charles Sproule |
On June 8th, the 1999 award was presented by Donna Denning (last year's recipient) to Dr. James C. Johnson. The award was presented at the IPMAAC Conference in St. Pete Beach. Jim is a most deserving recipient of this award.
In 1972, Jim left a position as Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville for a "temporary" two-year assignment with the state government of Tennessee in Nashville. Though planning to return to academe by 1975, the challenges and opportunities for advancing assessment practices in the real world were unexpectedly attractive, and he has became a highly-regarded practitioner committed to designing and using assessment methods which are job-related and fair, developing and demonstrating the value of new assessment methods, and an asset to fellow practitioners personally and through his many contributions as a leader, author, trainer, and presented at conferences of many organizations throughout the country.
Within weeks of starting work on Tennessee civil service examinations, he arranged a visit to the U.S. Civil Service Commission in Washington, D.C., hoping to better understand how civil service examining methods had evolved to that point, and to learn more about the unprecedented legal and professional challenges to merit employment then emerging. There he met Bill Gorham, Lorrie Eyde, Ernest Primoff, Mary Tenopyr, and many others at the Civil Service Commission and at the EEOC. Seeking contacts in other state and local governments, he learned of Charley Sproule in Pennsylvania, and benefitted enormously as part of an early network of assessment specialists throughout the country who formed the Assessment Council of the International Personnel Management Associated just a few years later. He was a member of its founding Board of Directors, and within his region, established and was co-director of the Southeastern Personnel Assessment Regional Consortium (SPARC; 1975-80).
Some of his most visible efforts to enhance information exchange and promote use of sound assessment methods occurred during his recent tenure as President of IPMAAC. As IPMAAC moved its fiscal year to a calendar year, Jim served 12 months as President-Elect and 18 months as President. He put that time to good use, creating an environment conducive to and promoting enhanced communication and information exchange. Results include a revamped ACN with 6 issues/year and associate editors, an IPMAAC listserv providing almost "real time" email discussions, and IPMAAC Online!, IPMAAC's internet site.
His view of the importance of information exchange extends beyond fellow assessment professional. He has long recognized the importance of establishing relationships with academic researchers, other professional organizations (SIOP, APA, APS, etc.), decision-makers (IPMA and regional chapter members, and SHRM). He succeeded in obtaining an inexpensive "student membership" category in IPMAAC to encourage students to become more familiar with assessment practices. He has always promoted direct relationships with assessment professionals in other organizations, and has himself participated in programs designed to acquaint psychologists in SIOP and APA with public sector assessment issues.
Jim's practical contributions resemble those of Steve Bemis in remarkable ways. One goal of his 1972 trip to Washington, D.C. was to understand the use of minimum qualifications for employment, and scoring applications through "training and experience rating" methods in the public sector, a procedure then unknown in the private sector and the field of industrial-organizational psychology. Concluding that the traditional methods had neither rational nor "scientific" evidence to support its use, he was provided a grant by the U.S. Civil Service Commission to conduct comparative validity studies of these methods, resulting in a paper presented at the 1980 IPMAAC Conference titled "When is a T&E Rating Valid?" Hundreds of copies were sought in the next few years, and it remains one of the most frequently accessed documents on IPMAAC's web site. Dr. Frank Schmidt describes this work as "the first demonstration of the superior validity of the behavioral consistency method" which he and Steve Bemis had advocated. Shortly thereafter, Jim focused attention on use of minimum qualifications, devising methods (some adapted from Eric Prien's studies of "educational equivalencies") to conduct studies he needed as an expert witness in a case challenging use of all high school diploma and college degree requirements. To promote better use of these methods, he joined with Ron Ash and Nancy Abrams to create a three-day workshop on T&E methods in 1986, and co-authored (with Ash, Ed Levine, and Mike McDaniel) a comprehensive book chapter in 1989. He has served as a trainer and consultant on these methods continuously since that time, revising and updating materials and research summaries, providing workshops for IPMAAC, regional associations, and employers.
By the mid-1980's, he recognized deficiencies in the "traditional" content-oriented validation methods which rely solely on job tasks and KSA's in the design and validation of assessment methods. Based partly on the results of his studies of supervisory evaluations of employee performance and emerging research in the psychological literature, developed alternative ways of viewing "content-oriented" validations and was invited to present his conclusions and proposals at a PTC-SC conference on the role of intelligence in 1988. In "Three 'g's and the Design of Selection Systems," he observed that the traditional model, based on an unnecessarily narrow interpretation of the Federal Uniform Guidelines, paradoxically resulted in tests of cognitive abilities which usually increased adverse impact and limited the potential validity of the assessment process by limiting the concept of performance domains to tasks. He forecast the growing significance of measures of "personality" and other "non-cognitive attributes," and extending methods of job analysis and performance measurement to domains defined more broadly than simple tasks. These ideas were further developed in papers subsequently presented at IPMAAC, MAPAC, and IPMA conferences.
In dozens of other presentations and papers, he explained a practical means for development and criterion validation of situational judgement tests suing critical incident methodology, using rater confidence in ratings of employee performance to moderate test score - criterion validity coefficients, development of a state-wide employee feedback program, development of a state-wide performance evaluation system, and many other topics.
The Stephen E. Bemis Award is designed to go to a practitioner who id dedicated to personnel assessment; one who has contributed in a meaningful and lasting way to it; one who has shown great generosity with his or her time and energy assisting others and developing innovative new methods of personnel assessment. Jim Johnson meets all of the criteria. For the past twenty-five plus years, he has been extremely active in the field and has continually pursued information sharing with his colleagues, in fact, he has been instrumental in the development of information sharing networks. He has developed selection materials and methods and has made a point of ensuring their accessibility to others in the field. His commitment and ongoing contributions to the selection field have been an inspiration to all who have come into contact with him.
We would like to offer Jim our most sincere congratulations on winning the Stephen E. Bemis Award. He is a most deserving recipient.
We would also to like to recognize the other nominees for this year's award. The fact that did not "win" is not a reflection of their generous contributions to our field bur rather of the high quality of individuals we have as active members of our profession. We would like to recognize the other nominees and let them know we appreciate their contributions. To us, they are all winners! We offer the following information, taken from their nominations, to substantiate this claim.
Magda Colberg
From the outset of her career twenty-five years ago, at the U.S. Civil Service Commission, Magda Colberg has been committed to the principles of merit and fairness. Her earliest work involved developing logic-based measurement, a new methodology that succeeded in removing bias from cognitive ability tests. Logic-based measurement enables one to separate the medium of reasoning from the measurement. When the agency was attempting to meet the requirements of the race, national origin, and sex data collection for compliance with the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection, Magda contributed unique insight concerning the different groups covered by the Equal Employment Opportunity laws and regulations. She also shared great insight into how best to examine people with disabilities, particularly the hearing impaired.
In 1987, she assumed the responsibility of Director of the Measurement Research and Applications Division at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. During her tenure, she simplified and revalidated varius test batteries. She was also responsible for the design, construction, and validation of the Administrative Careers with America (ACWA) examinations, which were implemented for the selection of personnel into approximately 100 Federal occupations.
In 1995, Magda moved on to establish a new Research and Development Division in the Office of Human Resources and Development of INS. Under her leadership and direction, the Research and Development Division developed the standardized Border Patrol Agent (Trainee) entry level examination. In addition, she directed the development of competency-based promotional assessments for supervisors, managers, and executives. Her positive impact on the Federal service will be felt for years to come. In the words of the Chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, "Dr. Colberg has provided us with the highest caliber of new agents and cadre of professional supervisors and mangers who will lead us into the next century."
Magda is recognized for her expertise in the area of cognitive ability measurement, most notably in the assessment of reasoning. The results of her research have been extensively published in refereed professional journals and in national and international technical publications. In addition, the results of this research have been presented in numerous professional forums such IPMA, APA, SIOP, APS, and the International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science.
Her crowning contribution to the field of assessment has been the development of logic-based measurement (LBM). LBM was conceived during her first assignment in the U.S. Civil Service Commission. When asked to develop a state-of-the-science test of reasoning skill, a component of the Professional and Administrative Career Examination (PACE), Magda saw the opportunity to use formal logic to improve the science of psychometrics of reasoning abilities in both the deductive and inductive domains.
Not content with the development of a taxonomy, she has throughout her career applied, refined, and extended this methodology. This methodology is now being used in the testing programs of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, where it is a cornerstone of the Administrative Careers with America (ACWA) Examination. It has also been incorporated into the testing systems for the U.S. Customs Service, the Internal Revenue Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In addition, the technology of LBM has been transferred to the governments of the United Kingdom and Thailand. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services uses LBM to make hiring decisions for mission critical occupations at both the entry-level, for supervisors and managers in Law Enforcement occupations, and for Executive personnel.
Another second significant contribution has been her development of an Artificial Language Test (ALT). This test was developed to screen out applicants for Border Patrol Agent positions who would have difficulty learning Spanish at a level required to pass the Academy's Spanish language training course. As a result of implementation of the test attrition rates at the Academy due to failure to learn Spanish went down by a staggering 76%.
Magda is known for the assistance she provides to her fellow practitioners, organizationally and personally. She willingly shares her tremendous knowledge with anyone who asks for her assistance. During her many years of managing OPM's personnel selection program, she cast a wide net within the International, Federal, State, and Local personnel selection community. While in the throes of setting up a new research and development program at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, she was heavily involved with assisting her peers at U.S. Customs Service and FBI n the development of their own systems. She has also traveled to the UK to assist the British Government. She has held training sessions on logic-based measurement for representatives of the Government of Thailand, the United Kingdom, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Customs Service. She has also fostered sharing among her colleagues by sponsoring symposia on advances in Law Enforcement selection techniques.
Magda's strong leadership has earned her the trust, respect, and affection of her employees, her colleagues, and the professional community. In everything that Magda does, she leads by example, providing all who work with her a living model for professionalism, excellence, integrity, and dignity in the workplace.
Edward Z. Hane
Ed's contributions to the field of personnel selection date back to the 1950's, when, following graduate school he embarked on his career. His interest in selection and testing launched his early career in the design and validation of employee selection instruments for aerospace. From his initial work with Howard Lockwood at Lockheed California and Mary Tenopyr at North American Aviation, Ed's dedication to the filed of industrial-organizational psychology took root. During his tenure as Manager of Industrial Sciences at Douglas Aircraft, Ed graduated from the University of Southern California with a Ph.D. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology. His research on multi-dimensional scaling led him to further his investigations into assessment instruments for selection.
Having spent nearly two decades as a selection-specialist within organizations, Ed moved into consulting. In 1974, he founded the Personnel Consulting Group, an independent consultancy specializing in human resources programs for employers. Ed has designed and validated selection procedures, assessment programs and structured interviews for a myriad of organizations through the United States, among them, U.S. Borax, Occidental Life, Kaiser Steel, Kerr McGee, Mattel Toys, Southern California Edison, the Automobile Club of Southern California, Los Angeles Times, Kaiser Hospital, and ARCO, to name a few.
While busy developing selection tools for industry, Ed has been actively engaged in conducting training programs for two types of audiences - the organizational client and the professional selection specialist. The comprehensive education programs that Ed has organized have been presented for the primary purpose of educating individuals who would benefit from instruction most - those who are on the front lines designing the selection programs and managers who utilize these programs to make selection decisions. He has presented workshops and training classes for members of PTC, WRIPAC, and IPMAAC on such topics as job analysis, item writing, item analysis, validation, EEOC and ADA compliance, examination and interview planning, as well as the design of assessment exercises.
Throughout Ed's professional career he has served the testing community as a mentor, guide and educator. Having taught classes in personnel testing at the University of Southern California and University of California at Riverside, Ed has also edited newsletters and handbooks on testing for professional associations. He has written articles on ADA, testing , and selection processes, which have been published in the Personnel Journal and industry manuals.
However, Ed's influence has been greatest in the time he volunteers to professional organizations. His professional membership activities include PTC, WRIPAC, IPMAAC, APA, SIOP, National Human Resources Association, and the Association for Resources Professionals.
In addition to having been a continuously active member of the Personnel Testing Council since its inception in the early 1950's, Ed has served twice as President, and has been on the Board of Directors for many years. He has coordinated numerous training workshops and presented at professional conferences for PTC, IPMAAC and WRIPAC.
Always ready to assist when needed, Ed has submitted several recommendations for the preparation and revision of the Uniform Guidelines and other standards for testing. His expertise was most influential when he served on the Technical Advisory Committee on Testing to the State of California's Fair Employment and Housing Commission (now Fair Employment Practices Commission). He served as vice chairman of the committee and chair of the subcommittee on test validation. In this capacity, he met monthly with other testing professionals who advised the Commission on policies and practices regarding the evaluation of tests in connection with cases of alleged discrimination. He reviewed validation studies submitted by employers in such cases, and offered expert opinion on their efficacy.
Ed's generosity in giving his time and energy to assist others and to further the goals of professional associations that serve our field have been unique and consistent throughout his career. We would like to recognize and thank Ed for decades of wonderful contributions to our field.
Kathleen Hurley
Kathleen Hurley is an accomplished personnel management measurement practitioner with more than twenty years of municipal personnel experience. She is recognized for her on-going commitment to the principles of merit and fairness in testing. Kathleen has specialized in public safety recruitment and selection for most of her career. She served for twelve years in the San Francisco Consent Decree Division where she managed the most successful outreach of diverse applicants and was largely responsible for dramatically increasing the representation of women in the sworn ranks. Kathleen was promoted in 1986 form Examinations Manager to a federal-court appointment as Consent Decree Coordinator for the San Francisco Police Department. In that position Kathleen was instrumental in developing policies and procedures that resulted in successful litigation of at least four cases that went to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Currently, Kathleen is the Manager of Employment and Classification for the City of Oakland, where she ensures that the principles of merit and fairness are extended to all City classifications. These efforts include a 1996 fire fighter selection process that involved 4,700 applicants and oral interviews for 1,900 candidates in four days!
Kathleen is a professional who has made a practical impact in the field though her literary contributions in the textbook chapter, Police Assessment Centers, which detailed practical steps to handling successful assessment centers. The text applies research in the practical area to assist personnel professionals. Kathleen has also provided consultation to representatives of a number of personnel and public safety departments throughout the count and aborad in the areas of testing, selection, promotional practices and procedures.
She graduated with highest honors from San Francisco State University where she also completed graduate course work in Industrial-Organizational Psychology and Labor Studies.
Kathleen is a concerned individual who is recognized for her commitment to assisting fellow practitioners by being available to them as a resource and by calling on them to share their expertise. She is always willing to share the information she has gained and encourages others to do the same. Although she is a manager and leader in the field, no examination task is too small for her to do.
Kathleen believes in helping others in the field. This has been demonstrated again and again as she obtained recognized personnel professionals from across the country to serve as presenters at local Personnel Testing Council workshops and conferences thereby enhancing the skills of fellow practitioners. She is the past vice-resident of the Personnel Testing Council of Northern California and is a long-standing member of the personal development committee of IPMA-Northern California Chapter.
We would like to recognize and thank Kathleen for always being willing to help, for offering solid practical skills and advice, a smile and a can-do attitude.
Michael A. Willihnganz
Over a career spanning more than twenty years, Mike is known for his tireless dedication to learning, innovation and sharing what he finds with others.
Mike has worked in the area of personnel assessment for the State of Wisconsin; Monterey County, California; Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD); and the California State Personnel Board (SPB), where he currently serves as the Manager of Test Validation, Construction and Technical Training. Through his work with these agencies he has demonstrated the highest technical and ethical standards, as well as an ongoing enthusiasm for finding new and better ways to do things. He has blended his academic interests with his work to provide practical innovations and information to his colleagues. He has contributed research projects on such topics as the impact of time of day on interview scores, performance motivation and test environment, and low fidelity simulations.
He has generously shared his work in the area of low fidelity simulations. Through this and his willingness to conduct training sessions on the topic, he has enabled many practitioners to utilize a tool which they thought was out of their reach due to lack of resources or expertise. Presently, he has initiated work in the area of personality assessment which will most likely also lead to the introduction of a new tool in an applied setting.
Mike earned a Masters of Arts Degree in Human Resources Administration from the University of Wisconsin, a Masters of Arts Degree in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from California State University, and his Doctorate in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from the Professional School of Psychology. He continues his commitment to education by sharing his expertise with others in a variety of arenas. Currently, he is an Associate Professor with both Chapman University in Sacramento and the Professional School of Psychology (Sacramento campus). Additionally, he has developed an outstanding series called "Test Talk" in his capacity as Manager of Technical Training with the California State Personnel Board. This series, available at no cost to both State employees and outside agencies, consists of a variety of programs designed to provide strong foundations in the essential areas of personnel assessment.
Perhaps, however, he is most known to his colleagues for his work developing and presenting foundation level training in the areas of job analysis, item writing and item analysis. These courses are offered as core curriculum through WRIPAC and Mike has literally trained thousands of individuals throughout the country. In these session, participants take away several valuable lessons. First, many realize that quality selection procedures are within their reach and the training provides them with the tools to get there. Secondly, they inevitably make a valuable new professional contact in Mike whose enthusiasm for the subject, humor and giving personality make him someone they can (and do) freely call upon.
Mike spends a great deal of time dedicating himself to the professional development of others, however, he spends an equal amount of time contributing to several organizations within our profession. His professional affiliations include WRIPAC, IPMA, IPMAAC, the Personnel Testing Council, and the Bay Area Organizational Development Network. He is currently serving as a member of the Board of Directors and Training Committee Chairperson of IPMAAC and is also the Vice President and Job Analysis Committee Chairperson of WRIPAC. He has served as a member of the Personnel Testing Council of Northern California's Board of Directors and as the 1977 IPMAAC Conference Program Chairman. He is the author of Job Analysis Made Easy, co-author of a monograph on performance testing, and has served as an Associate Editor for the ACN.
This range of contributions reveals the essence of Mike's professional commitment. He dedicates an enormous amount of time and energy to his profession and his fellow practitioners. His commitment and giving nature are evidenced by the fact that he initiates most of these contributions, anticipating what needs to be done and volunteering before someone asks. He is one of those people that can always be counted on to help with a project or conference, regardless of how busy he is. Whether through direct contributions such as training or the low fidelity simulation instrument or through being a valuable friend and professional contact, Mike has and continues to have a tremendous impact on our field.
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