Foundation Spotlight: Zedeck-Jacobs Adverse Impact Research Grants
Milt Hakel, SIOP Foundation President
About Rick Jacobs and Shelly Zedeck
Back on April 18 in Chicago, a crowd of over 150 people gathered to honor recipients of the awards announced at the Foundation’s Dessert Reception. Sandra Davis and MDA Leadership supported the event—thank you Sandra! Attendees viewed posters of the award winners, had their photos snapped, and celebrated the continuing advances taking place in our field of applied organizational science.
For me the program had many highlights, including recognizing Tom Bouchard as the second winner of the Dunnette Prize, proclaiming that the Foundation had achieved its goal of making cumulative distributions of over $1,000,000 fully 2 years ahead of the original 2020 target date, and announcing two new incubator fund start-ups, one by Joel Lefkowitz and the other by Wayne Cascio—you are cordially invited to contribute to these and any other Foundation fund at http://my.siop.org/Foundation/Donations. Just pick the fund to designate your gift – it’s easy.
My greatest pleasure was in announcing that Rick Jacobs and his wife Jen made a significant contribution to the endowment for the Adverse Impact Reduction Research Initiative and Action (AIRRIA) Grants fund, which they had started several years earlier. It is the first time for the Foundation that a major endowment has been enlarged.
I’ve been grinning ever since Rick proposed this plan back in November: The award was to be renamed the Zedeck-Jacobs Adverse Impact Research Grant, with a new goal to build the endowment to $100,000 to yield larger grants. Rick’s and my scheme was to surprise to Sheldon Zedeck, for whom the award is conamed.
I was elated to finally reveal the surprise, which came in the form of a pop quiz:
I asked the attendees to raise their hands if they recognized any one of these people, and then to keep their hands raised if they recognized two, and then if they recognized all three. By the time that people who recognized only Bob Guion or Mary Tenopyr dropped their hands, Shelly’s hand was raised even higher because he and few others in the room recognized Ed Ghiselli.
Then I went on to the second and final pop quiz item:
The answer here came as a surprise to Shelly and as a shock to his wife Marty, standing next to him in this photo from his retirement party. The obvious question for them was “what’s up?”
The answer appeared in the next slide:
About You and the SIOP Foundation
This year marked the inaugural award of the Hebl Grant for Reducing Gender Inequities in the Workplace. It recognizes a graduate student who is conducting a gender-related research project for his or her master’s thesis or a doctoral dissertation. It was won by Ashley A. Membere, George Mason University.
This year also included the first call for applications from graduate students for the Graen Grants for Research on Design Thinking and New Professional Knowledge Workers.
The reality of the Foundation’s 20 years of funding awards, scholarships, and grants has been that I-O psychology professionals are both the principal donors and also the creators of smarter workplaces.
Last October the trustees distilled the mission of the SIOP Foundation into a compact statement: Connecting donors with I-O psychology professionals to create smarter workplaces. The new statement really captures the essence of how the SIOP community develops, at least along one vector.
The clear mission in turn led to setting two goals for the coming fiscal year—by June 30, 2019:
- Increase the annual number of donors from 200 to 400.
- Increase the annual total of donations from $56K to $120K.
Special thanks go to Stephen Cerrone. In November he sent a check and a challenge to the Foundation: to think broadly and creatively about how to strengthen our applied organizational science.
The Trustees are now setting plans to meet Stephen’s challenge while exceeding the two goals for SIOP Foundation’s new fiscal year. We welcome your ideas.
Milt Hakel, President, mhakel@bgsu.edu, (419) 819 0936
Rich Klimoski, Vice-President, rklimosk@gmu.edu
Nancy Tippins, Secretary, Nancy.Tippins@gartner.com
Leaetta Hough, Treasurer, leaetta@msn.com
Adrienne Colella, Communications Officer, acolella@tulane.edu
Mirian Graddick-Weir, Trustee, mirian_graddick-weir@merck.com
Bill Macey, Trustee, wmacey9@gmail.com
John C. Scott, Trustee, JScott@APTMetrics.com
