Dr. Frederick L. Oswald, longstanding member and former president of SIOP (2017-18), has been named chair of the Board on Human-Systems Integration (BOHSI) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He assumed his duties on Jan. 1, 2020. BOHSI deals with a wide range of issues relevant to I-O psychology. Current projects address making recommendations on facility staffing requirements of the Veterans Health Administration, working with the U.S. Air Force on human capital management, and reviewing ways to improve patient care by reducing clinician burnout.
“It is a real privilege to have worked with my BOHSI colleagues on a range of important and interesting issues, and now to be the chair is quite the honor and responsibility,” Oswald said. “Human factors psychology and expertise features strongly within BOHSI—but organizational psychology is also critical to every issue on the table, and I hope SIOP will be interested in increasing its involvement.”
Oswald is a professor and Herbert S. Autrey Chair of Social Sciences in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Rice University in Houston, Texas. His research and publications focus on developing, implementing, and statistically evaluating psychological measures in personnel selection and college admissions contexts.
“My years of fortunate involvement in SIOP has allowed me to work with and listen to a wide range of I-O psychologists. This helps me communicate the many ways that SIOP might importantly inform the National Academies,” he said. “Although own research deals with personnel selection and testing, there are so many other areas of IO psychology that are relevant to BOHSI, such as training, teams, recruitment, diversity, and management and culture. In general, it is my role as BOHSI chair to bring the best objective science available to inform a variety of complex issues facing the world and workforce. I-O psychology, human factors, and other scientific disciplines are usefully brought to bear on these issues, and therefore I hope SIOP will become a strong supporter of BOHSI.”