Article archive / December 1, 2011
Originally published: . Volume 3, No. 4. Source pages: 1, 10, 11, 12, 13.
The LSU Industrial-Organizational Psychology (IO) Program is one of the oldest, continuously running IO programs in the US, with a long, distinguished legacy. Next year marks the 60th anniversary of the program, which began in 1952 with the late Dr. Bernard Bass, an early expert in IO who gained national acclaim for his work in transformational leadership, who was the Louisiana Psychological Association President in 1957, and who later became Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Organizational Behavior at Binghamton University in New York.
The combination of Dr. Larry Siegel and Dr. Irv Lane, both who served as Chair of the Psychology Department, and who coauthored Industrial Psychology and also Personnel and Organizational Psychology, mark for many a profound influence through the 60s, 70s, and 80s. With Greg Dobbins and Dirk Steiner taking the reins into the next decade, and to a program now led by Dr. Tracey Rizzuto and Dr. Russell Matthews, who carry on the legacy of quality and contribution.
The Psychology Times talked with the program leaders and many in our community who have been influenced by those in the program and the impact on their work and careers.
Dr. Rizzuto, the current head of the IO program, is a Louisiana native. During her undergraduate years at LSU, she got her first taste of IO psychology by working as a research assistant in the program she now leads. When asked how it feels to be a part of the legacy Dr. Rizzuto said, “I feel remarkably blessed to have the opportunity to come ‘home’ to LSU to direct the LSU IO Psychology Doctoral Program.”
Dr. Rizzuto works on a variety of research endeavors, including a project with Dr. Matthews to assess the effects of the aging workforce in the oil and gas industry. Additional efforts include Rizzuto’s investigation into helping Louisiana secondary education teachers to use social networking technology to improve communication, and a project that enters on uncoverig ways to enable more adults in Louisiana to attain a college degree. She explained that her goal is “to apply knowledge and skill to address obstacles and challenges facing Louisiana people and businesses.”
Dr. Matthews is a work- family and occupational health researcher whose primary research includes how adults are best able to manage their work and family domains. He investigates the effects that a lack of management of work and family can have on individuals including stress and decreased well-being. In addition to working on his own research, he currently serves on the editorial boards of J. of Business and Psychology and also Stress & Health. He also directs the Organizational Psychology Research Consultancy, an applied research center available to companies of all sizes. Graduate students Jared LeDoux, Claire Taylor, and Shane Lowery assist with a number of research projects in Dr. Rizzuto’s lab, including the work with Louisiana teachers. Graduate students Suzanne Booth, Rachel Trout, and Tatiana Toumbeva are members of Dr. Matthews’s lab working in areas of work-family issues, generational differences, and family embeddedness. Suzanne Booth and Shane Lowery are interns with the Psychology Times, a community publication. Regular collaboration between everyone and the small program size facilitates a close and supportive relationship between all the students and professors. This culture of collaboration and supportive training relationships seems to have been handed down through the generations of the LSU IO program.
Dr. William Costelloe graduated from the LSU IO program in 1973. “It was called Social-Industrial at that time,” he told the Times. His major professor was Dr. Perry Prestholdt, a social psychologist.
“From the day I graduated, I went out and started my own consulting practice,” he said, “and have been doing that since 1973.” Dr. Costelloe leads the Metairie consulting firm, Costelloe & Associates, offering an array of services such as employee and executive selection, organizational surveys, and management consulting. Drs. David Lange and Brian Bienn, both also graduates from LSU psychology department, are associates at the firm. “David lives in New Braunfels, Texas, and Brian lives in Atlanta, Georgia,” Dr. Costello explained. “We collaborate on projects so that we can draw upon each other’s specialized areas of expertise to benefit clients.”
“The best thing about those days [in graduate school] was that it was a great department,” he explained. “There was Siegel, Lane, Prestholdt, Glad, Timmons… Everyone was pulling together and there was overlap between everyone’s work.”
He noted that the real world experience came through the overlap in the work that professors where doing in social psychology, in the community, and with businesses.
“We did the weekend retreats for Father Phil Cappella at the Catholic Church’s leadership conference for Dr. Glad. We did the behavior laboratories for Dr. Timmons at the Institute of Insurance. We were all doing everything.” “I think it was the dynamics between those professors–the collaboration–that gave me the experience and confidence to go out and start my own practice.”
Dr. Courtland Chaney graduated from the LSU IO program in 1980. He then worked for the University of Maryland European Division teaching psychology and management at US and NATO military installations throughout Western Europe, specifically in Germany, Spain, The Netherlands and Italy.
“I recall the intensity of qualifying exams,” he explained to the Times. “More specifically, I remember the overall planning process, the assembly of the various sources defining the body of knowledge for all ten areas covered by the exams, and the total submersion into the various areas of psychology. Those late nights and the 14 cups of coffee a day were standard.”
“My graduate education at LSU was absolutely outstanding,” Dr. Chaney noted. “The scientist- practitioner model used in the IO program was an ideal fit for me and, I believe, the appropriate model for the field. Each year of graduate school I was required to take a practicum in IO psychology in addition to completing the academic components one expects in a doctoral program.”
“At a personal level,” he said, “the IO education and experience I received affected my career options, thought processes, and philosophical view of the human condition. I am more at peace with the life cycle because of it.” Dr. Chaney went on to accept a faculty position in the LSU Department of Management where he became the J. Trigg and Betty Baskin Wood, Jr. Endowed Professor in the College of Business. He retired in 2010 and now consults, teaches supervisor and management training for LSU Continuing Education and Executive Education, and works with the local chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management.
“I feel a sense of pride, gratitude and good fortune,” he said about his training. “I believe the comprehensive education I received was fabulous.” But he also wonders about the trends for IO psychology, being drawn to business schools and the disconnection between the licensing process and the practice of IO.
Dr. Rosemary Hays- Thomas (formerly Lowe), currently professor of psychology and Director of Women’s Studies, at the University of West Florida, crossed paths with Larry Siegel in 1982.
“I visited LSU in the spring of 1982 after the SEPA (Southeastern Psychological Association) meeting in New Orleans and spoke to Larry Siegel about the possibility of doing a post-doc in IO psychology with him.” Hays- Thomas had her doctorate in social and had been an LSU undergraduate in psychology. “I had heard Larry speak at SEPA and thought he had really good ideas.”
Dr. Hays-Thomas was able to join the LSU faculty and also respecialize in IO. “…the environment was friendly and very stimulating intel- lectually,” she said. “During that time I studied with Larry and Irv and also with the late Greg Dobbins and with Dirk Steiner…” she noted. “Their courses were solid learning experiences.”
At the time Siegel was the first Administrative Officer for SEPA. “Another connection,” said Hays-Thomas, “is that I was honored to be chosen as the third Administrative Officer for SEPA.” She has recently stepped down from this after nine years of service.
Through the 70s it was the custom of the psychology department to have graduate students choose a major and a minor. Baton Rouge psychologist Dr. Laura L’Herisson is one of those mixtures, earning a degree in clinical with a minor in IO, in 1978, with Irving Lane as her minor professor.
In her positions at Atari and Crocker Bank she found her training served her well. “I was working from a generalist approach,” she told the Times, “and I’d say it was the only way to be effective. By understanding the individual and the group, and the interaction between the two, I was able to enter industry at a high level of competence.” She told the Times her training helped her, “…to learn how the individual and their personality and idiosyncrasies affected the overall structure and the group in the corporate setting.”
“I did as much clinical as IO,” she said. “I set up Employee Assistance Programs at Atari and Crocker, I handled all the executive problems, I’d do the diagnostics for troubled employees, I established all the training for manufacturing employees on the floor, I was asked to evaluate promotability. …” She said, “If you did not know the corporate setting and the individual components, it was difficult to be effective.”
Dr. Donald Truxillo, now a professor at Portland State University, is the Society of Industrial- Organizational Psychology Chair of International Affairs. From hosting a conference in Italy, he told the Times that he finished his doctorate from LSU in 1987, with Greg Dobbins advisor, and worked with Irv Lane and Dirk Steiner.
“As someone who eventually found my calling and became an academic, I think that what LSU gave me was a good start in understanding research and publishing. Faculty were good at including grad students on publications, and that helped me a lot – not just in terms of my cv – but more important, in terms of understanding the process of research and publication. I think that this sort of mentoring is very important for students and is one I try to take with my students today. “
The Times talked with Dr. Irving Lane, who is doing well and living in a utopia type town somewhere tucked away in California. He enjoys his retirement and said a hello to all his colleagues in Baton Rouge.
One of the main sentiments behind the celebration of the IO program at LSU is a notion that seems to run through the program as a whole, expressed by Dr. Rizzuto. “The field of IO Psychology can do tremendous good for the state,” she said. It is a sentiment that all those affiliated with the current program share, as they strive to grow and continue the legacy. The celebration of the 60th anniversary of the IO psychology program at LSU is not just a remembrance of what has past, but rather is an acknowledgement of what is to come.
Dr. Courtland Chaney, IO psychologist, teaches executives for LSU Continuing Education. (Photo courtesy LSU CE.) LSU IO team collaborates on research: L to center, Claire Taylor, Shane Lowery, and Rachel Trout (reading). Tatiana Toumbeva and Dr. Russell Matthews facing away.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.