IACAT members will be able to vote for our next Vice President of the Board.  The Vice President will become President and then Past President of the Board.  This is an important leadership position for IACAT and how our bi-annual conferences continue.

We would like members to vote for one of the nominated candidates.  They are:

  • Dr. Richard M. Luecht
  • Dr. Mark Reckase
  • Dr. V. Natarajan
  • Dr. Hua-Hua Chang

Members will receive an email from Assessment Systems Corporation ("FastTest Web") with a link to vote.  Please check your spam folders in the next few days in case the email is diverted.  The deadline to vote is August 1.

​Their biographies are:

Dr. Richard M. Luecht

Ric is a Professor of Educational Research Methodology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) where he teaches graduate courses in applied statistics and advanced measurement.  He is also a Senior Research Scientist with the Center for Assessment Research and Technology, a not-for-profit psychometric services division of the Center for Credentialing and Education, Greensboro, NC.  

His research interests involve applying engineering designs principles to assessment constructs and task design, advanced psychometric modeling of response data, and scoring issues related to diagnostic and formative assessments.  Ric has published numerous articles and book chapters on technical measurement issues. He has been a technical consultant and advisor for many state department of education testing agencies and large-scale testing organizations, including New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, The College Board, Educational Testing Service, HUMRRO, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC), the National Center and State Collaborative (NCSC), the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the National Board on Professional Teaching Standards, Cisco Corporation, the Defense Language Institute, and the National Commission on the Certification of Physicians Assistants.

He has been an active participant at previous the National Council of Measurement in Education (NCME), American Educational Research Association (AERA) and Association of Test Publishers (ATP)meetings, teaching workshops and giving presentations on topics such as assessment engineering and principled assessment design, computer-based testing, multistage testing design and implementation, standard setting, automated test assembly, IRT calibration, scale maintenance and scoring, designing complex performance assessments, diagnostic testing, multidimensional IRT, and language testing.  

Before joining UNCG, Ric was the Director for Computerized Adaptive Testing Research and Senior Psychometrician at the National Board of Medical Examiners where he oversaw psychometric processing for the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step and numerous subject examinations, as well being instrumental in the design of systems and technologies for the migration of the United States Medical Licensing Examination programs to computerized delivery.  He has also designed software systems and algorithms for large-scale automated test assembly and devised a computerized adaptive multistage testing implementation framework that is used by a number of large-scale testing programs.  His most recent work involves the development of a comprehensive framework and associated methodologies for a new approach to large-scale formative assessment design and implementation called assessment engineering (AE).

Dr. Mark Reckase

Mark Reckase is a University Distinguished Professor of measurement and quantitative methods. He specializes in the development of educational and psychological tests, educational policy related to testing, and the psychometric theory that supports the assessment of cognitive skills and content knowledge. In particular, he is doing research on applications of unidimensional and multidimensional item response theory (IRT) models, computerized adaptive testing (CAT), assessment using performance tasks, standard setting on educational tests, and methods for evaluating the quality of teacher education programs.

 

Dr. V. Natarajan

1. He’s Professor Emeritus at MeritTrac Services.

2. An engineer and D. Litt. in Educational Evaluation and Administration

3. Author of 72 books e.g. “Basic Principles of IRT and Applications to Practical Testing”

4. Over 60 original papers published in Indian and International Journals

5. Pioneer in the area of education assessments in India

6. Visiting faculty at ETS, Princeton, USA.

7. Member of Board of Governors of IACAT from the last 5 years

8. Member of the Association of Indian Universities for over three decades

9. Member of the Governing body of Chitkara University, India.

10. Holds 4 patents (IPRs) in Engineering Design and in statistics for assessment

11. Learnt IRT from Prof. Fred Lord (father of IRT, of ETS) himself

 

Dr. Hua-Hua Chang

Dr. Hua-Hua Chang is a Professor of Educational Psychology, Psychology and Statistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He is a practitioner turned professor. Before moving to academia in 2001, he had worked in the testing industry for nine years, of which six years were at Educational Testing Service in Princeton, NJ and three years were at the National Board of Medical Examiners in Philadelphia, PA. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Applied Psychological Measurement, past President of the Psychometric Society (2012-2013), and a Fellow of American Educational Research Association. Since 2008, he has been included on the “List of Teachers Ranked Excellent by Their Students” at UIUC for six consecutive years. Dr. Chang currently serves as the director of the Confucius Institute at UIUC, and he was most recently awarded the Changjiang Scholar Chair Professor by the Ministry of Education of PR China.

 
 
Be sure to check out our conference in Septemeber.