EAST LANSING, Mich. — During a combined 65 years at Michigan State University, Neal Schmitt and Dan Ilgen have mentored dozens of future corporate executives, state officials, college professors and military officers.
They’ve played a key role in guiding MSU’s industrial and organizational psychology doctoral program to a No. 1 ranking in U.S. News and World Report for 13 years in a row.
And their research and training projects have helped improve the hiring practices and work environments of organizations as large and diverse as the FBI, Chicago Public Schools and the Navy.
This summer, the two scholars will retire to the ultimate tribute as more than 100 colleagues and former students gather in East Lansing for an academic celebration called a festschrift. In addition to honoring Schmitt and Ilgen, the June 10-11 symposium will explore issues related to industrial and organizational psychology, which is the study of people’s behavior at work with the ultimate goal of improving both the worker and the workplace.
The scholars’ impact runs deep. One former student, Stephen Gilliland, who received his doctorate in 1992 with Schmitt as his adviser, said he turned in a 200-page dissertation one afternoon and was stunned to find an edited version on his desk the next morning.
“Like fairies that work in the night, Neal had somehow managed to read and provide substantive comments on the entire draft in less than 24 hours,” said Gilliland, now a faculty member and department head at the University of Arizona. “I realized at that point that he was setting an example of mentorship that I would always try, but never truly be able to live up to.”
Schmitt came to MSU as an assistant professor of psychology in 1974 and served as department chair from 2000 to 2010. His research has been cited more than 5,000 times by scholars around the world.
A University Distinguished Professor since 1992, Schmitt studies how effective hiring practices can help find the best employee. He has worked with Ford Motor Co., the FBI and the National Association of Secondary School Principals. Currently he’s helping Chicago figure out how to select the best 2,000-3,000 entry-level teachers every year from a pool of 20,000 applicants – a project with implications for teacher quality and classroom learning in one of America’s largest cities.
Throughout his career Schmitt tried to take on only those research projects that could involve MSU students. Through research donations and grants, he has supported two or three graduate students a year for about three decades.
He’ll retire in August after 37 years at MSU.
“I felt I always paid attention to detail and worked hard,” Schmitt said. “I tried to be persistent and thorough in preparing my case for research projects and with the groups with whom we worked.”
Schmitt helped recruit Ilgen in 1983 from Purdue University, where the two had previously crossed paths. At MSU, Ilgen served as John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Management for nearly a quarter century before assuming a part-time faculty role in 2007. He’s retiring this spring, closing out a 28-year career at MSU.
During that time, both the I/O psychology and management programs have become prominent internationally, and MSU is recognized as one of few universities where psychology and management work closely together to create leading scholars in these disciplines.
Through his research – much of it funded by the U.S. Department of Defense – Ilgen investigates worker motivation and teamwork. One project involved helping the Navy attempt to improve work conditions for those refurbishing aircraft. Another project, which will continue into retirement, involves training Air Force officers and noncommissioned officers how to work better in teams.
Ilgen has also served on several National Research Council panels that addressed problems critical to Congress, such as the effectiveness of pay-for-performance for civil service executives.
“I think I’ve had a reasonably good ability to twist my head on differently and look at problems in ways that other people didn’t,” said Ilgen, who has chaired more than 30 dissertation committees for doctoral candidates. “And I’ve always enjoyed the role of just asking questions and what-ifs of students, trying to get them to see the world differently.”
Jaclyn Jansen, who received her doctorate from MSU in 2004, said Ilgen was devoted to seeing his students succeed. Jensen and Gilliland made donations to start an MSU endowment called the Ilgen-Schmitt Endowed Graduate Fellowship.
“He was generous with his time and resources, and was a constant source of support during my time at MSU,” said Jansen, now a faculty member at George Washington University.
As for the prestige of MSU’s I/O psychology program, Ilgen and Schmitt are quick to point to the quality and stability of the entire program. Five other professors in the program have been at MSU at least 15 years.
“I do think that, in a sense, Neal and I played a role in bolstering a program that worked pretty well,” Ilgen said. “But more importantly, it’s been a stable program. People come and tend to stay, which reflects the quality of the department and the willingness to work together.”
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