Lindley Award - October 1999 [ACN]

Clyde J. Lindley Exemplary Service Award Presented to Chuck Schultz

The IPMA Assessment Council Exemplary Service Award was established in 1991, in conjunction with IPMAAC's 15th anniversary, as a way to recognize members for continuously and generously contributing their time, energy, and talents to IPMAAC. The Award was renamed this year to the Clyde J. Lindley Exemplary Service Award to honor the late Clyde J. Lindley, one of IPMAAC's founding members..

This is IPMAAC's highest honor and in previous years it has been presented to:

1991	Susan K. Christopher
1991	Charles F. Sproule
1994	Nancy Abrams
1995	Clyde J. Lindley
1997	James C. Johnson
1997	William J. Waldron

In 1999, in recognition of his years of contribution to IPMAAC the award was presented to Charles B. Schultz. Chuck is truly deserving of this award and it is somehow very appropriate that he be the first recipient of the award under its new name, the Clyde J. Lindley Exemplary Service Award.

Chuck has been an assessment professional for almost forty years. He spent the early years of his career in academia at Seattle University and the University of Pennsylvania where he mastered his understanding of the theoretical and scientific aspects of assessment and contributed to the education and training of future academics and practitioners. For the last twenty-seven years Chuck has dedicated his career to the practice of assessment where he has made innumerable contributions to the art of assessment and to those of whose practice the art on a daily basis.

Chuck spent twenty-two years of his career with the Washington State Department of Personnel. His initial position was as Director of Validation Research under an IPA grant where he was to perform criterion-related validation studies of existing selection procedures. On discovering the poor quality of the exams he changed his focus from validation of these poor exams to improvement of the entire test development process. After only three years, Chuck moved to the Test Development Unit which he managed for more than nineteen years. His first focus was the development of high quality written multiple choice tests but he didn't stop there. He replaced the system of traditional seniority-based T&E's with one which was job-related, introduced agencies to structured interviews, transformed the old style of global performance evaluations to one based upon observed behaviors, and introduced job simulations as an assessment technique. With each innovation he provided training and support to his staff and the staffs of the State agencies.

Chuck's impact in selection has not been limited to the State of Washington. He served on IPMA's Committee to provide comments on the Uniform Guidelines as they were being developed. He chaired a session on this topic at the 1976 Selection Specialists' Symposium in Chicago, the forerunner of IPMAAC.

Chuck is a great believer in the sharing of information. When he started work with Washington State, he began to write letters to other organizations around the country to identify who was doing interesting work, which might help him in his own work. This network became a precursor to IPMAAC.

IPMAAC and its members have been the recipients of Chuck's contributions since its inception. He served as Program and Host Committee Chair and as President. At the twenty plus annual conferences he has shared his expertise and knowledge with his colleagues through workshops, presentations, and symposia. He has even authored and presented skits to bring home important messages in fun and diverting ways. Topics have included oral examinations, preparing written multiple-choice test items, training and experience evaluations, managing a test validation unit, workforce diversity, systemic validity, and statistics (introductory, intermediate, and advanced). His presentation on "Test wiseness, cultural orientation and job-related factors in the design of multiple-choice test questions" with Brenda Morefield and Christina L. Valadez led to the production of a 1989 monograph on the topic. Chuck's paper and symposium on systemic validity led many to reconsider how the validity of tests is related to how those tests fit into the entire recruitment and selection context.

He even makes statistics understandable. Through dozens of ACN columns and presentations/workshops over many years, Chuck has helped assessment specialists of all backgrounds understand and use quantitative methods. His "Statistics Tips & Enigmas" columns in the IPMAAC newsletter (ACN) provided practical information on statistics that helped practitioners understand statistical concepts and apply them correctly to their everyday work. He has a unique ability to clarify the complex. Chuck has also identified important questions which even now are largely unrecognized by leading researchers and practitioners in the field. An example, from a paper titled "What They Don't Teach You in PhD School," is the interpretation of a validity coefficient, this: Two tests each correlate .30 with a criterion. Are they equivalent? No. And he proceeded to explain why that is so and its implications, demonstrating, for example, that two rank-ordered lists drawn from the two tests rank candidates quite differently. While doing an excellent job in teaching statistics and their use in assessment, Chuck is also aware of the overemphasis they sometimes receive and one of his favorite topics at which to poke fun is the over interpretation of statistical findings.

Chuck's active participation is not limited to IPMAAC. In the early 1980's he helped organize WESPAC, a consortium of organizations in the Pacific Northwest. This group eventually dissolved but was replaced with the Northwest Conversations.

One of Chuck's most valuable characteristics and contributions is that in moving from "scientist" to "practitioner" he did not forsake the one for the other but has combined them to the benefit of all. A unique distinction of his contributions to our field has been the combining of mysterious methods and psychometric traditions with day-to-day challenges faced by practitioners. Perhaps because he understands both arenas so well, he has managed to propose strategies which might be challenged as "unsupported by current research evidence," but he understands that such limits to the state of scientific evidence is a problem of science, which is a problem for practitioners only if they think "no evidence" is equivalent to "not acceptable." As did Steve, he developed methods which made scientific sense, even if scientific evidence was lacking. For example: Chuck and his staff at Washington developed an unusual methods of evaluating candidate background information (T&E Rating) which entailed configural scoring and other nuances which were both more sophisticated than what we now call "traditional T&E Ratings" and far less cumbersome to use than other methods. When developing and revising the IPMAAC training materials on T&E methods a decade ago, his strategy was included, labeled as the "Modified Traditional Method." He provided a brief manual for the method, with permission to include it as an appendix to the participants' manual. But, as typical for Chuck, his name was not included. Hundreds of public sector (and some private sector) trainees have learned this strategy, and it has been among the more important methods for those who can't adopt so-called "better methods."

Chuck is one of the most unassuming persons in our field. He has clearly valued enhancing the state of the art rather than his personal visibility and career. Chuck has helped many of his colleagues and it seems that he has been more interested in advancing their careers than his own.

He does not compromise principles, but disagrees in a unique fashion, not by attacking others or their ideas, but by raising a crucial question or questions. He is the true scientist/practitioner, combining the best of both worlds to create solutions that work in the real world without sacrificing principle or sound assessment practice. He is a worthy role model for all in our field.

Summary: Chuck's modesty and lack of self-promotion result in his accomplishments and contributions frequently going unrecognized. IPMAAC corrected that this year by presenting Chuck with its Clyde J. Lindley Exemplary Service Award. Congratulations Chuck on well deserved recognition and for all of your help and support through the years! It is truly appreciated!